Lovely Little French Chair

Ok....this chair doesn't look so great now right?  My neighbor was going to throw away this chair. He thought it was ugly.  But look at it - it has great bones!  Great details, a cane back, cute curves...and so easy to re-do!

Now, you can take this chair to be professionally reupholstered and it would be beautiful.  But, you can also re-do this yourself and have a great outcome. Don't be intimidated, just start taking it apart and save the material as your pattern. With the burgundy velvet off, look how great this chair looks.  It actually looks so much better with the material off which is why you need to look at the form of an old chair and not the material. Now you can see the details and the wood and know that this has so much potential.

With Annie Sloan chalk paint, you don't have to strip and sand the wood on finished furniture, which... would be kind of a pain. You just paint right on it - which makes this super easy.  So I gave this a coat of Old White, which is a soft cream and then added some french linen.  Nothing has to be perfect - unless you want it to be. I just swirl it around, wipe some off, add more back on, until it looks how I want it to look.

Then I added some gold gilding to highlight and accent.  

 I originally thought I'd leave the cane brown, but ended up thinking it looked prettier painted.  When painting cane, use a very little bit of paint on your brush and make sure no drips come through the back.

People tell me all the time, "I could never do this....I'll mess it up."  That's ok....I mess up all the time and sometimes, when you mess up - you get an even better result.  Take this next step for instance... Since the chair pad had all these curves, I opted to get the removable pad, professionally done.  I chose to do the chair portion - myself.  This isn't hard to do, but you do have to pay attention - which on this chair - I did not.  If you look closely at that right arm at the bottom, I cut the material too short (always go bigger first). And of course, I did not have any extra material. Knowing I could not leave the chair this like this (I'm a little OCD)  I went out and bought some new fabric and used a different fabric on the bottom to go with the top cushion.

I found a beautiful new material that worked out great.  Truth be told, I actually like the two different patterns together better and the chair took on a new personality with the difference.

How fun is this?  So don't be afraid to try something for fear of messing up.  If you mess up, try something else.  :)

I love my new little chair.  It makes me happy!

Do you have an old chair sitting around....give it a makeover.  It's easy.

Have a great week!

Paula