Monday, July 18, 2011

Sister Sunday

One day last week I had some time to kill while I was waiting for our jeep to get it's desperately needed new tires put on, so Melissa, Mom Peterson, and I wandered around The Salvation Army.  I have really grown to love thrifting these last few years! Especially now, having a very tight budget....it's amazing what you can find at thrift stores.  

This particular day we stumbled upon 2 chairs that we knew would be going home with us.  At a whopping $4 a chair, it was too good to pass up! I should also mention that these chairs are actually in good shape and seem to be made really well. We immediately began brainstorming what we could do to give them a makeover, even though neither one of us knows the first thing about re-upholstering a chair! 




We declared this past Sunday to be "sister day" so we could work on our chairs.  Of course it happened to also be one of the first truly hot days of the summer.  We did not let the heat keep us from our DIY fun though!  We found a shady spot and spray painted these beauties a nice ivory color.  I love how a little paint can make something look so different!  


beating the heat with The Pioneer Woman's delicious Iced Coffee!

Mel is demonstrating how strong she is.  :)

After some paint!

After the first coat was on we let them dry while we ran to Walmart to get more spray paint, and some food for us and our hungry husbands.  After dinner and a second coat of paint, we treated ourselves to some chocolate dipped ice cream cones from Tastee-Freez because it was National Ice Cream Day, and it just seemed like the right thing to do on such a hot day. :) 

Once the chairs were dry we had to figure out the best way to re-upholster them. Unfortunately there was no easy way to remove the cushions, so we had to get creative.  We considered doing a step by step tutorial but that quickly went out the window when we realized we really didn't know what we were doing, and this was going to be a learn as you go kind of thing. :)  We never even googled "how to re-upholster a chair". I guess we just wanted to figure it out for ourselves.  haha.  It was quite humorous at times.  Covering the second chair was definitely much easier because we had worked out some of the kinks in the first one.  We laughed at the thought of someone watching us who actually knows how to re-upholster.  All that matters is that we had a great time, and we ended up with some fun chairs! While they aren't perfect, we are proud of our work and they look beautiful!

The onlooker. :)  Gilbert was either laying under our feet sleeping, or observing from somewhere near by while we worked. 

No one was harmed during this project.  We practiced staple gun safety.

Finished!  Mel found this fun fabric in the sale bin at JoAnn.

before
after!


here's what we found inside of the chairs.  a driver's prayer card, a Quality Motors business card, and....a peanut!

It was a fun experience, and we would definitely do it again.  Maybe next time we'll find some chairs with removable cushions. :)  ALSO, next weekend we're doing an engagement photo shoot, and you can bet these chairs will be making an appearance! 

4 comments:

  1. Fun! I love your little DIY project :) It turned out so cute! Have you ever checked out allthingsthrifty.com? She has some AMAZING ways to freshen up furniture using spray paint and glaze! It's so cool!! :D

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  2. What a fun day! It sounds perfect :-) And your chairs look wonderful too - good job!

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  3. Thanks, Liz and Leah! :)

    It was a fun day!

    Liz, I just checked out that website and I love it! I had never heard of it before. Thanks for telling me about it!

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  4. Hi, Charissa! How neat to see that you have a blog - I'm so excited to keep up with you on here! Those chairs look awesome - I've always wanted to do crafty things like that! :) And the iced coffee recipe sounds amazing - I'll have to look it up! :) Hope you're having a great day!! -Carrie (Harriss) Hart :)

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