DIY Chair Makeover - with pictures
It's always better to have a pair, naturally. But when you only see one of something, whatever, just take that and figure out how to make it work. That was my guiding principle when I spotted this interesting chair on the top of a furniture pile.Finding the chair to work with
I decided to take it since it was a classic shape, solid wood, and I could see that the seat would be easy to remove and recover with new fabric. After getting it home I decided to strip the finish and dye it black. The quasi-inspiration was chair shown (below) in navy blue, except with a different back, a fabric seat, and a darker (black) color......
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| Pottery Barn - Napoleon Chair |
The color inspiration came from these gorgeous chairs featured in one of the homes designed by Amber Interiors out in California. The pulled-together-yet-non-matchy-matchy-ness of this dining space is superb. Of course I'm not going to go out and buy matching shaped chairs, but I'm definitely going to experiment with black wooden chairs for a while.
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| credit: amberinteriordesign.com http://amberinteriordesign.com/project/client-tupac-meets-biggie-to-decorate-the-diggies/ |
Make sense?
Refinishing the free chair
So here we are, with the citristrip applied.
The key with citristrip is to use so much that you cannot see the wood underneath. This is how it will have enough time to act before it dries out. After scraping off a goodly amount of citristrip + old finish I got to the point where it became faster to just sand off the remaining bits of old finish. Eventually I got to the point where the frame, as far as I could tell, was down to the wood.
After all of the stripping and sanding, and more sanding, and more sanding, it was time to dye the wood! I used an aniline dye dissolved in water and painted it on with a brush. There is probably a better way to do that type of application, the paintbrush dipped in water is pretty drippy.
The initial round of dye application (above) revealed that some spots were resisting the dye, and hence needed more sanding to remove the stubborn remnants of the original finish.
So I did more sanding.
Then I applied another round of dye....
As I was applying the dye I was naturally filled with doubt.....
Was black the right choice?
Would it be too dark?
Would the finish be uneven?
Would it end up looking like crap?
Well, after dye, furniture wax, and a recovered seat (including a new layer of foam and batting) I got my answer.
The chair makeover, completed
Here's a close-up of the corner so you can see the detail of the printed fabric (from Spoonflower.com ) and also appreciate the soft lustre of the waxed finish.
So there it is, for better or worse, my dark floral makeover of a classic wooden chair.
If you look closely there are a few spots that resisted the dye, but maybe I can pass that off as the unique variations of a hand-finished piece? (Although we all know the truth is that I just get tired of sanding.)
Hopefully if you didn't know what a splat was on a chair you've also learned a new furniture word!
Happy freestyling!
