Farmhouse Style Chair Makeover

Hey all!  What can we never have enough of?  Aside from tacos?  For us it’s dining room chairs.  They get used y’all!  Our dining room table and chairs has always served us very well and we love having dinner parties.  Over the years there has been a need for additional seating especially now that we started offering brunches at our B&B.  Boo and I have been out hunting for an additional table and some chairs every chance we get.  I was excited when my friend over at Acquisitions told me she had a Duncan Phyfe table like I’d been searching for and when I stopped by, I also found 2 cute chairs that I thought I could revamp into a chic-ee new look!  I transformed them with very little effort – here’s my farmhouse style chair makeover.

Before I share the steps for the chairs I have to tell you that my friend (Barb), back in Texas sent me these socks and they’re all I could think of when I was working on this project!  I know exactly what will go through her mind when she sees this post and it’s hilarious, as is she and (these socks)!!!

But back to the chairs…

They were oak stained and not being a fan of  the “oak” shade and because most of our pieces are a dark stain or white, I went with white.  Here are the before…

They had been redone at some point with this navy print, which I pulled out endless amounts of staples.

Making a few minor repairs as the bottom of this chair only had those little nails sticking out that were holding that mid section together (along with some old glue).  I pulled out all the nails and stripped the glue off before replacing them with some wood pieces.

Once the bottoms were off I painted the chair frames with a white wash chalk paint.  Followed by antique medium and wood wax over the entire pieces before beginning the upholstery part.

You can see the old padding had seen better days.  Before we moved from Austin our son had given my husband these coffee bean burlap sacks from a local coffee shop he frequents.  He figured we could re-purpose them for something.  (Our family all thinks alike–reuse, reduce, recycle!) I thought they were the perfect use for these chairs!

I also had some thicker padding, I just needed to cut to size.

I’m fixin’ to blow your mind…

I discovered this trick by accident back in the 80’s. I was working on a 3D architectural project for my final grade and was making it out of foam pieces but I just couldn’t get them straight enough.  My uncle who owned a flower shop in town told me about a hot wire getup he had developed to use in the flower shop to cut flower foam in specific sizes.  It worked great, but then after returning it and not wanting to bother him again, I thought of my electric knife.  GUYS—it did the trick!  It cuts perfectly and so flawlessly it’s amazing.  Been using it after all these years!  That was one of my greatest GENIUS ideas!  Try it if you ever have a need for perfect foam pieces.

Once the foam was cut and fitted, I trimmed the burlap sacks.

BOO-BOO!!! I failed to account for the new thickness so I ended up with a seat with no pattern (lettering) on it because I didn’t have enough of the sack to fit it.

PLAN B: (always have a plan B!)

Improvise—I used my Cricut, some clear contact paper and cut a stencil that I designed to use as my pattern.  I just used a permanent marker to fill in the lettering.

Farmhouse Style Chair Makeover

Supplies:

• old chair(s)
• pliers- to remove old staples
• staple gun
• new fabric (plus padding if needed)
• chalk paint
• sealing wax
• antique medium (opt.)

I LOVE how they turned out and they fit our style perfectly!  Not too shabby a makeover for $30 right?  And we have the additional seating we needed!  On to the next project!