My painted chair project - Pinterest Inspiration

25 January 2012

I found this tutorial on pinterest “the painted chair” http://www.apartmenttherapy.com/before-amp-after-painted-uphol-144133 I wanted a chair for a studio prop like this but could never find on in my budget that I liked the color of,  so I found this chair on craigslist for $25 (please forgive my bad iphone pictures)



I thought, I can paint this chair and if I mess up it was only $25 right?  I then doubted that it would come out good and called a local furniture reupholstering company to find out how much it would cost to re do it, “how much?” $225 and that’s if I supplied the fabric.  Ok so painting the chair it would be.

I followed the instructions on the website above but instead of using household latex paint for the remaining steps I used acrylic paint the entire time.  I used 1 part fabric medium to 1 part acrylic paint then I added water, I don’t remember exactly how much water but I went for a very watery consistency. I ended up only using half a bottle of each on this chair, I kept my paint in a Tupperware container and closed it after each coat and that one batch lasted the entire 4 coats.

I sprayed the fabric very well with water before I started and painted a very light coat for the first coat.  I let it dry (it actually didn’t take too long to dry) Then repeated the steps 3 more times, so I did a total of 4 light coats).  The fabric didn’t feel like it was painted at all and the design on the fabric comes through very nicely
My last step was to paint the wood surface, I used white spray paint,  this to me was the hardest part, I had to tape off all the fabric areas which was a pain, if I chose to do this again I would find a chair that didn’t have so many wood surfaces.


And the final product, which I have to say I’m pretty happy with, since I’m not very crafty.


Before and after






4 comments:

  1. Man, I think that is one of the best I've seen! Awesome!! Ironically, someone sent me a link to a chair painted almost the exact same color yesterday. Posted in on my FB. I may do a post with both chairs on it sometime. Great job!! It looks amazing! If you have a large photo, would you mind emailing it to me?

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  2. I just wanted to let you and your readers know that I posted your chair on my page with examples of painted upholstery! I linked right to you so they could find more information on your blog. Hope you don't mind.

    http://www.hypheninteriors.com/chairs

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  3. Hi! Love your chair! Would you recommend spray painting the wood first and then painting the upholstery (after doing lots of taping on the wood)? My chair is similar to yours, so I was wondering if you would do it the same way if you were to do it over again? Thanks! :)

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