BrittanyMakes

Happy belated Christmas everyone! Yep, I definitely got caught in the whirlwind tornado that is Christmas and wasn’t able to post a dang thing over the last week.  I had a fantastic holiday though, and I hope you all did too!  My plan for New Years is that I have nothing planned.   A weekend full of cleaning house, cuddling, and enjoying the last few minutes of my Christmas tree is all we have planned.

Before the Christmas tornado hit, I was able to reupholster a chair-in-need for a good friend!  This is a reproduction piece from the 90’s, hence the faded blue and peach botanical print… yum right? My  friend’s mom bought this chair as one of her very first pieces of furniture, the sentimental value in this piece is high and my friend wanted to do right by the chair and give it a fair make-over.

First, we I spent a couple hours stripping the chair of it’s botanical get-up and prying the cord and staples from the frame.  Scissors, pliers, an Xacto knife, and wire cutters were our tools of choice for this step.

We grabbed a can of Graphite Chalk Paint and covered the chair in two coats of paint.  We let the first coat completely dry before we applied the second.  After the chalk paint was dry, we grabbed some Liquid Gold Leaf and painted some gold leaf detail in the rosette and scroll patterns at the edges and arms of the chair.  Once all the paint was dry, we lightly coated the chair in Annie Sloan’s dark wax, which adds a dark patina and gives the wood some beautiful age.

I stepped in at this point to start the upholstery process.  First, I took the original pieces of fabric and used them as a pattern to cut out the new fabric.  Then, I re-purposed the original cord by sewing new double-welt cord with strips of the new fabric.

My friend found this velvet Napoleon Bee fabric at a local fabric warehouse.  I think it was about $25/yard.  The Napoleon Bee is a symbol of resurrection, and couldn’t be a better representation of the rhythm of this chair’s life.

We’re super happy with how this chair turned out.  My man said it’s his favorite project yet, since I “didn’t paint it white”.  I guess I paint a lot of things white…