Once the fabric was cut and I was back home, I realized that the white and gold wood of the chair just wasn't going to sing with the new fabric. I would have to paint the chair as well. Before I could paint, I carefully removed all the fabric from the chair and masked the areas I didn't want to paint. I primed the wood with a spray primer and headed off to find the right paint color.

I like to use spray paint for a job where I want to avoid brush strokes and this was one of those jobs. A local gallery stocks a wide assortment of high quality spray paints with waaaay more color options than the hardware store. The brand I used, Sabotaz 80, turned out to be really excellent spray paint. Sabotaz is a medium pressure spray, which means the paints comes out evenly and smoothly and when buying a can you are given two different spray caps to help control the size of the spray area. I was very impressed with how easily I could control the paint and how evenly the color was distributed. Next time you have a spray painting craft get your hands on some of this! While the spray paint dried outside, I rolled my tattoo fabric out and laid out my pattern pieces (the fabric I just removed from the chair). When cutting your own upholstery fabric be sure to check the orientation of the print on the fabric---you want all the print running in the same direction. Once this was achieved I cut my patterned pieces and was ready to finish the job!

As I mentioned before, if you have paid close attention to exactly how the chair came apart, you should be prepared to put the chair back together. Using the same stuffing that came out of the chair and a staple gun, I put the thing back together. I did struggle with the channels and button tufting for a while, but with patience everything went back where it was supposed to go. The final finishing step was using fabric glue to adhere black braided trim around the edges of the new fabric to hide my staple work. TA-DA! Changing the paint color as well as the fabric made this makeover complete.

4 Comments