Fabric Painted Chairs

I spotted a Craiglist ad for some chairs a couple of weeks ago. A store in the area was closing, and they were giving them for free. 

I was interested in some swivel office chairs the original post had, so I went to pick them up and do some other errands in that area.

Well, when I arrived, the swivel chairs were gone!
These were the ones left. There were also some cabinets and more plastic office chairs on the other side.

Hmmm, I was not interested in those "leather" chairs :)  I grabbed two with fabric material.

I thought about using them in my office, but that room serves too many purposes right now, such as an office, guest room, and storage space. There is still a bed in there since we had a guest... who knows when! That's why I brought the chairs to the family room. When my husband saw them, he said they looked like hotel room chairs. I couldn't agree more :/ And right then and there, I began thinking about how to change them.

The color was OK, but they were too dark for my space. They look better in these pictures with all the light purring in. I didn't want to reupholster them. Too much work + fabric ;)

I decided to paint the fabric, using these chairs as "guinea pigs." I have another set of chairs - wingback chairs that I was thinking of doing the same, but I was hesitant to do it to those chairs since they are of better quality.

This is how it all went:

First, I painted the wooden parts. Two coats of homemade chalk paint.

I also use homemade chalk paint to paint the fabric. 

As the left picture below shows, only one coat covered lots. That first coat of paint took me like two hours to complete on only one chair!

I used a Purdy paintbrush to paint most of that first chair. I had to come back to paint the tufted back with a smaller brush, going between the folds and inside the holes; that was the hardest part.

For the second chair, I didn't use the Purdy brush. Wearing a plastic glove, I painted it with my hand. My fingers worked better to apply paint in all those folds. Painting it this way was faster since that material absorbed LOTS of paint, and with my hand, I just slapped the paint on.

I waited 24 hours for the paint to dry, though it felt dry at the end of the day. 

They looked horrible! 

At that point, I even considered throwing them away, but I continued because so many people have done this, and they had given it good reviews!

The second coat made them look so much better. Look at the difference!

I used the paintbrush again with the second coat. This coat of paint went on faster than the first one, as the fabric wasn't absorbing much product.

 I decided two coats were all they needed. Both chairs got two coats of paint.

They looked good, but they were outrageously rough! 

The fabric had turned into sandpaper. 

I brought them back to the garage for a good sanding as soon as they were dry.

It was like 24 hours after the second coat. I began using a sanding block on the back of the chairs, afraid that the blue color would show up, but no. :) 

They sustained heavy sanding without any damage. The sanding worked wonders. I gave special attention to the seat and the armrests; I didn't want anyone with scratched arms!

See the difference:

After dusting them very well, the wooden parts got waxed. I'm still trying to improve my work with the dark wax ;)

And they were DONE!

This is my view on this whole project:

It took work. I thought upholstering them would've been easier (well, 50/50 because removing staples isn't easy, either). The first coat of paint took forever, and the sanding was exhausting.

Do I like the look? Yes! When I'm in the kitchen and at the far end, I see my new pair of white chairs; they look lovely, just like in these pictures. I like how they are not shiny; I didn't want any shine on the fabric, that's why I didn't apply wax on it.

Do I like how they feel? No. They are not rough. They are smooth, but they feel like plastic material. When my daughter sat for the first time on one of the chairs, she said: "it feels like I'm sitting on an old marshmallow" I guess that's not too good ;)

I'm going to keep them right here where they are. If I see any changes, I'll update this post.
For the wingback chairs, I'm going to skip the paint treatment; they're going to be upholstered.

The chairs were painted with homemade chalk paint -custom colors - Find the recipe HERE.