I set myself up in the garage, covering the floor with newspaper and got to work with a can of teal spray paint. It took three coats of paint, plenty of drying time in between and a coat of acrylic sealer left over from some painting project my kids did ages ago, but my boring, practical and abused stepladder is now a colorful addition to my closet, and both practical and adorable. Total cost for the project? Probably about $2 for a can of spray paint that I bought with a 40 percent off coupon at my local crafts store.
A year or two later, the bug struck again as I noticed that the wrought iron chair with a fabric-covered cushion in my daughter’s room looked like it had seen better days. The fabric was fraying, the paint was chipped, but was there anything physically wrong with the chair? Absolutely not.
This project involved a trip to both the crafts store (for spray paint) and a fabric store for new fabric. My goal was to turn a humdrum white chair into something that would inject a little wow factor in the corner of my 13-year-old’s room.
It didn’t take long to unscrew the cushion from the chair and take off the old fabric. Recovering the pad took a little longer than expected because I neglected to figure out just how much fabric I needed. Not only did I have to cover the top of the chair, the material would have to wrap around the sides and extend to the bottom so that it could be staple-gunned into place. It took another trip to the fabric store to get a totally new piece of fabric and I learned an important lesson: always buy extra fabric, just in case. You just never know when you might need it.
Once again, I pulled out the sandpaper and started sanding to eliminate any imperfections, giving me a clean work surface. Since I did this project in the summer, I spray painted my chair on newspaper set up in my driveway, but always factor in the wind when spray painting outdoors, unless you don’t mind those little airborne droplets of paint settling on you and your clothing. Three coats of paint and one coat of sealant later, with extra drying time to accommodate summer’s humidity, and my chair was ready to be reassembled. I screwed the chair pad back, and took the chair up to my daughter’s room. She was thrilled to find that her once tired-looking ugly chair had been transformed into a lime green and fuchsia stunner. Total cost, including fabric that was too small and couldn’t be used? About $7.
How many times do any of us look around and notice things in our house that look tired and worn but are structurally sound? In today’s day and age we are all accustomed to tossing things and starting fresh, but often enough we can breathe new life into stuff we already own, giving us maximum bang for a minimum investment. Look around you and see what you can do with what you already have. You might just be very pleasantly surprised with the results.