Rocking Chair Transformation

You saw the before and afters, but now I wanted to walk you through with a step-by-step of how we got from A to B.

The chair at first was old...my daughter received it when she was just a baby and it saw years of destruction from all 3 of my children...now that the girls are interested in having some more grown up pieces in their room like a vanity and a desk, these little chairs no longer have a place. So I decided to refinish them and make them new for another little girl to enjoy.

Supplies Purchased:
$5.00 1/2 Gallon of Black Paint (Didn't even put a dent in it, plenty more for lots of other projects)
$4.00 Mini Cursive Letters Box (Still have enough to do other names)
$2.99 1 yard of Fabric (Was a remnant from a vanity project I did for my daughter's room)
$3.49 Krylon Spray Primer (leftover from another project)
$5.00 2 pack of chair sized foam pieces (used 1/2 of 1)

Overall used about $5.00 worth of supplies


Steps:
1) Wash the piece and strip those stickers off. Also a good time to remove the seat if it is able to be removed.

2) Sand it all over evenly to loosen up any existing finish and also to help remove any remnants of the stickers and old name.

3) Prime the chair - I use a spray primer by Krylon

4) First coat of paint color. For this project I chose black because it went so elegantly with the fabric the client chose for her seat.

Since the rocking chair was such a drastic color difference from the original color and is very lightweight to pick up. I recommend painting underneath too. Overall the entire painting process will require about 2 full coats and one brush up coat.

5) The client did not care for the wicker look to the seat, plus the wicker was damaged and last I heard that is not easy to reweave and repair. So instead, I added a foam cushion, and some fabric left over from another project and gave her an adorable cushioned seat. The cushion was necessary not only for comfort, but also to keep the weave from being visible through the fabric.

Please excuse the blurry pictures, my daughter is 7 and I let her be my photographer she forgot to turn on the flash until the final picture. I would normally work with a little more fabric to not have it be so stretched and so close to the frame of the seat, but since this was a remnant I only had a little bit of the fabric left.

6.  Put the seat back on the base and glue the name letters on (these were painted to match the flowers in the fabric)

Great transformation for $5.00!

I found a few rocking chairs at an online retailer (www.rockingchairs.com) that were ALOT of money.

Retails for $59.99

This one has fabric elements and is black and modern like the one I made, but it retails for $119.99.