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Sunday, May 17, 2015

DIY Outdoor Wicker Chairs.



This one is going to be pretty long, but will have step by step instructions to how I redid the chairs.
Since the baby is on a regular schedule and I had these chairs in my garage just begging to be fixed up and put outside. They were begging. Seriously.


How cute, right? These will look so cute painted and put on my back porch.
So lizards can climb all over them and sunbathe on them. I have to find something to make that stop..
Anyway.

I started by cleaning them off. They were pretty dusty , so I just took a toilet bowl brush (that we use for cleaning, not for toilets haha) and brushed it all over the entire thing. Later I noticed it didn't do as great as I would've hoped so I will be looking for something else next time.
After I cleaned them I had to take them apart. 1. To be able to paint the chairs. 2. To cover those cushions.

Those arrows are pointing to the screws holding the seat on. Most all chairs you want to redo are like this. So just take your screw driver, or drill if you're fancy, and take the screws out. And now you have two pieces.

All done.

Make sure you take the chairs outside to spray. There's a lot of over spray and with this particular chair it got everywhere. Thank goodness the lawn grows because otherwise my husband would've been pretty ticked.

So I had this vision in my head to do them a pretty coral color and I thought they would be so cute!
Well, I did it and it was not cute. It was pretty bad actually. So, I had to go out the next day and get a different color spray paint. While the paint was drying I went ahead and covered the cushions. I had some old fabric that I bought from the Restore a long time ago (I paid $8 for an entire thing of it. Not per yard or anything. I thought that was pretty good, and it's heavy duty!). All I used was a hand staple gun, scissors, and a hammer - or in my case a big screw driver because I couldn't find my hammer.
 I started by measuring the cushion.
Nothing special really. No tape measurements or anything. If you are really particular, of course do use a tape measure, but I'm not and you won't see the bottom of this cushion anyway so it doesn't have to be pretty for me.
 So I took the finished edge and put it where the front of the cushion is.
Folded it up, started in the middle and stapled about 5 staples from one side to the other.
  So once that was done, I pulled the fabric tight, folded the corner down and stapled that.
Then, since its on a corner, I pulled tight, folded the fabric up from what is the top of the cushion to the bottom making a crease and stapled again.
I made sure that the crease looked nice, and pulled as tight as I could to make sure it looked nice and crisp. Now, I made sure I didn't use too much fabric as to cover up the holes where the screws go for the sides, the back it had to go through fabric (which turned out not to be a problem at all).
After that I stapled the rest of the fabric to the wooden part and stapled along the straight part.
Did that on both sides before continuing to the back/rounded part.
For this part, I kept folding and stapling. Nothing really special. Worked from one side to the other. If you are good at wrapping presents, then this will be a breeze for you. And even if you aren't it's very easy, just make sure you are pulling tight and keeping the folds nice and flat.
For the back/rounded part I first measured so that the fabric closest to the top of the cushion had enough fabric and I didn't pull that too tight.
So after I knew how much I needed, I folded the excess and stapled.
Then once that was stapled, just like a present, there was a larger piece across the back that I pulled nice and tight, then folded over and stapled.
Ta-da! Nice and neat. Not too shabby right?
Took me all of, say, 10 minutes to do one of them. Cutting and all included.

Awesome, so that was done. Now to go do a touch-up coat on the chairs with my spray paint.
New colors! In. Love.
This Rust-Oleum paint is about $6 at Walmart. But the way it sprays so easily and the coverage is definitely worth the money. The Krylon spray paint was great, too. The coverage was fantastic! I've never used anything like it. This was $4 at Walmart. I used two cans of both. I already had one can of the white to paint a flying pig at my house I got from a yard sale (haha that sounds so funny - I'll show you one day!).

So the finished product:
How freaking precious, right?
I'm so in love with them! They go so well in my back porch.
(I know, I have to do the table now, too.. I'll get to it!)

Run down on prices:

Chairs: Free
(gift from hubby's aunt)

Fabric for cushions: Free.
(already had)

Spray paint: $24
(including the coral can I bought that I didn't like.)

All together, I spent no more than $25!! Awesome right?
DIY doesn't have to be expensive, hard or stressful. Just have to try and see how it goes.

Have you done any DIY projects? I'd love to see!


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