Bentwood Kitchen Chairs Makeover for Dwell With Dignity Atlanta- Part 1

Last Spring, an amazing Dallas, Texas based non-profit organization called Dwell With Dignity chose Atlanta for one of their new design installations/locations. You can read more about it here. While I had a little more time with my design and painting business to help with the one last Spring, I had a few more things I was doing this time around, and couldn’t volunteer that much downtown, but I still wanted to help by doing a DIY project for the family’s new home makeover. ( In a nutshell, DWD finds Interior Designers in the area to help makeover the sponsored family’s existing home.  Other area volunteers help in different ways, but the blogging group I belong to, Atlanta Home/DIY Bloggers, helps paint, build, create, etc. different items needed to complete the designers’ plan for the family’s home.

Dena, from Hearts & Sharts blog, met me with the chairs, paint, fabric, & other supplies. She did a tremendous amount of work helping with the project this time, from assigning different bloggers a project to helping finish the house on installation day and so much in between. It’s just so amazing how our group and all the other volunteers work together to make this project happen from conception to completion. It’s such fun energy and it wouldn’t be possible without every single person helping. Everyone using their gifts and talents to help a family have a beautiful home they can finally take pride in and enjoy! 

Years ago, my husband & I had some Bentwood ( ice cream parlor) chairs in mahogany passed down from one of his Grandmothers. We sold them at a garage sale when we lived in Arizona, I think. They were not terribly comfortable for tall people, but they were cute and charming. The designers chose these ice cream parlor chairs to be painted and reupholstered for the DWD family this time, which was a young Mother and her 2 little girls, ( all tiny people) so they will be perfect for their family’s new kitchen. Here are a few BEFORE pictures of the chairs: ( in all their turquoise glory 🙂 )

 

The Goal: To prime and paint all three chairs and add upholstered seat cushions in designer chosen fabric.

The first thing I did was remove the chair cushion, and spray them all with a few  good coats of Zinnser 1-2-3 primer. ( to cover the bold turquoise paint )

Next, I used the existing seat cushion as a template to trace 2 other circles onto approximately 1/4″ plywood.

 I removed all the staples in the existing seat cushion with a flathead screwdriver and a pair of pliers.

 My husband then cut out each circle with a jigsaw ( sorry, forgot that picture ) .

 The kitchen designers, AJW Designs,Inc. selected this beautiful greige taupe paint color called Fashion by Behr Paints. This was a paint + primer  product in an eggshell finish.  I love Behr paint and usually use this paint and primer in various finishes, depending on the project.

( Looks are deceiving in this image. It’s actually much lighter when applied! )

I had recently received a new Home Right Fine Finish Max Pro Sprayer to review, and the chairs were the perfect pieces to test it out on because of all the curves and hard to reach places. It was so easy to use, too! I love when a product makes your life easier, it’s actually fun to use, and clean up is a breeze. 

I simply diluted the paint a little, ( approximately  1 part water to 4 parts paint ), attached the lid, turned the power on, and used the spray nozzle to spray the chairs. I started by flipping all the chairs over on some dropcloth outside. Keeping the nozzle moving in a long continuous sweeping motion was my most successful technique. If you stay in one spot too long, dripping can occur, so just keep it steadily moving. I was very impressed with the HomeRight Fine Finish Max Pro Sprayer, and can’t wait to try it on some larger pieces of furniture. It gives such a smooth, flawless finish and is sort of addictive to use 🙂

The next day, I had a few spots that needed touching up, so I lightly sanded the paint drips, and repainted with a foam brush. After letting that dry very good, I gathered the fabric, some foam, and battling to reupholster the seats. Again, I didn’t remember to take a picture of the wooden circles that we cut, but they were the base of the seat cushions.  I used the wood as a template for the foam by tracing around it with a Sharpie, then cutting it out. I cut the batting and fabric larger than the foam to have enough room to pleat and pull. Just cut away the excess when you are finished or when you see you have enough. Nothing worse than cutting too much too soon !! :0

The fabric chosen was called Richloom Solar Outdoor Fabric in  Destiny Terracotta  It’s an outdoor fabric, so it will be durable and easy care for the young children in this household. I assume it came from Forsyth Fabrics, an amazing fabric store in Atlanta’s West District because it was in a Forsyth Fabric bag, but I couldn’t find it on their website when I searched. Here is another link if you would like to look it up here.

Recovering a circle seat is a little different than recovering a square seat, because you basically work in one direction pleating, pulling, then stapling all the way around. If the fabric puckers, you have to remove the staple(s), pleat, and pull tight until it’s neat and uniform. An issue I  had was that my staple gun would not go through the edges well ( the wood must have been more dense? ) so I had to pull the fabric down a few more inches to get the staples to go in. ( I was thankful I didn’t prematurely cut it at this point! ) I think I used 5/16″ staples because I wanted to make sure they were long enough to stay in good.

 The chair that already had the existing seat cushion had these braces underneath, and that helped guide us on attaching the other 2 seat cushions.

 The great thing about the way we did the 2 chairs with no existing seat cushion was that it didn’t show the raw edges of the fabric under the chair because we attached the wood seat cushion on top of the existing seat, and then screwed it in from underneath. Short screws are key here…people are going to be sitting down and they have to secure the brace and hold the seat cushion to the chair, while not sticking someone when they sit down! 😉 

 

And the finished chairs…alas!!

 

And another look at the before…and after….. 

They turned out pretty, didn’t they? I wasn’t particularly drawn to the fabric when I saw it, but wait until you see it in the family’s new kitchen makeover! A great example of how individual pieces contribute to an overall design in a space. Hope y’all enjoyed this before and after of these Dwell With Dignity kitchen chairs…it’s always fun to see such a change. 

Join me for PART 2  next time for the Dwell With Dignity Atlanta September 2014 reveal!! You’re going to LOVE it!!

Til next time….xoxo