And now for something completely different...

As you have probably gathered, there is never a minute wasted in our household.  I have been looking at a sad, dilapidated French dining chair for some months and finally got the enthusiasm to reinvent it.

You will need:

                  One neglected chair

                  Piece of plywood (if not seat) MDF too hard for staples!

                  1 inch foam or similar

                  Staple gun or upholstery tacks

                  Piece of calico and material for final cover

How often have you been to a junk shop and seen an old chair for a fiver - or less?  It may even have been on a skip!  I love skips. Well, if you don’t have one, hopefully this blog will encourage you to go and seek one out.

My chair started its life 100 years ago with a beautiful cane seat, sadly long gone.

The idea here is to be economic.  Use material and paint you already have - be thrifty - it feels very rewarding and friends will be amazed.

I initially treated the chair with a woodworm zapper - just in case.  I then had a piece of plywood cut to fit the base by my very good friend Bob who always has just the thing in his garage.  You may be lucky and have a base already in the chair.

When it came to painting the chair I used Annie Sloan chalk paint as I already had some to hand.

You can buy little tester pots which are enough for a chair.  The wonderful thing about Annie Sloane paint is it needs little or no preparation - it sticks to anything.  I used duck egg blue for the first coat and old white as the second and final coat.  When dry with some 000 grade wire wool carefully rub the wood until the first colour appears in places and a little of the original wood.  This gives the chair a wonderful aged look.  Nearly finished the woodwork now.  Just rub a clear wax over the paintwork and buff it up.  You can use a satin acrylic varnish if you prefer.

Now for the seat pad.  You will need some firm 1 inch foam.  I sourced mine from our local market for £1.50.  Place the wooden base on the foam and using a very sharp knife, carefully cut around the shape.  I put a piece of thick plain material loosely on top of the foam as I find the final cover often “sticks” to the foam making it more difficult to work with.  Cut your top cover material about 3 inches bigger than the base.  Place on foam pad and carefully turn over so that the underside of the seat is facing you.  Be firm and pull the two sides over and staple in about 4 places.  You do have to pull hard otherwise the cover will be loose.  Leave the corners free.  Now do the same to the top and bottom.  It is now safe to turn the seat over to check that it looks OK. You don’t want any wrinkles.  Carefully fold and staple each corner to get a neat edge, cutting away some material if it is too lumpy.   You could staple a little calico or something similar on the base to make it look more 

professional.

So how do you think it looks?