You remember my before?

Here starts the after!

I bought a red outdoor carpet at Target. Because it’s red. Surely you have book-clubbed up regarding Red Moonglow on Snow, and realize the importance of the color? I knew you had! 🙂 I found the off-set umbrella at Aldi. Yes, Aldi. For the majority of my life, I had a bad impression about the place. (they don’t use bags, it’s a little odd). However, I get some good food and steals like this there: $60! Everywhere else had them for no less that $200!

 (Suni, the dog, up there in the corner, beside the trash that Comcast left. Bastards.)

Carpet, shade: I set to work on my chairs. I don’t know what the last people were thinking with the maybe-once blue?, or green?, and white-ish checkered fabric they had on these chairs:

There is an amazing sun motif in the iron work, and they chose that?

I knew exactly what fabric I wanted to replace it with: black background with red, teal, purple, and green accents. Maybe some yellow (I’m not a fan of yellow in general, but there is a sun that needs some homage paid). I also wanted something celestial, and circular. Took me a couple years and several stores to finally find something.

I debated on buying new batting and decided to wait and see what I uncovered, in case something was salvageable.

I think I lucked out big time. Underneath the ugly fabric was ugly orange leather. However, it’s pretty thick leather, and as much as I never use leather in anything (vegetarian here), I saw its points. One, it’s already there. Two, it’s waterproof. Therefore, it’s protecting the batting and wood underneath. If I leave it, I don’t need to replace the batting, or find another similar cover.

That was before, this is after!

No sunbursts, but it had the circular pattern and the colors I wanted, and with just a hint of yellow. Super proud of myself when I saw the new seats!

Onto the chairs themselves!

Spray paint. Mmmm. 🙂 I have never spray painted before, but I get into my painting moods and go pretty nuts. This could be fun or something of a disaster. I did mention lots of color, remember? My original thinking was to keep it all black. Be traditional. But traditional is pretty boring. I don’t have any flowers to bring me color, so the chairs will need to take on that job. Plus, it’s paint. If I don’t like it, I can paint over it. Time to experiment!

Before:

After!

Oh, that Ikea furniture plastic saved me yet again! First, the greenhouse, now my chairs.

They didn’t require a lot of pre-painting work. I washed them, then used a wire brush to get out some rust. Aside from that, the old paint remained in good condition.

I couldn’t believe the difference in just the new black over the armchairs. Hadn’t relaized just how bad the original paint job looked. Surprisingly, the green covered the easiest, while the red needed two cans of paint. I know many people who only decorate with white, admitting that they are afraid of color. It’s paint. You can paint over it. Painting these chairs somewhat obnoxiously was terrifying, amazing, and liberating. It was an immediate ‘Oh my god, what am I doing- Oh. My god. Look what I did!’ Now I understand graffitti artists. (The artists, not the taggers). Why do I understand graffiti artists? What did I do after finishing these?

Yep, bought a metal cart at a fleamarket for $15 that needs more in-depth refinishing. And spray painting. If this rain ever stops, I might actually get to work on it. It is July, isn’t it?

Which is also partly why I don’t have a picture of the completed, put together chairs. It keeps raining. The seats are stacked on my back porch to keep them somewhat dry. Screws have not made it out of the tool chest. Also, because it’ll be part of my final reveal. There is a plan in place, you know.

In any case, rest assured, no slimy snails were harmed in the re-making of these chairs: