Designalogue

Hi. It’s been a while. How you lot doing?

I have a story of an ugly duckling to beautiful swan (or what ever!) to share.

I’ve been working on an apartment project where the budget was getting a bit tight. Rather than miss out on loveliness and ruin the overall look, it just needed some clever thinking. Rather than compromising on not the right thing! It would have been such a shame to use chairs from one of those chain stores where the it breaks on the 15th sitting (fact. or, um not. but they are crap ok! and yes, I am very much a snob about those things) so I knew I had to step in and get my hands dirty – literally!

So to the trusty store in the sky I turned – eBay and snatched up a great set of balloon back dining chairs for $300. Bargain! (Reproduction naturally for that price!) They were sturdy in construction and just with ugly upholstery and the frame colour not being right for this project. But I was confident they would look fabulous after a bit of love.

Before shot

Once they were stripped of the baby poo velvet seat upholstery, they needed to be painted. This is where I get my hands dirty, very dirty and painted myself. I have a reputation amongst my loved ones to paint anything I can get my hands on. I also have a tendency to paint when the mood strikes, leaving little time for preparation or pesky things like drop sheets. (Leaving to little paint droplets in um, some places inside the house and out. ssshh) Though as these chairs were for a client and not for me, I did really have to take the time to do all that stuff, even wait for the weather to be the optimum condition so I could paint in my back garden and use the right products to help the transformation!

As I have no patience or inclination to sand furniture, I needed a kick ass primer to paint directly onto the surface. I was told about a product called Zinsser. This stuff is the goods! You can paint that baby onto virtually any surface and its holds like a dog to a bone.

Once that was dry I painted the colour of choice – black with a lovely satin finish.

(I do hope you appreciate the beauty of my tiny back gardens drain pipe in this picture, and my garden chairs – painted turquoise by moi -naturally!)

Once painted and already looking pretty, I handed them over to my trusty upholsterer to do his clever bit.

This picture of them lined up in my hallway waiting to go to the upholsterer makes me happy!

I chose one of my all time favourite fabrics for the upholstery: a stunning  Florence Broadhurst fabric.

I cant tell you how pleased I am with the transformation. I think they look stunning! but I admit, I couldn’t help but be a bit sad to send them off to their new home.

But at least they went to home where they are appreciated and will live happily ever after!

(psst, the wall clearly needs a little sumpin sumpin, its a coming – all in good time!)

This is a sneak peak of the apartment where they live. Finishing details and proper pictures coming of that soon!

The end!

Tags: Chairs, florence Broadhurst, painted chairs

This entry was posted on Monday, June 20th, 2011 at 10:35 am and is filed under All about ME, Before and After, Cushions, Furniture, My work, Sustainability, Textiles. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.