Oh yeah! I was expecting the standard glossy white paint and trellis fabric. This is much more chic.

great job! I do love the dark stain!

I love these B&A- this is a really great one, what a transformation.

I love this chair! The dark stain and cheetah looking fabric are to die for (and very me)! I have been searching for a chair for bedroom and this rehab would be oh so perfect in my place. I guess I know what I will be thrifting for this weekend!

Great job Christine!

I wasn't expecting the "after"! Very nice!

gorgeous!

As someone who hates white paint on wood furniture (I once saw someone do a white paint to a solid mahogany table--why? why? why?), I think you did a great job keeping the integrity of the chair in tact by staining it.

Beautiful. Great garbage find and so nice to see someone refinish the wood instead of painting it.

This looks really good and is an excellent reminder that not all wood has to be painted.

Absolutely love it and wish it were mine! Inspiration like that doesn't strike me nearly enough.

I love it. It's really well done. Very imaginative. Congratulations, Christine.

Very well done! Looks so much better than the all too common coat of white latex paint.

Great job! I was dreading seeing the after, but it's very nicely done.

that dark stain looks excellent! nice alternative to the usual painted before and afters

Love the stain and fabric. Great job!

I clicked over expecting it to be painted... what a wonderful surprise! It looks amazing.

Oh boy!! I love it!! I was so happy to see someone keep the wood in tact. :)

Excellent. Upon seeing the first picture I figured there was no way I could like the after - I was wrong. Delightfully wrong.

fabulous - the dark stain and the fabric selection - LOVE it!

wow!!! congratulations, that is a wonderful result.

very nice

Thanks so much everyone! It's funny, it never even occurred to me to paint it. I just gave it a light sand and used the walnut stain, pre-treating the light areas so the color would finish evenly.

I actually "ooooooed" instead "ohhh-nooooed"

nice job.

Wow, that dark wood is totally amazing. Funny, the wood looks more vintage in the after picture than the before. And that is rare. Not overly crazy about the animal print, but hey it's not my chair either.

All in all, it looks great. And a steal at $5 in materials...

Impressive work. I, too, DREADED the after picture as I thought it would have some god awful girlie paint scheme and flowery fabric. Again, nice work. Bravo!

Well done! Thanks for sharing. (You've inspired more people than you know.)

THAT I did not expect when I scrolled down... Stunning! You are one clever lady!

Another sell out to the animal print.

Good job, well done and economical.

ChrisGal, I tried other fabrics but nothing else worked as well. I didn't want a solid but anything with too much pattern took away from the details on the chair (like the cane back). Plus, I have quite a bit of other patterns going on so I needed a pseudo neutral.

Ooooooooo....wow. Nice!

It's just you see animal print over and over and over again any more. It would have been much better to go solid than continue this fad - which will be over in less than a couple years and then you got to redo your work.

IMO, well-done animal print falls into the category of a classic.

It comes back occasionally, but animal prints do get outdated. Go through history - for awhile they look great, then they look horrible for a decade, and then it's back again. So I take it the OP doesn't mind recovering this chair in a few years when it's out of date again.