apartment therapy changing the world, one room at a time

Uncomfortable-looking chair Ugly sweater = No thanks

I like the DIY spirit, but that chair would be better suited as a prop in one of Spadaro's sets than as a functional home piece - a sweater would make terrible upholstery material as it would stretch and pill over time.

I think the point was - not that chair and not that sweater but - "if you have some imagination and don't mind getting your hands dirty you could do something similar with a chair and re-cycled fabric of your choice".

At an estate sale last weekend I saw an old chair that someone had used an old tribal Iranian saddlebag as a seat cover. Not everyone's cup of tea, but it was very cool to me. I collect tribal saddlebags and it was obviously an original piece, not a Pottery Barn knockoff.

Comfortable or not, I think the creativity behind the chair is brilliant! Nice job!

This should not have cost forty dollars. I'm pretty sure that very chair is on my neighbors driveway, awaiting trash pick up.

i enthusiastically second elizabethy's post. AT's financial sensibilities often leave me wondering what people consider expensive...

Guys - it's not the money that's the issue here.

It's creativity.

If you see something you *love* $40 won't seem like a big deal. Trust me. You don't even want to know what my last chair project cost (over 30 times what the one in this post cost) but now I have an heirloom piece that people are hoping I will to them that's impossible to buy anywhere.

In the grand scheme of things $40 for a piece of furniture is cheap. No doubt to a professional designer it's insignificant. And I think the post was right on (would have been better without mentioning a price though).

boomer: i agree with your comment, it just makes me a little flabbergasted how chair cost $40 secondhand as it seems of crappy/meant-to-be-used-for-a-year poor quality. i think the main advantage of what this post is advocating is that you can buy QUALITY used furniture cheaply and make it look fabulous with a little ingenuity. i've redone chairs in a manner not unlike this post, but not only were they more cheaply done, i'd like to think the "bones" of the chair were better/more substantial...a dark, scarred chair with a canned back and elegant legs and a little bit of embroidered upholstery fabric cost me a little over $20. this little chair looks like it'd buckle under a 120 lb woman (and should cost about $20 at target).

bunny - I agree. That chair was maybe a bad example but I think a lot of people do like those things. I don't see why but oh well. The idea itself was good.

About the sweater, I new a lady once that would take cotton cable-knit sweaters that couldn't be worn anymore (by family, not strangers) and make pillows out of them. It wasn't my taste but I always admired her creativity.

In (maybe) the spirit of this post - I desperately wanted 2 - and only 2 - tilt/swivel patio chairs with comfortable pads. I priced new ones and anything decent that I could actually buy just 2 of, were $300-500 *each*. Which is a fair price since they were good quality but way outside my budget for two patio chairs that would sit outside and not be usable for 9 months out of the year (rainy pacific NW).

So I bought a set of 6 on Craigslist for a little over a hundred bucks.

They were rusty in places and the pads were badly faded. Neighbors thought I was nuts at first.

I disassembled them, scraped off the rust, sanded, primered, spray painted them with super hard appliance paint ($3 a chair), bought new pads on sale for 2 of them for myself, and sold the rest with new paint and old pads for $25 each.

So my net was next to nothing and I have some nice new looking patio chairs.

boomer...i hope you survived the appliance epoxy spray paint! i have a out-of-control spray painting habit (nothing enters my house without being radically altered/painted), but i only just recently used that appliance epoxy spray paint and that stuff is vile! nosehairs i didn't realize i had ended up laquered in a thick layer of white epoxy! i had no idea that stuff was so different that regular old spray paint. i'd love to see the result of your elbow grease.

Cute. Great idea!

bunny - I ended up with a pair of gray shoes...LOL If I ever work with the stuff again I'll find a respirator first. I did it in the garage with both doors open and still ended up with a crashing headache. On the plus side the finish is pretty tough.

Here's a picture of one of the 2 that I kept. It's not the best picture but you get the idea. The color is "biscuit".

http://picasaweb.google.com/kclark56/Condo_garden/photo?authkey=dOXF6_r7ew0#5208782880354869106

The "rug" the chair is sitting on is actually plastic - made from recycled soda bottles. Rain goes right through it so it never gets squishy. You can get them here : http://www.gaiam.com/product/id/1007682.do