I Gave This Smelly Facebook Marketplace Chair a Colorful Makeover for About $15
I am a vigilant Facebook Marketplace shopper; I’m talking stalking the website morning, noon, and night! While I do love a bargain, I’ve been looking around lately specifically for extra chairs to add around our dining room table — and I was SO excited to find this bentwood chair with arms.
While it’s extremely beautiful as-is, it didn’t match the lavender theme I had going on with my other chairs, and it smelled really bad. (Close your eyes and imagine yourself in a bar in the 1970s. Remember, they smoked inside in those days!) No matter what I did to cleanse the wood, it still reeked, which is why I felt completely guiltless when sealing the smell in with primer and painting it.
I painted the chairs with a sock — yes, really!
It wasn’t the most straightforward piece to paint, and I knew this going in because I have a few bentwood chairs that I’ve already painted. This time I tried a new method that I’d seen on TikTok: painting with a sock!
This process was great for the first coat of primer and paint, but when I wanted a really nice finish I had to resort back to loading up a paintbrush with a good amount of paint. I went with Sherwin-Williams’ Baroness for my lavender of choice. These chairs are pretty petite, so I think a sample-sized can (or about a quart, if you want to be on the safe side) of paint would work for a similar project, bringing the total for one chair to around $15 or $20.
I added stripes to the seatbacks with regular transparent tape.
Surprisingly, I was able to wash the vinyl seat covers, and the smell almost completely disappeared. I knew I wanted stripes and wasn’t ready to commit to reupholstering it quite yet, so I decided to mess around with painting the seat and back. I’ve painted vinyl in the past and had really great results, and this time was no different. I knew I wanted skinny stripes but only had 2-inch painter’s tape on hand, so I decided to try regular old transparent Scotch tape and was completely amazed that it worked — and I’d say this is a great in-between fix if you, like me, are still figuring out what fabric to reupholster your chair with.
Instead of brushing on the paint with a paintbrush over the tape, I decided to gently blot it with a foam brush, just like you would when stenciling. I sprayed an acrylic sealer over everything once dry and plan to let it sit in the basement for a week or two to totally cure before I let anyone sit on it.
Overall, I’m really excited about the chair. I put a decent chunk of time into it and learned a new little hack about tape in the process. I couldn’t be happier!
Inspired? Submit your own project here.