To you it's a broken chair. To me it's a new stool.

I was a complete maniac this weekend. I had a few things that were lingering on my to-do list for a while and during yet another neighborhood yard sale, I took advantage of my time outside to polish some of those things off my to-do list.

(I apologize for the lack of updates. Both my camera and laptop are messed up, so posting has been painfully slow to impossible)

Before: Given to us by my husband's uncle who got it from his mother who probably got it from her brother. His uncle has the mate to this chair in the same fabric pattern except this is a rocking chair and the one his uncle has is a round. It's so cool to walk into their house and seeing the "matching" chair.


I turned the chair over and unscrewed the seat. I took it outside and wiped it down.


I gave it two coats of clear polyurethane. Look how shiny!


I traced the shape of the seat onto the fabric leaving 3" around. I stapled the fabric down just as I did with the canvas wall art I made last week. Pull it tight when stapling. Trim off the excess.


The fabric had a really pretty, iridescent pattern. I also put the fabric pattern on a diagonal. Screw the seat back onto the chair.


After: Like new!


Before: Hand me down end table. The gold trim really made the table look out-dated. Otherwise, it's a perfectly sturdy table.


After: 2 cans of white gloss spray paint and I have an end table for the sun room for my plants, coffee and magazines. The round, wicker thing is actually a charger plate from Walmart $3.50. I was looking for a runner for the coffee table, but even Target was something like $25 for a wicker/bamboo table runner/place mat, so instead I bought a couple of these instead.


Before: I totally trash picked this from my neighbor's garbage. This belonged to a pink Disney Princess table and chair set. I think someone bought the table at the yard sale. The back of the chair broke off so this is what was left. Some may see this as a broken chair, but I saw a stool!


After: Currently, I'm using it to hold up my magazines in the sun room, but I plan to use it to elevate some of my house plants. I might even get creative and sew a seat for it. I admit, I'm mostly motivated to do this, so I can blog about it and not necessarily because I need it. Then again, who doesn't need a spraypaintedmagazineholderandplantstoolthatusedtobeapinkdisneyprincesschair???


Before: Last, but not least, this was the first project that I embarked upon in the early morning actually. We got these from our neighbor and it's been really useful when we had company, but come on...don't they look like they were from a school gym or church basement? Motivated by the company I'm having over next weekend, I finally decided to give them a new face. I took them outside during the week, thoroughly cleaned them and allowed them to dry in the sun.


After: Each chair required at least 1 can of spray paint. Color "Pebble". Honestly, I can't say I liked doing this. It was such a pain and half way through I just wanted to give up. I bought 2 cans of lime green with the intention of doing 2 of the chairs in some color with a pop, but it looked putrid so I painted over it.


I spray painted a few other things around the house as well. I wish I had something more fun to show you, but that's it for now. I'm exhausted! Spray painting is great alternative to turn something that didn't work with your decor before into something that does making it new and shiny too!