Red Chair Redo

Okay, so I never completed the tale of woe from the bathroom cabinets. I've been really busy. For the past six months. Ahem.

The Before picture

So here's my latest project: redoing a chair from school. Since my classroom is all purple and lime green, this red and gray chair totally clashed. Every day when I arrived at work, this chair taunted me with its glaring redness. I haven't had time to do anything about it (see paragraph one re: time/busy) until now. Summer break is the time to tackle all the crap I pinned all year on Pinterest.

Such a pretty purple.

I started by taking the chair apart and painting all the plastic gray parts purple. Love that shade of purple, don't you?

My original plan was to reupholster the chair with some lime green zebra print fabric, but (as usually happens with every project I decide to tackle, Grrr!) I ran into a stumbling block. 1) The fabric was attached to the foam backing so I couldn't take it off, 2) The whole chair is plastic so there's no wood to staple fabric to, and 3) The fabric I wanted was $17 a yard, and 4) the red fabric would have showed through the light-colored zebra print. SO, I decided to paint it after reading this. I've always wanted to use Gesso or fabric medium on something, so this was my chance.

Seriously? I'm going to be here all night.

It took a LOT of paint. Like, a really, really, immense LOT of paint. Here is what it looked like after the first coat of lime green. I knew I had my work cut out for me at that point. After two or three coats, I ran out of the lovely lime green I started with (and so did Wal-Mart), so I had to switch to the pea green that Mom and I had leftover from other projects. It also took a ton of textile medium, which my Wal-Mart doesn't carry. Trying to avoid going to the Rivergate area on a Saturday to hit the craft stores, I went to Mom-Mart. Thankfully she had some leftover fabric medium too.

Final Product

It look four (or maybe five--I may have lost count--AND I lost all the feeling in my fingers because I had to press hard to get the paint to soak into the texture of the fabric) coats of paint/textile medium/water blends, but I finally managed to cover all that red. Here's the final result.

It's a little stiff, but I think it will soften over time. Even if it doesn't, I'd rather sit on a stiff chair that matches the room than that awful red in my tranquil sea of purple and green.

Over the weekend I found some more purple and green paper lanterns to hang from the ceiling above my reading area. The ones I already have over my desk are so cute.