Zebra chairs

In which I blog about yet another project because, well, it's summer and I can. Plus, it makes Marian happy when I blog and I like to make my friends happy.

Zebra chair #1

Over spring break I reupholstered this chair. I took it apart, which involved removing millions (only a slight exaggeration) of staples. I painted the frame with several coats of matte black paint (going for that Pottery Barn look) and then covered it with zebra fabric after borrowing my Dad's staple gun. I didn't blog about it then because spring break only lasts a week. And since my principal did my pop-in observation first thing in the morning the first day we returned from spring break, it's a really good thing I didn't spend time doing frivolous things like blogging, buying groceries, or having a life over spring break. But, I DID take the time to recover this chair.

And I love it. I really do. However, it didn't work very well for the purpose for which I created it. It matches the music room beautifully, but it has arms. Unfortunately, so do I. The chair's arms and my human arms did not play nicely together whenever I tried to sit in the chair to play guitar. Dan, who joins me whenever I practice, sits there comfortably rocking out in an armless task chair. So naturally I had a major case of chair envy and decided to make my own.



Shopping list: armless chair

I saw a few zebra chairs online, but they were too expensive. Plus, I'd have to buy two of them and get rid of Dan's chair. That just seemed wasteful to me. I wanted to by a cheap task chair, and then recover both to match. I found a chair like this one at Target for $20. Not bad, but I knew I could find one cheaper. I looked at garage sales (which, next to being off work is my very favorite part of summer) for a few weeks, but I didn't find one. Then I hit paydirt at the Goodlettsville Goodwill and found one that looked a lot like the Target chair for $7. Score! It's a bit shorter than Dan's chair, but that's okay with me because I am a bit shorter than Dan myself. Win, win.

I took both Dan's chair and my new chair apart, borrowed Dad's staple gun again, and got to work. I love to recover furniture because it's typically pretty easy, does not involve sanding or caulking, and is finished pretty quickly. Naturally, my chair was more difficult to cover than Dan's was (which makes sense, really, if you know the two of us) because I had to do the back of the upper part instead of just the front. Thank goodness I had some fabric glue left from another project. So, here are the two chairs after being recovered. I probably should have cleaned up all of our cords from the floor first and tidied up the music area. Eh, you get the idea.


Zebra, party of two

When we line up all three chairs side by side, we have a real Goldilocks and the Three Bears theme going: Papa Bear, Mama Bear, and Baby Bear. The chairs are super cute and, best of all, it's easier to practice my bass in the new chair. The other chair sits across the room and glares at me, so I have to sit in it every once in a while to keep it from feeling left out.