rocking chair redo

With Mother's Day coming up, my girlfriend wanted to do something special for her mom. She wanted to buy her some new rocking chairs for the front porch, but after looking at the price tag ($100 a chair!), we improvised (#diy4lyfe). Her mom already had some chairs, they just needed a little extra lovin'. 

Side note, this is a special iPhone Edition tutorial! Okay, maybe we forgot to bring the camera with us, but this is how you learn lessons in life, right?

This redo cost almost 25% of what we would have paid for new chairs, & it only took:

• Paint
• Nylon webbing
• Outdoor fabric
• Outdoor cushions
• Staples & staple gun
• Paintbrush

As you can see, the major issue with these chairs is that they weren't performing their main duty - you couldn't sit in them! What good is a chair without a butt-holder? 

So we got hard to work removing the wicker (Wicker? I don't even know her! I'll be here all week, folks).

With the wicker out of the way, these babies were ready to paint. 

You may be asking yourself why we left the wicker up top. The back of the chair was actually in fairly good condition, & since we were just going to cover it in fabric anyway, we figured we could leave it & save a little dough on extra nylon webbing.

Two coats of paint later, & these chairs are looking bright! 

The top of the butt-holders came off, & using a staple gun we attached nylon webbing taut in place. Any excess webbing was trimmed after.

In between the nylon webbing & the outdoor fabric we used some mildew-resistant cushions for extra oomph. 

A stapled layer of fabric, & we're half-way there! We attached the fabric the same way we attached the webbing, only this time we folded the corners in & stapled them in place. 

The back of the chair was frustrating (hence the lack of photos), but essentially we draped the fabric over the wicker & stapled it in place along the bottom & sides. The edges of the fabric are folded in to prevent any fraying. The staples aren't noticeable unless you turn the chair around and squint your eyes, which hopefully my girlfriend's mom will not be doing.

Happy Mother's Day to a woman who definitely deserves a comfy seat! Seriously, this woman raised five kiddos. Who even does that & survives?

Happy crafting!

xoxo,

-m.e.

Related // Update your furniture with a new stain job.