banker’s chair makeover

(alternately titled: holy crap! I finally finished this project!)

A while ago, like 2 years-ish, we were living in Minneapolis, scraping wallpaper off the walls of what was going to be our office, and I was scouring craigslist for the *perfect* bankers chair & desk.  And this is what I found:

Not quite, *perfect*, but for $15, I decided it was close enough to at least try to do something with.  And then the chair sat in the basement for a good 4 months while I decided whether to paint or stain it.

In the end, I figured I’d strip & restain it.  After all, if I didn’t like it, it would be easier to paint over stain than it would be to strip the paint and stain the chair.

I took apart the entire chair, removed the stain from the wood, then re-stained and polyurethaned the chair (and, yes, that is polyurethane in verb form right there.).  The metal bits were boiled in water and baking soda, soaked in vinegar, scrubbed with a wire brush, and then paint black.  (More on how I did this is here).

And then… she sat like that for over a year.  No seat.  Just hanging out in our office.  The original caned seat was totally broken beyond repair… even if I did know how to cane, which I don’t.

The movers moved her seatless (and then looked at me like I was a little nuts for wanting a seatless chair in the office).

Instead of trying to re-cane the seat, I got Jason to cut out a piece of wood that would fit in the insert where the seat was.  Awesomely, we happened to have a sturdy board that was the right thickness just hanging out in the house.  I also already had batting left over from a baby quilt that I made.  I ordered a print from Joel Dewberry (PS LOVE his fabrics) from Fabric.com for like $4/yard on super-clearance.

I covered the board in batting, then covered it in my fabric.  And the end result rocks my socks off.  Seriously.

I love it so much.  And, I think the best part of the whole deal might be that the cost for the chair was $19 – $15 for the chair, $4 for the fabric, and I had everything else (stain, etc) left over from other projects.  I can’t believe I waited nearly 2 years to finish her!

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I’m linking up to the CSI Project’s Yard Sale Challenge, Just a Girl’s Show & Share Day, The Shabby Nest’s Frugal Friday Party, and the Penny Pinching Party.