DIY: Refinishing Grandma's Chair

For the first 6 months of our marriage, we lived (very cheaply mind you too!) in Mike's Grandma's little house. This cute little house was loved and well taken care of for many years. It was a sad day when they sold it. Mike's Grandma Melissa was one of the funniest, kindest, and most lovable people I have had the privilege to know. She passed away just a week after Mike and I were married. One of the blessings of being able to live in her house was not having to worry about purchasing/finding furniture right after we got married. But when the house sold, the furniture was passed on to Grandma's children and Grandchildren. This chair was given to us. It may not look like much, but I loved it's personality and I loved even more that it was something loved by Mike's Grandma.


Now this chair has been loved, well maybe even a little too well loved. I am not even sure how many years Grandma Melissa had it, but we have had it for the last five.

A close-up of the lovely 80's material and oil stain!

I had some material to recover the seat (had been planning to for the last 5 years) and finally decided to go for it. But upon further investigation, I discovered that this chair needed some mighty TLC. So I started by using a little bit of elbow grease (and of course some Lysol cleaning spray) to see if I could get it looking nice.


But during the cleaning process, I noticed that this chair would need a little bit more than some good ol' cleaning. So I took off the chair padding, and decided to pull out my good ol' trusty sander (who pretty much has become a dear friend to me;) and went to work sanding.


I am not sure what was used (or painted) underneath the white but it seemed to be like some kind of putty and so it was very difficult to sand off. So I decided to stick to sanding just the arms of the chair and the areas that were dinged and scratched really bad, like in the picture above.
It still took some time, but it was well worth it to create a more uniform surface for when painting commenced. I painted two coats, distressed the wood (pretty much beat it with a hammer and of course sanded the edges) and stained it. Wiped the excess stain off, and than it got a good layer of polyurethane. I think it looks way better (especially with replacing the chair pad, but I will let you be the judge.


I painted it blue (because I am in love with this gorgeous blue!) and it gives the kitchen some much needed color. And I love the blue and red combination. It was really easy to recover the old padding. I added the new padding and fabric, simply by stapling the new material and padding on to the piece of wood that provides the seat. Really simple to do, and I feel a much needed improvement. The biggest benefit to distressed furniture is that if you or your children ding it, it just looks like it was supposed to be that way. A huge benefit in our home!

I am headed to Las Vegas next Friday for a girl's weekend (so excited!!!) so I am going to try to get this weeks project finished either between Monday and Thursday. I think I am going to be refinishing our bookcase (which happens to have also belonged to Mike's Grandma!) and than I will be starting on our kitchen table and chairs. If you have any questions, feel free to e-mail me at littleforeverfamily@gmail.com.