Upcycling Chairs

Last year I bought 4 new (old) chairs so that I would have enough to host my daughter's birthday party.  Our old chairs were looking a bit shabby and two of them had developed a wobble so after the party, the plan was to get rid of the old chairs and upcycle the new (old) ones.  Skip to one year later and we have finally upcycled our chairs and they look pretty special (although don't look too closely)

Before the upcycle they looked like this:

These are the chairs after some sanding down, shortly after we collected them.  We bought them through eBay for £20 - a bargain at £5 per chair and collected from about 10 minutes away from our house.  They then sat in our shed for a number of months...

Here they are after the upcycle:

We used some chalk paints from B&Q - some little tester pots to get different colours and a top coat by Frenchic (which looked suspiciously like watered down PVA).  The top coat gave the finished chairs a nice 'feel' and promises to protect the chairs.  The different paints seemed to have different levels of chalkiness and some were hard to apply, although this could also have been because it was a sunny day and the paint was drying quickly.  The fabric came from Betsy Boo Haberdashery - I got some fat quarters - I also bought some extra wadding to add comfort.  I particularly like the fabric on the pink chair which is a little bit of Liberty in my own home!  Overall, I think the cost per chair is around £12.

Although it took a year to complete the upcycling was easy to do and we're all pleased with the final results.  My daughter has already assigned the seats - hers is the blue one which is extra squashy!  We plan to do our table next and we definitely won't be waiting so long to do it!