Office Chair Make Over

Happy New Year!

Hope everyone had a lovely Christmas and winter break.  

I'm back with the office chair make-over I mentioned on Facebook.  

Before Christmas, I went to a church rummage sale.  There I scored this office chair for just $5.  

My oldest daughter needed a chair for her desk and this style is what she wanted.  However, the color was not want she wanted.  I figured I could recover the cushions in a fabric to match her room.  My husband said I didn't need another project.  Knowing how some of my projects have turned out in the past, he had a point.  Of course I’m not the only one to recover an office chair, there were several tutorials on Pinterest.  So with Pinterest on my side, I decided to go for it.

The first thing to do was to separate the padded top from the plastic back.  Unscrewing the back from the chair and then using a butter knife was the easiest way to do this.

Then I laid out my fabric and cut to size.

I wrapped the fabric around the padded chair back and used a staple gun to secure it.

Here's what it looks like from the front.  I was happy to see that my pattern was straight and not slanting upward.

Then using the butter knife to pry open the plastic back, I slide the padded part back in.

The top is done and now onto the seat.

The process was similar however there were also some screws attaching the seat cushion to the black plastic base.

Once I got the seat cushion off, I laid out my fabric, cut it and stapled it in place.  Then I reattached the seat cushion to the plastic seat.

Voila!  A custom office chair!

I love the way it turned out, and it wasn’t too hard to do either.  This project only took me about an hour and now my daughter has a custom, one of a kind office chair to match her room.  $5 for the chair and $5.99 for a yard of fabric is all it cost.  I could have gotten away with half a yard but I bought a little extra in case I made a mistake.  So now we have some leftover fabric for another project.

It's these little touches to make things coordinate in a room that really turn a house into a home.  I can't wait to show you what else I've been doing to make our new house home.

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The Best Patio Furniture EVER!

I think it's finally feeling like spring around here and that means spending more time outside.  I'm slowing starting to spruce up our patio and make it look fun and inviting.  A couple of years ago I found a great deal on some patio furniture that I absolutely love.  It's been one of the best investments we've made.  We were lucky enough to score this set of 6 chairs and a table on craigslist for only $900.  Considering the cheapest chairs I could find were $150, that price is a steal.  And since it's made out of poly wood, it still looks new and that's really saying something since our patio is very exposed to the elements such as the wind and sun.  Add in the fact that we don't do anything to maintain it and hardly ever clean it unless there's been a spill and that makes it ...

the best patio furniture ever!

Our backyard is on the south side of our house so it gets all the sun all day long.  Anything out there gets faded.  The yard and surrounding areas next to it are flat and it can get pretty windy.  So whatever is out there has to be pretty sturdy or it will fly off the patio and into our neighbor's yard.  Case in point, last month we had some strong winds and they blew our playhouse into our flower beds.  This is actually our 2nd playhouse.  Years ago, wind blew our playhouse to pieces.  It came apart and we never did find one of the roof pieces so we had to get rid of the entire thing.  Luckily our latest playhouse has yet to meet it's windy demise. 

This is not our first patio set.  We had a smaller one with four chairs and that would blow away in strong winds too.  I'd have to stack the chairs and line it all along the side of the house to prevent it from blowing into our neighbors yard.  This set here is not going anywhere.  I love that I don't have to worry about it moving much less getting blown away during strong winds.  But what I really love is that it's maintenance free.  I'm busy with four kids, I don't have time to be sanding and painting picnic tables when they get weathered.  This poly wood is great.  I don't have to worry about paint chips, splintered wood or fading colors.

Here are some more shots of my patio furniture.  Seriously, if you are in the market for a new patio set, I can't recommend this type highly enough.  It's more money than the wood kind, but the fact that it's maintenance free and will last a lifetime makes up for it.

I mentioned that we found ours on craigslist which was a rare find.  However if you are local and looking for a good deal on poly wood furniture, this is the cheapest place I know of:

http://www.lancasterpolypatios.com/

No, I'm not being compensated in any way for this post, just sharing what I love and a good deal.

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