Restore and decorate an old wooden chair

The colour is a deep turquoise, not quite captured in the photos

One man’s rubbish is another man’s treasure… or in this scenario a ‘girl’s treasure’. Putting all pride aside, I did something for the first time recently: salvaged an old wooden chair from a skip. It’s out there now; that’s what I did and it was worth it!

It is solid and sturdy and looks like a 1950s kitchen chair – it just needed was a light sanding, painting and the seat replaced. I’ve been looking for an old chair to use as a side table in the bedroom, but didn’t expect to find an abandoned beauty balanced on top of a pile of rubble. It was shouting for a makeover and a new home.

The first step was to sand it lightly using a fine grit sandpaper (180). This removed flaking paint and prepared the surface for painting.

Once it was sanded I wiped away the dust and painted on a coat of all-purpose primer.

The seat was warped and badly splintered so I removed it and created a new one using chipboard (with the help of my tremendously patient sidekick).

This is temporary as I’ll make a better one using MDF, which is stronger and has a smooth surface.

I bought a couple of tester pots of paint; the frame of the chair is painted with Dulux Kingfisher, although the photos don’t show the true paint colour – it is a vibrant turquoise.

This is the colour I painted the chair: Kingfisher (Dulux)

Materials used:
1 test pot paint (Kingfisher – for the chair frame)
1 test pot paint (Stone – for the seat)
Clear matt varnish spray
All-purpose primer
Gift wrap for decoupage
Mod Podge (or similar adhesive to lock in the paper design)

Once the primer had dried I painted two coats of the turquoise paint, followed by a spray of clear varnish. The seat was painted with two coats of Stone coloured paint.

I found a sheet a vintage-looking gift wrap and used this to decoupage the chair – I’ve never decoupaged anything so this was an absolute first.

I cut out a design using newspaper and placed it on the seat to see how it would fit and look. I then cut out a card template and finally used this to cut out the gift wrap.

The gift wrap cut-outs were glued in place using the ‘mod podge’ aka clear glue. I painted the seat first and then placed the cut-out on the wet glue and brushed more glue over them. I let it dry and then gave it a second coat. I’ve read that you can sand lightly between each coat and layer it until the surface feels completely smooth (ie you can’t feel the transfer and the material it’s glued to).

Waiting for glue and paint to dry is an agonisingly long wait. Hence this took me several days to finish.

The chair is now being used as a side table, unless I’m short of seating at some point!

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