The main living area has been slowly taking shape as we add furniture and décor to the space. One of our recent additions is our wood frame chairs. I’m so excited to be sharing with you how I updated them from dated thrift store chairs to fabulous casual beach house seating.
B and I spotted these two open frame chairs in the window of our local thrift shop up the street from our house. The next day I stopped in after they opened and brought them home with me. They were in good shape but were extremely outdated but I knew that with a little effort, they would be perfect for the beach cottage.
The first thing I did was remove the wings on the sides of the chairs. This one change went a long way toward updating the chairs.
The other major change was cutting down the arms. The arms of the chairs appeared to be replacements and they were super curvy and much too big in proportion with the rest of the chairs. I cut them down with a jigsaw to take out some of the curve and shorten them so they looked more like a part of the original chair.
The cushions on the chairs weren’t original and they weren’t in bad shape but the cheap vinyl wasn’t the look or feel we wanted. I decided to go with a navy blue ticking fabric as a classic and neutral pattern that would go with our design choices at that cottage now and down the road.
I’m not an experienced sewer but to properly recover the cushions, I took the time to take each of the vinyl covers apart to use as a pattern. It took me a couple of weeks to complete this project, but I’m really proud of the final result. I’m not a skilled sewer and I never did anything like this before. If you want detailed instructions on how I tackled this project, please let me know and I’ll plan on putting together a post with all the steps outlined.
I didn’t go crazy with the chair frames. I gave them a good sanding especially since I removed the wings and cut down the arms, but my primary goal was to stain the arms so they blended in with the original parts of the chairs.
After testing a couple of stain colors, Early American was a perfect match. The finish didn’t turn out perfectly but with so many other projects going on, we are happy with them for now. IT’s also nice to have a little “dinge” with everything being brand new.
The living area of the beach cottage is almost finished. With the addition of these chairs, the space feels cozy and relaxed and I can’t wait to show you to full space reveal soon!
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