How to makeover a chair seat with Chalk paint®

Sometimes you have a chair in your interior that is still perfectly fine but doesn’t sit with your decor anymore. Your style might have changed a little, the fashion might have changed and this poor chair even though nothing is wrong with it gets banned to the attic.

I have a chair like that, bought for my previous home its style is a bit too nautical shabby chic for my more Scandi looking interior. Instead of throwing the chair out I thought I can adapt it to fit better with the other chairs round my table. I could have taken all the fabric of the seating but there is a quicker way of updating your fabric seating at that is chalk paint®

I started by cutting the ‘wings’ of the back rest, the chair was way too wide, round and shabby chic to fit in with my more toned down Scandi style. I used a jigsaw to make the back rest a bit more stream lined. The cut edges got a good sanding to make sure the back rest is nice and smooth. 

I then got ride of the trim around the seat, as that also wasn’t to my taste. With the chair stripped back I painted all the wood bright white with Annie Sloan Chalk paint® in Pure.  To add a bit of quirk I painted one of the chair legs in Greek blue and added three little striped to the back rest. I previously done this to  chair in my book Furniture hacks and love how the little hint of colour looks in my white interior.

The seating got a coat of paint too, I mixed Chalk paint® in Greek blue with an equal part of water and gave the seat a coat of paint. When the paint was dry I used paper tape to create a geometric pattern on the seating and painted these sections with lesser diluted Greek blue, Duck egg and Aubusson blue. In the picture below you can see I used a wider green tape and a narrow orange one.

When the whole chair was dry the wood got a coat of clear wax, also by Annie Sloan and I added a new trim round the edge of the seat. I used a denim ribbon that I glues to the edge of the seating pad with a glue gun. One afternoon of work and my chair got a whole new look, what do you think?

You can still see a little bit of the old pattern through the painted seating and I love that extra bit of texture. I think the chair looks great round my dining table now and fits with the rest of the interior so much better now. The chair makeover is another one of my projects as painter in residence of Annie Sloan, check her website for more details and the products I used by clicking here. To see all my other Chalk paint® projects click here.