Painting Armchairs!

Yep! You read my title correctly! :)

I painted our armchairs this weekend and have a few pictures to show you of the progress I made along the way.

I still have to upload more pictures of the family room as it stands with the newly painted armchairs, but that will be for tomorrow's post hopefully.

Let's begin, shall we?!

To start this project, I did a little research on exactly how you should go about painting a piece of furniture fabric like an armchair. There are many great resources out there, but the two that I used came from this lovely blog by Hyphen Interiors and this awesome blog by I Should Be Mopping the Floors.

So I went out and purchased some paint, a lovely color called Wrought Iron by Martha Stewart, a mixing container, a water bottle, and some Fabric Medium all from Home Depot. The total came in under $15.

I used 4 bottles of Fabric Medium...one note though: I could have probably used 3 bottles but I didn't water down the chairs the first go around like I should have so I needed the 4th bottle by the end.

Then I snapped some pictures of what one of the chairs looked like with the slipcover I made and the other chair without the slipcover.

Don't the original armchairs look fabulous?

Nope!! Not really...but it was $25 at the Restore and I knew I could do something with it...plus, we had been wanting 2 armchairs like these for our large family room and I couldn't pass up the $25 price tag!!!!!

:)

I love thrifting!!

Okay, so after I took off the slipcovers and cleaned up the armchairs a bit, I used my Home Depot water bottle to spray down the chairs.

I used a ton of water because you want to be generous with that part. I probably should have used more the first go around, like I mentioned before, but you live and you learn I guess.

Look at those lovely marks!

Anyways, this was a picture I took after the first coat went on.

I did 2 more coats after the first dried.

Then I came back after I let the paint dry to do a second coat on both of the chairs.

I watered down the chairs each time I painted.

Here is what she looks like after a 3rd coat of paint...doesn't look that great yet because the paint and the fabric medium had to dry first, but don't worry...I have more pictures to share with you tomorrow.

And a quick side-by-side shot of the armchairs from Before and After.

I should also mention that once these puppies dried, after 24-48 hours, they needed to be ironed a bit so the paint set...I still have yet to do that step because I just couldn't wait to get them inside to see how they looked in our family room. However, they were dry enough to sit in when I brought them inside....we already tested that out!!

And the chairs don't feel stiff from the paint either!

Why??

Because when you mix the fabric medium with the paint, the fabric medium keeps the paint on the chair from getting too stiff.

Amazing!!

Oh, and in case you were wondering, the blogs I read said to mix a 1:1 ratio of the paint and the fabric medium...plus, a half part of water before you begin painting.

I followed the directions on the fabric medium bottle and did about a 2:1 ratio of the paint and fabric medium with half the amount of water of the medium. For me, that worked best, but I don't think it matters too much. It may depend on the type of fabric you are painting.

Stay tuned for more pictures of the complete look and I will show you what these beauties look like in our room!!

I'd love to know if you have ever done something like this before too?!

Thanks for stopping by!