French Provincial Chair Fabric Painted White With Chalk Paint

Do you have an accent chair in your home that you love and is in great condition but the dated fabric has it hiding in the basement for no one to see? We have one of those - a chair that Mr. Frugalista inherited with sentimental value. We splurged several years ago and had it upholstered. The fabric is still in mint condition but the gold color no longer works in our home. Replacing perfectly good fabric seems like a waste and so I took the budget-friendly approach and painted the fabric on the French Provincial chair instead.

French Provincial Chair Fabric Painted White

But first, let's take a peek at the gold striped fabric before I started...

You can see there is nothing wrong with it and would be a shame to replace when there is another alternative.

How to paint fabric on furniture

I created a custom color by mixing a 50:50 ratio of Annie Sloan pure white and old white chalk paint. The photo below shows the chair after one coat of paint.

This isn't my first time painting upholstery with chalk paint. I painted our burgundy Wing Chair red and a tufted armchair for a client.

What I did differently this time

In the past, I used a 50:50 ratio of chalk paint and water. This time I tried a different method by dipping just the tips of my brush into water first, and then into undiluted chalk paint. I have to say I much prefer this method as it goes on so much smoother and with better coverage. But first, like the other chairs, I lightly dampened the fabric first with a spray bottle and worked in sections.

I should mention, wait for the paint to dry between coats. It took four coats to completely cover the gold stripes on my chair. In the photo below you can get a closer look at how lovely the painted stripes give texture to the chair.

After the paint dries the fabric will feel stiff to the touch but once you give it a coat of clear wax with a round wax brush, it will soften the fabric like buttah.

I would recommend, especially with a light color, to wait 30 days for the wax to cure before using the chair. I waited a week and brought it out for my daughter's baby shower and had denim stains all over the chair.

The wood frame of the chair was also painted white at the same time but I used dark wax to give them an aged patina. The photo below shows how I applied the wax into the ridges and along the recessed parts of the legs.

What a difference white paint made to this chair and it looks lovely paired with the small nesting table I also painted white.

But I couldn't stop there.

It felt like the chair needed a little something-something to dress it up. So I reached out on Facebook asking for feedback. The consensus was that I should leave the chair As Is and add some decorative upholstery tacks around the curve of the front legs.

Another suggestion was that I add a pillow with a pop of color. As soon as I read those two suggestions I knew exactly what this chair needed.

Embellishing the chalk painted chair

Adding decorative trim

So I tried adding these silver upholstery tacks because our living room has silver accents and thought they would be perfect.

FAIL - far too masculine for this curvy chair.

I had these pretty self-adhesive pearl stickers leftover from the Christmas Cone Trees made during the holidays. They come in long strips so they were easy to line up and hot glue in place.

They add a lovely feminine touch to this French Provincial chair, don't you think?

Adding A Pop Color

The second suggestion was adding a pop of color. I happened to have fabric in my stash leftover from the DIY kitchen roman shade that I made using an extra drapery panel from the living room.

I also remembered I had some leftover fabric from the faux roman shade in the master bedroom that I made from drapery panels.

While rummaging through my stash I also found some leftover clothesline cord used to make piping on the window seat cushion in the master bedroom AND I found a small pillow form. See where I'm going with this?

It took all of fifteen minutes and zero dollars to make and the perfect pop of color for the white painted chair.

This post is long enough so I'm not going to get into a detailed tutorial on how to sew piping. In the photo below you can see that I used the zipper foot on my sewing machine and stitched tight against the fabric wrapped cording.

It wasn't until after I added the photo below that I noticed a crease in the fabric. Oops, note to self - steam pillow.

I'm so glad I reached out on facebook because thanks to you, the chair now has the perfect pop of color and feminine details that make it unique.

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Turquoise Sofa Table {It's Third Incarnation}

Our humble abode was is bursting at the seams with furniture.  Last weekend I bit the bullet and decided to part with some of our pieces.  Like this sofa table that we purchased several years ago at an auction.

Originally it looked like this...

Sorry, pre-blogging photo

...and then like this.

Sorry, before I knew anything about taking good pictures.

I decided to freshen it up with one more makeover before parting with it. The plan was to paint it turquoise with little distressing and silver leaf the grooves. Well this baby had a mind of it's own and no matter how hard I tried it decided it wanted more distressing.

Silver leaf in the grooves?  Heck no it wanted white!

So turquoise and white it is!  I waxed the entire table with my new favorite thing...white wax.

I kept the original (original from the first makeover) glass knobs.

I added some pretty to the inside of the drawer.

And now it is time to part with it.  Despite having no room in this house I really really really want to keep it.  I have absolutely no turquoise in this house but I still want to keep it.

But I can't so bye bye sofa table, I hope you find a good home!

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Last summer I picked this vintage wooden desk up at a neighbor's garage sale for a song. Several weeks later I discovered a wood ladder back chair sitting in our back yard, compliments of the same neighbor. Running out of room bursting at the seams with furniture awaiting makeovers I finally dusted them off and gave this vintage executive wooden desk a makeover with a lovely carte postale handpainted graphic.

Vintage Executive Wooden Desk With Carte Postale Graphic

This is what the desk looked like before..

You can see in the photo below that the top had seen it's better days. I discovered a few messages carved into the wood.

I hemmed and hawed about sanding it down to the natural wood but that would have required taking it outside. At the time the temperatures ranged around -26℃ (-14℉) and there was no way in H E double hockey sticks I was doing that so I opted for the warm option by painting the desk instead.

Here's how I did it...

The desk was painted in a custom white color with a 1:1 ratio of Annie Sloan Chalk Paint­­™ in the colors Old White and Pure White. The drawer fronts were painted in the color Pebble Beach (medium grey color) by Country Chic Paint.

The paint was lighty distressed with 220 grit sandpaper.

Instead of replacing the batwing drawer pulls, I spray painted them with Primer White Rustoleum Painter's Touch matte spray paint.

And distressed them with sandpaper to reveal some of the original finish underneath.

The desktop felt like it was missing something and so I headed over to The Graphics Fairy website in search of the perfect graphics to transfer onto the top when I found the perfect Paris Letter with Postmark.

I enlarged the graphic to fit the desktop over at blockposter.com. Then I printed it on several sheets of bond paper and taped the graphic together. To see how to transfer graphics onto furniture visit my Image Transfer Technique Tutorial.

Deciphering the Paris Letter and Postmark

Here is where the fun came in. As I was transferring the graphic it became difficult to superimpose parts of the image because they are worn, making deciphering the cursive French handwriting a challenge. Wanting to accurately transfer the image I did some research on Google.

After a lot of digging, I managed to figure out that the circular date stamp was postmarked on November 2, 1837, in Boulogne-Sur-Mer (a city in Northern France) with a mileage stamp of 643. It was addressed to Madame Sugat at 9 Rue Neuve in St. Denis (a northern suburb of Paris).

The oval stamp on the top left says Bonne Frères Boulange S•M. I'm going to assume that is the name of the post office - Good Brother's in Boulogne-Sur-Mer. I must say it was a little eerie tracing the handwriting of someone who was alive 177 years ago!

Dress up the drawers

I always like to add an element of surprise in the drawers and thought this Old World Map wrapping paper was perfect. My preference for lining drawers is using wallpaper paste because you don't get as many air bubbles or wrinkles.

The bottom of the deep drawer will likely not be seen once hanging file folders are in place but I gave it some paper goodness too.

Ladder Back Chair Makeover

Now for that chair that mysteriously appeared in my back yard. It looks like it originally was stained in a cherry color but had been spray painted grey. Unfortunately fortunately for me, the reason it landed in my yard was that it was full of paint drips. Sorry, I forgot to take a picture before taking the power sander to it.

To unify the chair with the desk I painted it in the same white and grey colors as the desk and also gave it a timeworn look with distressing.

I transferred the same Paris Letter with Postmark graphic in a smaller size onto the seat.

Now they look like they've always been a matching set.

For more desk inspiration, here a few other styles I've upcycled over the years. Like this Queen Anne Writing Desk that went from Bombay Co. To Anthropology with French flair. Or how I saved this Curbside Rescue Secretary Desk.

If you have any questions about this executive desk makeover, please leave them in the comment section below or press the Contact Me button at the top of the blog to drop me an email. I love hearing from you!

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Mr & Mrs {Post Valentine's Day Décor}

In the spirit of Valentine's Day and our upcoming 28th Wedding Anniversary I made some easy peasy DIY décor for the master bedroom.  I whipped (pun intended) these Mr. & Mrs. Wall Plaques up in an afternoon while waiting for paint to dry on a piece of furniture.

I already had everything I needed to make them.

What I Used:

• thin hardboard
• wooden crown plaques
• ribbon
• chalk paint in Old White and Duck Egg Blue
• Word document and laser printer
• graphite paper
• script art brush
• drill

These were so easy to make I feel kind of silly typing up a tutorial.

Step 1:
I cut the hardboard to size using a miter saw.  Then I drilled two holes on the top for the ribbon.

Step 2:
I applied two coats of a mixture of Old White & Pure White Chalk.

Step 3:
In Word I typed the words Mr. & Mrs. in the size and font I wanted and printed them on my laser printer.  Then I taped each word onto the pieces of wood and slipped a piece of graphite paper underneath.  I simply traced over the words to transfer them onto the wood and using chalk paint and a script art brush painted them in.

Step 4:
After they were dry I lightly distressed them using a sanding block.  Then I applied a coat of clear wax.

Step 5:
I purchased two wooden crown plaques at Michaels and painted them in Duck Egg Blue.  Then I attached them onto the wood using E6000 glue and let it cure for several hours.

Step 6:
I ran the ribbon through the holes and ta da!

My plan was to have them hanging on each side of the headboard.  Mr. Frugalista turned 50 Shades of Grey at the mere thought of hooks, tacks, or nails punctured into his precious DIY 5-panel door headboard.  Okay, so I can't blame him but he wouldn't even allow 3M Command Hooks!

I still think they'd look better hanging from the headboard.

I think one of the reasons we've survived 28 years of marriage is because sometimes you've got to pick your battles and know when it's just better to nod and say, "yes dear".

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