Monday, October 22, 2012

Patio Furniture Upgrade

Remember those outdated gliding patio chairs that we were gifted way back in the Spring? I told you I was going to have them updated by the time I went back to school. Well, school has been back in session for almost two months now, and I just finished the upgrade last night.

This is what the chairs looked like pre-upgrade:

 
I decided to go with a trendy color combo for the update: grey and yellow. After measuring the original cushions, I bought 3 yards of a yellow and white geometric indoor/outdoor print from fabric.com.
 
 
When the fabric came in, it sat around for quite a while. A few weeks back, I finally got around to recovering the cushions. After carefully measuring a second time and cutting the fabric, I sewed two pieces together on three sides. Then, I slipped the original cushion inside the pocket. Finally, I used my  Dritz snap fastener and some size 16 (7/16") snaps to close the top. That way, I can easily remove the covers for cleaning.
 
After covering the cushions, the filthy chair frames sat outside for another few weeks. I finally decided to get my butt in gear this weekend. I pulled out the spray paint and got going. After thoroughly cleaning and drying the frames, I gave them each a coat of gray spray primer by Valspar. Then, I added a coat of gloss protective enamel in gray by Rust-Oleum.
 
When I got home from work this evening, I went straight to the garage to add the cushions to the frames to see what the final product would look like. I have to say, I'm pretty happy! Check them out...
 

 
What do you think? If you look closely at the first picture, you can see that the dark green strips from the original cushions show through a bit. It's pretty subtle, so it doesn't really bother me a whole lot. It certainly wasn't worth the extra work to sew in a lining! I just love that snap fastener. It should make it way easier to clean the covers since they'll get filthy dirty before I know it!
 
It's too bad that I didn't get my butt in gear early enough to enjoy the chairs during the Summer. We may squeeze out a couple more mild days before they get put away for the Winter, but we should get much more use out of them next year.
 
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3 comments:

  1. Nice update! I think there's still some patio weather in store.

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  2. Well Katie, being a green and stripe lover I didn't think those chairs were so bad but they look great!

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  3. I love these. Do you sell your work at all? These would go perfectly with my steel patio. I would love to have a set of 4.

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