No Shame… Dumpster Chairs

Okay only a little. Imagine this scenario….

It’s roughly 100 billion degrees outside and even my eyeballs are sweating. I’m about to drop my friend off on the other side of town and I see this guy carrying these chairs to the dumpster. He then continues to throw them into the dumpster. This is the point where my adrenaline rush starts.

About an hour and a half later…

There’s four chairs in the dumpster!!! Okay so I’m mighty vertically challenged (shorties unite!) and there is no way I can reach into the dumpster without pulling a muscle, breaking a bone, or getting a third degree burn from the metal dumpster. I call Val and we were able to rescue two of the chairs. They were the winners who weren’t broken.

Solid oak chairs!  SOLID OAK CHAIRS!!

But they were sort of ugly… and Val needed a desk chair… so I took them home with me the week before school started and redid them.

I did a coat of glossy black spray paint and I thought it would look super great, but it looked like a chair from a collection of “modern” 80’s furniture :/

Thank goodness for Wal-Mart! They have these inexpensive cans of black spray paint for 96 cents so I got some in a flat finish this time. I did another coat and oooopsies, there were these teeeeny weeenzzzy bubbles on the chairs. I’m no chemist, but I’m guessing the two finishes had some sort of reaction.

I took a risk and used a sanding block to see if that would take the bubbles away. It didn’t, but it created this very cool antiqued/distressed look. I’m really happy with how they turned out.

I reupholstered the seats using a staple gun (LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE!), fabric from Wal-Mart, and some batting I found lying around at home.

The chair on the left is in the living room and the chair on the right is Val's desk chair. 

They look fabulous in the apartment too and the final product definitely makes the whole dumpster diving incident worthwhile. 

Thriftily Yours,

Chelsea & Allison