DIY, Furniture, Projects, Revivals and Redos

Cane chair redo

I love furniture redos! Taking old and worn furniture and turning it new again gives the best results of a project. It also helps you to decorate your home without breaking the bank. This cane chair redo only has a few steps to actually transform them!

A few days ago I showed you a picture of two chairs. I was not sure what I was going to do. Well they are done. It took me a while to figure out what room they were going to go into, and from there deciding on color sheme for the fabric and color to paint the chairs. If you remember they looked like this…

The spool redo post will be following shortly

I bought these chairs a few months ago, they have been patiently waiting for me to become inspired. Well inspiration struck. The chairs are done! They now reside in my master bedroom. We finally have a seating area! The spool is done as well but that is going to be talked about in another post. So after much thought and not really knowing where they would end up I decided to stain the wood a dark brown finish. I have never stained but figured hey, I can do this. And decided to go with a gray fabric with some kind of texture or pattern. Once I decided on the specific fabric, I am currently searching for the name of the fabric. I can’t find the receipt and have not seen it at the fabric store since. The rest came together really easily.

The fabric, I am desperately trying to find the name of it

The cushions came off with a few pulling of nails, and the material that was on it was not even stapled to the cushion. Just tucked in. The cushions were pretty new, no damage. We simply laid the fabric down and set the cushion on top. Gave a good 7 inches space around the cushion for the side of the cushion and leaving enough material to staple it to the bottom of the cushion. Once you have the piece cut for the cushion pull the material tight. Not tight that once someone sits on it there can be tears but tight enough to give it a clean look. Really specific and helpful right? Sorry I cant add more, this is a feel it out kind of thing. Once the tightness is decided I held down one corner while my husband stapled it. Then the hard part, folding in the other side of the same corner. I tried to make it as smooth as possible and then staple that down. Once you have one corner down, staple the side halfway and then repeat to fold in the corners.

The folded in corner, and the 20 million staples. I am going to hate myself if I change the material

The cushions have a rounded back to them so we had to compensate and be really careful with the tucking and folding because if there was one bad side we could not flip the cushion to put that in the back. No hiding it. After the corners are done is is pretty smooth sailing. There was a few pieces that once stapled made the material bunch up once set on the chair, I just cut off those random pieces to allow the cushion to lay flat.

There was this weird cut out, I just pulled it super tight around there and it seemed to work out

An example of one finished corner

Staple like a crazy person, make sure it all stays put

Once the cushions were done it was on to the staining. Now I will be real here, I know absolutely nothing about staining. I have never stained one piece of anything. My knowledge and how to came from TV. Yep a real professional here. I knew we needed to sand the chairs down. Once that was done we began lightly rubbing the stain onto the back of one leg. It was difficult to get into the grooves of the legs. We did it once, twice, three times. Each time letting it sit before applying another coat. It never turned out. Then there is a wicker like backing that would not take the stain. No matter how much rubbing I did, I got a hodg podge of some stained and some not. The wicker just ended up looking dirty. It was a staining fail!

I tried to do it evenly

Three coats of wiping the stain on

This was the lattice like backing, it looks dirty not stained

more staining failure

this is two coats of rubbing the stain into it

After many attempts. Thoughts, doubts, reading of instructions, how to’s, and helpful hints, along with some banging of heads against the wall, and shouts of “I don’t know” I decided enough is enough time to wip out the paint. I mean what good DIY-er does not have a fair amount of paint left from something. So painting it black we did. I had these visions of a beautiful deeply stained cane chair with the light gray fabric. It just did not work out. I got deep, rich looking black chairs with light gray textured fabric. I still love them. They turned out amazing. Total price was $43.62 for 2 yards of fabric and the paint. It was such an easy project (minus the staining) but with such a huge impact that I am constantly talking myself out of buying more chairs like them when I come across them at stores, flea markets, or rummage sales. I don’t need them, have no place for them but they sure could turn out pretty.