Re-furbishing a Great Find

We wanted to share a great DIY project that we have been working on:

We found these great cane back chairs at a local consignment store and decided to re-furbish them to use in our breakfast nook.

They were in relatively good shape, only needing minor repairs and have beautiful detail and shape. The color however, left a lot to be desired. Here's what we did:

Above is a picture of one of the chairs as we purchased it. Notice the great leg details and soft shape of the back. When we took the seat off, there was a tag attached to the bottom that told us these poor chairs had not received new upholstery since 1971!!!!

Surprisingly, the foam seats were salvageable and still give a nice firm seat.

We saw the potential right away and had to have them!

We found this beautiful cherry blossom fabric in cotton rather than the silk that we are accustomed to seeing this pattern in. This selection will be much more durable and easy to clean for dining seating. We were able to have plenty of extra fabric to have some remnant fabric in case of stains and spills by the little ones. We lined the foam seat with muslin fabric and then re-upholstered the seats.

We took a latex based paint that was not totally opaque and gave these chairs a metallic finish. Normally, you would use an oil based paint on wood chairs, however, we wanted to have an antique looking finish with the yellow base slightly showing through where we sanded some edges in keeping with the architectural style of the chairs.
These will fit in beautifully to the breakfast nook. It has a reddish/orange walls, some beautiful antique doors, an architectural table and a satin nickel drum pendant. We will post some photos of the space with the chairs in it when it is complete.

Not to harp on the "green" thing, but finds like these are not only unique, but saved these chairs from heading to the landfill.