My Chairs - With a Quick Tutorial

I have been working and working and working on these stupid chairs for weeks. I had grand plans of doing a really awesome tutorial about refinishing chairs (because you obviously can't figure it out on your own). But, plans sometimes change...

I started out with this. Or rather "these." There are two of them.



I took the frames and sanded, primed and spray painted them. Easy enough...



...and then noticed that, gee, the seats are metal too.



It's kind of hard to staple fabric onto a metal chair seat. I spent a couple weeks contemplating it before I decided that heavy-duty industrial adhesives were the answer. I bought a sheet of quilt batting and adhered it to three sides of the seat. Then I frankensteined an old cushion into filling for a new one.



And glued the fourth side down.



Then stretched my fabric over the new seat and cushion I made.



Wow! How great do those look!



Oh, but wait. One small problem. I can't screw the seat back onto the frame. The fabric is stretched over the groove that needs to be touching the frame. If I try to screw it on, the fabric is going to rip. So, right now the seat is just perched there on top of the chair. I wouldn't recommend sitting on it, but doesn't it look nice?



Remember how there are two chairs? Here's what became of chair number two:



DUH! A freaking chair cushion! The obvious (and easy) solution from the beginning. I could have just put a damn chair cushion on it and been done with it. This one just happens to match everything in the house. Imagine that. It even unintentionally matched the paint on the chair. It was kismet, me and that cushion.

In summary, here is how my tutorial for refinishing chairs goes:

1. Take the seat off the frame and paint the frame.
2. Put the seat back on the frame and slap a cushion on it.
3. Go have a beer because you're done.