Goodwill Chair Makeovers

I have always seen these great posts about people who find deals at Goodwill, I have been to Goodwill many times and never scored a deal..until now!! I had gone by a couple of weeks ago on a Friday and saw a dining room chair that may have worked - but it was $10 and I did not have $10 at that moment- so I walked away. I thought about that chair all weekend long...so Monday I quickly went back to the Goodwill on my lunch break! And SCORE! not only was the chair marked down to $5 but there was another one too for just $5!! I did the seat wiggle test (you know butt in chair, now wiggle to see if the legs are stable) and they both passed!! I quickly grabbed both and headed for the registers!!

I figured this one would be perfect to replace my rolling computer chair, but my daughter picked it for her dressing room instead- because it was prettier!!


So this would be my new office chair...maybe??

These sat in my garage for a few days, with my son asking daily if today would be the day we could start painting. Finally it was time- but first we needed some supplies. I had never repainted furniture before so I had no idea what to do- thankfully there were plenty of blogs out there with step by step instructions.

The first step was to sand the chairs and remove the finish already on them-we used the electric sander and I have to say it quickly removed the finish- a little too quickly in some spots!! LOL

Next up was to dust them off with a rag and prime them - we used Kilz2 water based because this was what we had leftover from painting a room earlier. You need to put on two very thin layers of primer- VERY THIN!!! My son started on the office chair and I started on my daughter's chair- I was done in 1/2 the time he took but I put mine on a bit thicker and in the end my chair had drip marks where his looked perfectly even. We waited and hour in between layers.

The next day we started on the paint- my son was really enjoying this and since I absolutely hate to paint (and his looked much better then mine) I decided to turn the project over to him. So he started painting the first layer on the office chair. We did not paint the underside of the chairs- because well no one sees them and it was easier for us to move them if we knew we had at least one spot that we could touch before it was completely dried.

2 layers of paint and 24 hours later we applied the Minwax Polycrylic water based sealant and then decided to wait another 24 hours before we brought them inside.

And here they are: I love them and think my son did an awesome job!

The office chair color is valspar liquid jade 5003-6B from Lowe's. It had a little more teal in it then I had hoped but I still found a perfect place for it! The back on it was too short to be my office chair but it found a great home at my front door by the entry table. Which just happens to be across from my office and now each time I look up from my computer I see it and it makes me smile. Look for this to show up in a post later this month when I show you my front entry Valentine's decorations.

My daughter's chair was painted Valspar Savvy Pink 1006-4B and it is perfect in her dressing room as you saw on yesterday's post!

Oh and a funny story about the paint- I am so use to only buying paint for bedrooms that I asked for a gallon of paint instead of a quart!! We barely even used any of it so I have plenty of these colors left over for future projects...unfortunately though it cost me at least twice what it should have in paint. So if you are going to paint furniture you can easily get by with a quart- maybe even just one of those sample jars depending on what you are painting!!

Inspiring you,

~Elizabeth