It's been a while since I did a DIY project, so to start my comeback I gave my friend's rustic Mexican-style chairs a makeover.
The bottom gave out on this one, so the first step was to strip off the fabric and cushion and see what the frame looked like.
It was obvious that this chair needed a new base. The chairs have a slightly trapezoidal shape and cutouts on each corner, and at Home Depot they can only cut square, so I bought a saw to do the rest.
I cut three new bases from a 2'x4' piece of tri-ply. I only needed two, but since I had the material, I decided to use it. Like my sexy orange gloves?
Once all the chairs were stripped, I sanded them down to prep for a coat of new varnish.
Once all the chairs were stripped, sanded, and varnished I cut the new material: red pleather. (You can see a piece of the old fabric, a cream- and red-stripe.) The tricky part was the corners.
For cushion, I cut a full-sized egg-carton mattress pad into 12 approximately equal pieces--three layers per chair is pretty plush.
And here's the finished product. The pleather was a little hard to work with--next time, fabric for sure. But ultimately, they look great and they're a lot more comfortable.
