Last year, right around this time, we bought a sad-looking pair of beach chairs at a yard sale for $5. It took me an entire year to get around to refinishing them, but hey, they're done! And by some awesome stroke of luck, Friday turned out to be a gorgeous beach day. Probably one of the summer's last. I arrived home from a work trip mid-afternoon, and we headed to the beach to end the day.
To refinish the chairs, I first had to remove a million rusty staples and the old, moldy fabric from the frames. I used a hammer and a small chisel to carefully pry the back support off each frame. Then I sanded the frames.
I decide to whitewash the wood instead of staining and I really like how it turned out. I loosely followed these instructions, using leftover white exterior paint, a paint brush instead of a roller, and a clean rag instead of a sponge. I also decided to forgo the plastic painter's suit :) I didn't give my paint mixture much time to dry before wiping it off with my rag, because I wanted the wood to look more sun-bleached than whitewashed, and I only did one coat. When the whitewash was dry, I sealed the frames with two coats of clear water sealer and left them to dry for a few days.
I was too lazy to break out my sewing machine for a $5 pair of chairs, so after I measured and cut my fabric to size, I hemmed the edges using iron-on hem tape. Then it was just stapling the fabric to the frames and re-attaching the back supports.
The fabric is P. Kaufmann's 'Cool Stripe' in sorbet, purchased from Tonic Living. I love the bright, happy colours, and beach chairs need stripes, I think. The chairs are really comfortable (Adam only wishes that the backs were higher so he could rest his head) and I like that they come apart (the seat slides into the back) so they can easily be tossed in the trunk.
Who knows, maybe we'll even get another beach day in?
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