Monday, June 17, 2013

Chinese Chippendale Chair Before & After


Found it! A Chinese Chippendale (bamboo) style chair has been added to the guest bedroom's desk this week.  Yay!
After searching and searching, style chair was either only sold in sets or was quite expensive (Jonathon Adler's version starts at $500).
One night, a forum poster on DecorPad.com also suggested the Chinese Chippendale style for my Natura desk, so I thought I'd try looking just one more time. This time my google-fu stumbled on this chair being offered by One Kings Lane.  It was not the right color and I had been hoping to find a $10 Craig's List chair, BUT since it was the first reasonably priced chair I had seen that was not sold in pairs, I jumped on it.


Lessons Learned

  • Customizing the chair is as easy as "they" say!
    A little paint and fabric and the chair was my own style.  While it took time, the level of skill required was minimal.  I could see this chair being many different colors long into the future!
  • Painting with a brush works too.
    Since I am in a high-rise building, spray painting is not an option (sad face!).  If I hadn't already painted my dining chair legs, I would have been nervous about streaks and brush strokes, but those turned out really smooth.  And the chair looks great too!  No brush strokes at all.
  • Work fast with latex paint!
    The white high gloss paint dried so fast that I had to be extra careful not to go over recently painted sections. Attention had be taken to smooth out paint bumps or drips right away, since it might be too tacky to smooth out later.  With other paint types, I never had the hurry and do it right feeling like I did with this.  =)  One tip given to always keep a wet edge of paint when using latex.  Good advice.
  • Be strategic about the order you paint sections.
    The chair back took a lot of time to paint because of all the small nooks and angles, and a lot more touch up was necessary because it was really hard to get good paint coverage in certain spots.
    I found it worked best to start by painting a thin layer of paint on those difficult spots first, then paint the remainder of the chair and then go back to the difficult spots again.  By the time I worked my way to the trouble areas, the were dry enough for me to paint again. 


Materials Used for Chair Re-Vamp

  • White gloss latex paint (dried super fast, just needs 2 hrs between coats)
  • fine grit sand paper
  • 1 1/2" synthetic paint brush (had at home)
  • this chair needed 3 coats (minimum).  I bought an 8 oz paint can, and used less than half the can.  Since white isn't a saturated color, I would have been find with a sample size 4 oz container. 
  • About 3/4 of the yard of fabric I purchased at a local fabric store
  • Staple gun to secure fabric to seat (had at home)
  • Drop cloth to protect floors and collect dust from sanding
As I'm typing this list, I realized I only sanded my chair and didn't get paint with primer mix it (my usual method).  Ugh.  Fingers crossed it doesn't start to bubble or crack.  Regardless, I love my chair!

Guest bedroom 
The room is still a work in progress, still looking for
  • artwork for above the bed
  • navy euro shams (scheduled to ship this week)
  • nightstand or small chest of drawers for the side opposite the desk
  • large scale artwork for the wall opposite the bed.  Or maybe a dresser?
    Obviously a guest room doesn't really need a dresser, but I was thinking I could use 1/2 to stash some sewing goodies.  Ha!

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