Sunday, August 11, 2013

From BLAH to FABULOUS in 1 hour!

Who knew I could get a little crafty? Who knew?

You know we have talked about the crazy creative Natalie over in Page's room.  That woman is like the MacGyver of the crafting world!  (If you don't know who MacGyver is..then that makes me feel old!  Here's what Wikipedia says about him...Resourceful and possessed of an encyclopedic knowledge of the physical sciences, he solves complex problems with everyday materials he finds at hand, along with his ever-present duct tape and Swiss Army knife!)  I'm telling you...give that woman a craft stick, scissors, bubblegum, and some yarn---and she'll give you a prom dress!

So anyway, she decides to give Page an end of the year surprise gift---she recovered her plain old "roll-y chair".  Yes, the technical name would be "Rolling Desk Task Chair", but "roll-y chair" works just fine for us!

  She gave that baby a TOTAL makeover!  Shined it up, added some snazzy new trendy fabric, and VOILA---Page is rolling in style!

So I decide--- I can do that too, right!  So I of course call 911 immediately..better known as Natalie's cell! She gives me all the necessary tools I'll need...bubblegum, a craft stick, scissors and yarn.  JK---but I KNOOOOOW she COULD recover a chair using those...you know...MacGyver and all!

I AM NOT KNOWN for my CRAFTING ABILITIES---so this was foreign territory for me.  But I have been having a bit of a PINTEREST addiction this summer and I was all in to redecorating my entire room (post coming soon, I promise!)---when alas...I looked over at my wonderful BFF's work desk table, and well---it just looked sad.  It needed a MAKEOVER!

So off I go to Hobby Lobby for all of the goodies I would need.  Surprisingly I did not have said bubblegum, yarn, craft stick...on hand!


You will need:
*roll-y chair
*tools to disassemble the chair (all we needed was an Allen wrench)
*scissors
*fabric of your choosing
*hot glue gun
*spray adhesive
*chopstick (or other "pokey" device!)



These basic steps should take you NO MORE than 1 hour!
1.  Gather supplies and disassemble the chair.
2.  Lay your fabric over each cushion and cut it in a square/rectangular shape with several inches hanging over the sides. (This will be what you tuck/glue.)
3.  Spray the adhesive and lay your fabric over it.  Smooth it out with your hands and give it a few minutes to set before you keep working.
4.  On the chair back, the plastic backing was actually impossible to remove so after spraying the adhesive, I simply used my trusty chopstick to shove the fabric between the cushion and the plastic. Worked like a charm!
5.  Finished seat back!  Presh!
6.  For the seat bottom, follow the same step using the adhesive, then use a hot glue gun to glue down the excess fabric.  I didn't remove the old gray stuff---just glued right over it.  Be careful that you tuck the fabric and glue it about every couple of inches so you don't have tons of fabric all left over in one section...that causes lots of wrinkles at the corners.  Mine was not perfect, but little tucks here and there looked just fine to me!  (PS-Be sure you don't glue the fabric down over the screw holes...that would just be crazy, right!---You'd think, anyway!!...cause that's EXACTLY what I did!  Don't tell MacGyver Natalie!)
7.  Finished glued chair bottom!
8.  Completed seat back and seat bottom!
9.  Find a cute kid (in this case, my handy 9 year old!) to reassemble the chair!
10.  And VOILA!!!  You have a trendy, stylish, new "roll-y chair"!

And of course I had to add some super cute desk accessories to finish out the look!  Here's to the MOST AWESOME teaching partner ever!!!

We hope your year is off to a crafty start too!

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