His & Hers Antique Rockers

I’ve been insanely busy lately. I’m not complaining, I’m so super thankful, but it does make sharing projects on a regular basis extra hard. At least ! have a great backlog of projects to share…?

Anyway, I did these for one half of the fabulous GordonDunning duo.

The order: Paint chairs in a high gloss appropriate for outdoor use and build up the seat on the “His” chair to match the “Hers”.

First order of business was to take ’em apart.

There was an entire dissembled crate inside! So weird. It was just… in there. Didn’t look like it was giving any sort of support. The wood that was supporting the seat was rotten and obviously needed to be replaced in order to upholster. Cutting a new seat bottom was not something I had done before but I figured it out and made a little graphic for ya just in case you come across a similar sitch. If you’ve got any kind of math skills, this probably isn’t hard for you to figure out. But, my math brain is blonde as hell. Also, I made all these numbers up because I can’t remember what it actually was.

The first thing I did was measure the front, back and sides of the seat opening. The longest sides were 20″ x 25″ so I made sure my piece of wood was at least that large.

I grabbed a piece of 4×4 furniture grade wood from Home Depot. I measured the front of the seat at 20″ so I divided that in two and measured 10″ from the bottom edge of the wood and made a mark. Then I did the same thing on the top edge of the wood and drew a straight line to get my center, making sure that the center line measured 25″, the same length as the sides of the seat. Since the back of the seat was 16″, I divided that in two and measured 8″ out from the center line I just made and then connected the top and bottom lines.

Then I cut on the lines, laid my 5″ foam on top of it and cut it with a serrated knife and finished up the upholstery.

Since the chairs were destined for a life outside, they needed exterior paint. Unfortunately exterior paint doesn’t come in high gloss, so we went with a semi-gloss. I sanded them down, did some wood-filling and sprayed them down with BM Bath Salts. The fabric is an exterior fabric from…  I can’t even remember. Ugh, I need to get with it. I would just rather do projects than blog about them so it’s hard to stop after each one. And, again, my brain is blonde. Probably from all the bleach.

This was the first project I did in my new DIY Paint Booth, which, by the way, has changed my life. Everything is so much easier now.

More on that later.

Ready for the after?

Boom!

Now they look like a matching pair and have a lovely new home in on a gorgeous porch in Atlanta.

One more before and after:

Minty goodness.

Pow. (pow, pow!)