Quick and Easy Dining Chair Makeover

You may have noticed in past posts that none of our dining room chairs match.  They're all hand-me-downs or side-of-the-road finds.   There's six total, but only four live in the dining room full time.  I've been thinking about painting them FOREVER, but haven't bitten the bullet yet. 

One thing that it feels like I'm ALWAYS doing is recovering the seats.  Kids are slobs.  Seriously.  It's amazing they get any food in their actual mouths.  Add that to the play-doh, paint, crayon, glue, and whatever else they find to smear into the fabric, and the chairs get pretty nasty pretty quick.  

Only three of the chairs are covered, the others are just wood, so I rip off the old fabric and staple on some new. Quick fix and it takes less than a yard of fabric.  I don't know how much good it does, but I spray them with Scotch Guard before attaching them back to the chairs, as well.

I can't remember where the first chair came from.  Most likely my mom, and I can't imagine she paid for it.  It was missing the seat, so we just cut a piece of plywood out to make a new one.  You'll see in the pictures that at some point, it had some caning on it.  Long gone before I was the owner.  

It's also the only chair that's painted.  Green.  And I love it.  It's completely beat to crap.  Let's call it "distressed", shall we?  Yellow is showing through where the green has just partially worn off.  It's the chair I sit in.  Did I mention I love it?  It's the green.  The green.  

I could never paint over it.  I know some of you are looking at it and gagging.  It's okay, it won't hurt my feelings.  Well, maybe a little, but I'm aware that "beat to shit" is not everyone's style preference.  

THIS IS WHERE YOU START READING AGAIN.

'Cause I need your suggestions.

So I either attempt to match the green for the other chairs and make them look as beat up as this one, or do them all a different color.  Or one other green so that there's two, and the other two something else.  Like white.  Or cream.  Or blue.  I can't decide.  Help!  I've thought about giving the chalk paint a whirl, but I've read that non-removable, greasy fingerprints are a problem.  That would NEVER do at my house.  Spray paint would be ideal, 'cause there's a lot of little nooks and crannies, but then the colors are pretty limited.  Again, HELP!

Okay, I'll shut up and show you an easy way to attach a new plywood seat.

L brackets!  Easy, easy, like so...

Flip her over and voila, a new, beat-to-shit, should-have-been-left-on-the-side-of-the-road, but I love it, chair.

And here are the other two.

Okay, now let's hear it.

To paint, or not to paint, that is the question.

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