Trying my hand at furniture make overs: Adding A Pop of Colour to My Office...

I love colour. To say anything other than love would be an understatement, however, colour can be a little over bearing for some people...I'm not one of those people! I do believe though that there is a time and a place for bright colours.

In my office I painted one of the main walls the most amazing pinkish-coral colour, and the other three walls bright white to offset the boldness of the coral wall. Then the rest of the colour I'm bringing in through furniture, artwork and accessories. I still have a lot to do, like sew up some curtains, replace the light fixture and some other odds and ends,but here was the starting point.

Every night I sit at my desk and think about the need for a good client chair. I don't know why, but for some reason I felt I needed one, and it had to be perfect. I'm pretty frugal, that's the fancy way of saying cheap, so I hit up Kijiji in search of my "perfect chair". It doesn't exist. At least not in a frugal world. So instead I found this little guy for $5.00, great price, not quite so great looking....yet.

I must admit, I graduated college from a Interior Design program and have always been artsy,so while seeing something ugly will always be something ugly to some, I see beyond...I see into its furniture soul I guess you could say! This chair had been previously owned by a younger college student, so it served it's purpose as a chair and as he was moving out decided to get rid of it at such a low price! His loss was fully my gain! Just look at the structure of this lil guy, great curves, who doesn't like curves!

So I set off to the fabric store, which lucky me is a 5 minute walk from my doorstep...I practically live there these days! Being the off season for bright and fun fabric I knew I had a good chance at scoring some great fabric at a 'frugal' price, haha...again, I'm super cheap but I know how to rock it! I searched through every bolt of fabric they had on clearance and finally found "the one", the perfect addition to my room...it pulls out the colour in my roadside vanity that I made over, and the colour from my wall. I was in love, and what was even better than it being the perfect match? The price! $44.00 a meter regular price on sale for $22.00 a meter, and since I needed less than a meter in total it cost $13.00 for my fabric. I have enough still to do another chair so I'm happy about that! By now you're probably getting eager to see this perfect fabric on this soon to be perfect chair....I'm getting there, just stay with me another minute....

Have you ever tried chalk paint? If not, I recommend it. It's fantastic! ~~I'm lazy~~...I have 2 boys, which means no time for sanding and priming in this house! But using chalk paint takes care of all that! I mixed my own, being true to my cheapness, from the latex paint I used on my wall. It took about 5 coats, but chalk paint dries in a fraction of the time regular latex paint does, so it only took 2 days in total. I set up shop in my kitchen and put up a blockade of baby gates to keep all the little hands and paws out of my way,I still managed to get paint all over the place, that's ok though, some hot water and an old cloth and things are back to new!

Five coats of home made chalk paint and the most amazing fabric and my perfect chair is complete! Here she is...yes, now it's a she.