Have you ever found a project and thought to yourself “I can do that?” And then you tried it out and it was a complete failure? No? Me neither.

Just kidding. The great thing is when you do a project and it turns out pretty awesome, even though somewhere along the way you may have wanted to set it on fire. What’s that you say? You haven’t wanted to do that either? Well, then you are lucky. Anyway, this is a story about awesome things that almost got set on fire. Enter the painted barcalounger…

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Isn’t she purdy?

I actually started out with two of these puppies. You may remember this photo from awhile back. (Don’t bother looking for the post. It disappeared into oblivion when we lost all of our blog posts {mentioned here}. That is a lesson on backing things up!)

We scored both of the chairs on Craigslist for FREE. Yes, you read that right. And they were is great condition. No funky smell. No nasty stains. Only a small amount of dust and hair clung on for its life as I vacuumed them off.

A while ago, while perusing {Pinterest}, I found a photo of a beautiful upholstered wing-back chair {by Kristy Swain of Hyphen Interiors} that had been painted with latex and acrylic paints, of all things, and immediately knew I wanted to work that kind of magic on my own set of twins. Plus it is a much more inexpensive option than reupholstering.

I decided to see if anyone else had painted their upholstery and there were a ton of tutorials out there, so I figured that this was totally a project I could pull off. I gathered my supplies.

These included:

– One quart of Glidden Satin Latex Paint in Granite Gray
– {Ceramcoat Textile Medium}

Also:

– a spray bottle filled with water
– a disposable cup to mix the paint in
– a paint brush
– white semi-gloss paint for the legs (already owned)

These supplies were based mostly on Kristy’s process, minus the acrylic paint, after I read about several successes using only latex.

Then it was time to get to work. I started by removing the head and arm rest covers (do those things have a real name?) and pulled the seat cushion off as well so that I could paint it independently. Next, I mixed my paint with the textile medium and some water in a 1:1:1 ratio. With the spray bottle, I spritzed the water onto the fabric of the back rest and used my paint brush to spread the mixture onto the fabric. You can see below that the first coat looks like it is going on decently, considering I was painting a light color onto a darker fabric.

I spritzed and painted until the entire chair was covered, making sure to get in all of the nooks and crannies with my brush. Then it was time for a break so that everything could dry and I could make lunch.

One salad and five gluten free pretzels later, I headed back to check on the drying process and that’s when I started to freak out. It looked like there was the slightest bit of dust on the chair, but not any sort of noticeable difference in color. I didn’t even take a photo because there was nothing to photograph. The chair literally looked the same, like the right side of the photo above.

I mixed up some more paint, medium, and water, this time changing things up a bit and using a 1:1:1/2 ratio and hoping that this would allow for a bit more coverage. Spritz and paint and wait. Again, when I came back, it only looked as if someone had sprinkled a light dusting of baby powder on top of the chair. Grrrrrr. It was time for someone to light the fire, because this chair was going to burn. I could only imagine how many more coats I was going to have to do to make any sort of impact.  10? 20? 100? So I waited. And waited. A couple a of days actually.

I knew I couldn’t give up on this chair, so after some whining to my husband and sister, I again mixed up my paint, medium and water, but opted not to use the spray bottle with water. That, my friends, was the secret to my success, because the next coat was definitely showing some decent coverage. Just a little green showing through.

One more coat after that and I was done. Finally, my green chair was gray. I slapped some white paint on the legs and once that was dry…

I used a hair dryer to heat set the medium, which seemed to make the finish a little more pliable.

This chair is so lucky that I had a little perseverance and with a little more, it’s twin sister will get the same treatment so that we will have two GRAY barcaloungers.

We love the way this chair turned out, regardless of the blood, sweat and tears that went into it. Parent approved and kid tested.  Hmmm… I wonder how spill resistant it is???

Things to note:

1. I would describe the texture of the chair as being similar to waterproofed outdoor fabric. It is a bit plastic-y, but still squishy and very comfortable to sit in.

2. My theory is that the final texture of the chair has a lot to do with the beginning texture. My fabric was fairly stiff and rough to start out with, so a more plush fabric may produce a softer finish. No guarantees on this though.

3. I used four 8 oz. bottles of fabric medium and one quart of latex paint, which equaled four grueling  coats of paint. This amount would have been less had I done fewer coats with my newly figured out mixture. (1:1:1/2 ratio of paint, medium, and water with no spray water bottle added.)

4. Use a coupon. I could have spent around $12 less if I would have utilized coupons from my local craft store. Doh! You can even load a lot of them onto your phone with the right apps!

5. The kind of chair I chose to use may not have been the best candidate for this project. Barcaloungers move and lounge (duh!) and have foot rests, so a stationary chair may be a better choice because it will have less surface area to cover. This will definitely be something I take into consideration in my future upholstery painting projects.

Moral of the story:  If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again.  We would love for you to share your upholstery painting stories with us if you end up trying this out!