Vintage Folding Chair Makeover

by: Jo

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Chica found two vintage Leg-O-Matic chairs at a flea market and bought them for me knowing I would love how they folded up. She was right — I did love them and I decided that with some fresh new color and fabric, they would be a perfect addition to my She-Shed makeover.

After removing the seat cushion, I spray painted the entire chair with Rust-Oleum 2X Gloss White.

To save time when re-covering the seat cushions, I decided to just put my new fabric right over top of the old cushion. Since the previous fabric was a slick vinyl, I first gave it a quick coat of spray adhesive to hold my new cotton fabric in place and keep it from sliding around.

Then I just placed my new fabric (found at Hobby Lobby) on top, wrapped it around, trimmed it, and stapled the edges to the seat bottom.

Normally that would be enough of a finish, but since these chairs fold up, the bottoms will be visible when not in use. I didn't want to leave them unsightly, so I decided to cover the bottoms with fabric, too. I used pinking shears to cut another piece of fabric just big enough to cover the bottom and all the staples. (The pinking shears just leave a slightly more decorative edge to the fabric but a straight line from regular scissors would have worked just as well.)

To make this a staple-free finish AND ensure that the edges didn't fray, I chose to use Decou-Page to adhere the fabric to the bottom.

These chairs had the original Leg-O-Matic brand sticker on the bottom when I got them. I really liked the vintage feel of those, so I carefully removed them before I did any work. Then when I was done, I used more decoupage to add them back onto the bottom of the chair.