So I had these "pleather" wing backs that I had to transform. They were tan with hunter green piping, lovely- and had marker stains. At first thought I was going to attempt an upholstery job, but reality set in an I was like "no freaking way."
When the paint idea came up, originally it was going to be in the form of something abstract like this fabness from Anthropologie:
or maybe just a big crazy design on the backside.
I went to my muse, Google, and started searching for info on painted leather. Found tons, and then remembered I was dealing with vinyl. I came across this vinyl couch transformation on Johnny in A Dress and I was sold:
So I ran to my local Autozone and used up 6 cans of this in gloss white for $7.49 a can:
And I proceed to kill braincells and the ozone layer simultaneously:
1 coat
(I spot primed the marker stains with a stain blocking primer in between 1st and 2nd coats)
2 coats
three was the magic #
Now onto the schnazzle-dazzle. Legs went gloss blue and greek key happened...
I broke out stencil mylar and made a greek key stripe for the back and seats.
I first cut a stencil from regular mylar and sprayed it with gloss navy blue (regular) paint, but that got messy with over/under spray.
See the fuzzy edges on the part near the bottom above?
I switched to adhesive stencil paper by Martha Stewart (found it at Michael's), and that worked much better.
Just be sure to protect the surrounding areas with lots of paper and tape,
or else you will be spot painting white the blue "hazed" areas.
This stuff really does bond well. I ran out of the vinyl paint and had to do part of one of the backs of a chair with regular gloss white spray paint that I had on hand.
Bad, I know, but I had a deadline and a hurricane on the way and all 3 local Autozones were out of white since I bought it all. They only stock 2 cans per store. dumb. I had no time to wait for a reorder...
Big mistake. Regular spray paint doesn't stick. Found that out the hard way when I removed the stencil adhesive from that chair. you can tell just where I used the other paint. Took quite a while to fix too.
f*CK!
My hurricane painting lair (aka my sun room)
At this point I was now three days into this project, and tired of cutting little Greek Keys (the adhesive stuff is a one shot deal- not reusable), so I just made a giant one for the backs:
In the end it felt fine, just like pleather. I can't tell you if this holds up over time since the chairs are no longer in my possession. (If you won these babies the other night, keep me posted on how you make out.)
But overall, I have to say my mind was blown by this. I am not sure I would do such a big piece again, but I have passed on many a pleather piece with cool lines because I just wasn't up for an upholstery job in the past. Maybe I wont next time. And the fact that you can add a pattern made my happy too.
How about you... would you dare?
