Mr. Wheat's Rockers

Mr. Wheat replaced his front porch rockers.  He gave the four old ones to me.  The bones were good and sturdy but had definitely seen better days.  Time for a bit of rocker resuscitation!

The first step was to remove all the seat rushing.  This was no small task.  It was messy and dusty.  Mr. Wheat keeps a spotless home, but anytime furniture is left outside, even on a covered porch, the are places that even a clean freak can't clean.  Between the rushes is one of those places.

Next I painted the rockers white.  Painting chairs and rockers is very tedious, so I decided this was a fine time to finally try out my new power spray paint gizmo.

That may have been my first and last time using a power sprayer.  I have a love/hate relationship with the thing.

LOVE:

• It covers in no time.  

HATE:

• It uses up paint at a shocking rate.  
• Each time the container gets a little low (which is very, very often), the paint spits out, making blobs that need to be touched up immediately.  
• At one point I didn't screw the container on correctly and when I picked up the sprayer, the container dropped and paint went everywhere.  
• I used three large dropcloths.  (The photo above doesn't show them all.  I had already started moving stuff when I remembered to take a photo.)  Three dropcloths was not enough.  
• The sprayer should not be used when there's any wind at all.  
• The sprayer needs to be cleaned up very, very well, otherwise it won't work well the next time you use it.  It takes a long time and a lot of water to clean all the parts. 
• By the end I was exhausted and covered in paint from head to toe.  I am not a power sprayer kind of girl.  I'll stick to my nice and slow and slightly meditative old fashioned painting.  But the chairs turned out great.

Note - If you had two very organized people working together and you had a lot of things you wanted to paint the same color and  if you were willing to use up a lot of paint and if you had a great place to paint with lots of drop-cloths, the power sprayer could be a very good thing.

Once the paint had thoroughly cured, it was time to weave the seats and back. 

I have a chair-weaving tutorial in a previous post.

Even though I stuck to a color palette of red, green, tan, and white, the pattern is still a little busy.  I'm not worried.  Once I add pillows and cushions, not so much of the pattern will show up.  Meanwhile, the pattern hides dirt and fur.

Once I sat in the chairs, I realized that they weren't all that comfortable.  They could use some cushions.  Not a problem.  I came across four old cushions at a yard sale that fit perfectly.

 

The cushions are weathered and worn, but that didn't concern me.  I'm planning to make covers for them in a pretty fabric.  That means I can't mark this project off my list.  I also want to add small pillows on the chairs.  That's not a huge rush.  I'm keeping my eye out at yard sales.  Maybe I'll even come across some that don't need to be re-covered! 

I have shared this post on the following link parties:

Saturday Nite Special at Funky Junk Interiors

Favorite Things Saturday at Bargain Hunting with Laurie 
Weekend Wrap Up Party at Tatertots and Jello  

Sunday Showcase at Under the Table and Dreaming