My brother and his girlfriend are welcoming a sweet baby boy, named Sebastian, into our family early October and I knew when I saw this little chair at a thrift store in Raleigh that it must be his.
At $5.00, this little gem was just the right price. I picked out some skull and cross bone fabric that I knew would match the nursery decor and googled "How to make an envelope pillow." I literally dusted off by sewing machine, spent 20 minutes relearning how to thread the needle and after about two hours I had covered a piece of foam with some fabric. The wood finish on the chair was actually not that hideous. My original plan was to just add a little cushion and paint a white "S" on the back of the chair to keep it pretty simple. I painted an "S" on the back of the chair using a Martha Stewart stencil and as soon as I went to peel the stencil off the entire "S"peeled off as well. I have a couple theories as to why that happened. First, I am an amateur stenciler and I stink at it. Secondly, the finish on the chair was way more lacquered than I had anticipated. I scraped my original plan and sanded the entire chair down and primed it with a white spray paint primer. I then picked out a super awesome orange that screamed boy and painted that chair with happiness.
Look at how happy my child is sitting there eating his orange popsicle in that fantastically orange chair. Pure childhood bliss. Next stop on the chair train is where things got hairy. I had to work so my sweet husband told me he would add another coat to my chair. He texted me at work verifying that he had the right spray paint bottle before painting and the details are fuzzy whether I confirmed that bottle of spray paint or not, depending on who you ask. The bright happy orange chair got a coat of fire engine red spray paint and sadness ensued. The chair in my eyes was ruined and I had no time to fix it before the reveal. I moped around with angry eyes for about an hour before I just started sanding that baby (the chair, not the baby) down and beating it with a screwdriver to distress it mostly because I was getting out my frustration at the color mishap. The orange and red blended together like the perfect storm and something bad turned into something better than I could have planned for.
I'm kind of in love and I almost wish Cole's name started with an "S" just so I could keep it. Here's to
accidental cuteness.
