One Day $5 Chair Makeover

In an attempt to add a little brightness and color to our brown, on brown, on tan basement, I decided to update my rocking chair. I love this chair so much, but the white slip cover wasn't very practical with kids. I cringed every time someone sat in it, hoping they wouldn't notice how dirty it looked. So for only $5 and a day of work (which was mostly waiting), I was able to transform our chair into something I want people to see.

I really did love the pattern on the slip cover, but the white was the problem. It didn't add anything to the boring brown basement and it got too dirty too easily. You can see that the seat is no where near white anymore. I have tried dying things in the past and it wasn't too hard, just a little scary because you have to have faith that it will work out. But I needed a budget friendly fix so I took the leap.





I striped the cover from the chair and decided to soak it in an Oxyclean solution for a couple hours.





Nothing to specific, just a scoop of Oxyclean in a container of hot water large enough to hold the slipcover. This helped get out a lot of the dirt so it would dye better.
After the soak, I gave it a quick wash in my washer so I had a clean and wet slipcover to put in the dye solution. Now it was time to jump off the deep end...





Rit dye is cheap (especially when you buy it at the craft store with a 40% off coupon) and easy to use. They have a color chart online that tells you how to mix tons of colors. I was torn between two colors. They were both a combination of the tangerine dye and the scarlet dye. So I grabbed a container of each.





This is where things got a little crazy, I jumped into the process and things weren't turning out how I hoped, but in the end, I was able to lighten things up a bit with a light bleach solution and some faith. In the end, it turned out beautifully!





The end result is this beautiful chair that is holding up much better to my crazy kids. It adds a little color to the brown basement. And I love our rocker even more!
Even though there were some moments of "What were you thinking?" I would definitely try this again because for only $5 and a little sweat on the brow, the end result is worth way more.






Original article and pictures take http://www.hometalk.com/11283775/one-day-5-chair-makeover site