French Chair Makeover

Have you ever perused Craigslist, yard sales, or online marketplaces for potential gems? I found some terrific French style parlor chairs and a settee on Craigslist that I knew could be given new life. You can do it, too! All it takes is a little vision, paint, and fabric supplies.

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Bargain French Chairs

My quest began when I was searching out a settee for our dining room. I fortunately stumbled upon a parlor set on Craigslist which included a settee, arm chair, and two side chairs. All for $200! So I set to work to transform them into a subtle, French country look. I wanted more casual fabrics on the chairs to blend in with a farmhouse style.

Since I actually took on this project a few years ago, I don’t have any ‘in process’ photos. I’ll do my best to walk you through my makeover steps. Here are ‘before’ photos of one of the side chairs and the arm chair. These are the actual photos posted on Craigslist:

French Chair Makeover Supplies

In order to transform these chairs, I first gathered up my supplies as follows:

• grain sacks and vintage hemp sheet (I found mine on eBay here)
• burlap fabric (found here or here)
• jute trim (like this)
• upholstery tacks and hammer (I got mine at JoAnns, but you can find similar tacks here)
• Optional: vintage style grain sack stencil (I found mine on Etsy here), acrylic or fabric paint, foam brush, upholstery webbing
• scissors, hot glue gun, glue sticks, upholstery stapler like this one
• paint ‘Sea Pearl’ by Benjamin Moore, light sand paper

French Chair Makeover Steps

Next, I followed these steps to transform my chairs. If you’d like more detail, you can find inspirational chair makeover tutorials at Miss Mustard Seed’s website.

• Carefully remove the existing trim, upholstery, and cushioning from the chairs and set aside. You will need these as templates for your new fabric.
• Lightly sand the chair frame and paint with your desired color. Let dry thoroughly. Seal if you would like.
• Using the old upholstery fabric as a template, cut out new upholstery pieces (leaving at least 1/2 inch extra fabric around). For my side chairs, I used grain sack for the front and burlap for the seat.
• This is where I centered my stencil on the burlap seat piece and painted with black craft paint onto the fabric using a foam brush to get the vintage grain sack lettering.

• Place the cushioning back on the seats, and cover with your new upholstery fabric. Make sure to attach the seat fabric properly so that the stencil design is centered.
• Staple the fabric to the chair using your staple gun.
• Cover your staples with trim using a hot glue gun.

• I attached my side chair grain sack fabric in a slightly different way. Instead of using my staple gun, I used upholstery tacks (with an upholstery hammer) to fasten this fabric. I liked the rustic look of the tacks here.

French Arm Chair

• For the arm chair, I also had to remove & replace the arm fabric with new fabric and trim.

• I used a vintage hemp sheet to cover the arm chair, and replaced the back of the chair with drop cloth fabric & upholstery webbing:

• The same stencil was painted on the hemp sheet fabric for the seat:

• I chose to remove the padding & fabric at the back of all my chairs, and just fasten my ‘backing’ fabric underneath my front chair fabric. For the arm chair, this was the drop cloth & webbing. For the side chairs, I kept the original burlap that was on the chairs:

French Chairs on Display

With a little effort and a creative vision, you can transform ho-hum bargain chairs into your dream chairs! I absolutely love how my chairs were dramatically changed to fit the casual farmhouse vibe in our dining room. It’s been over 2 years since I worked on them, and they’re still my favorite pieces in our dining room (along with our farmhouse table)!

Have another peek at these chairs and the settee showcased in my spring table setting post: