As I’ve mentioned before in my blog, I have a penchant for old and broken things. So when I find this rickety  $9 chair at a local thrift store in Manteca, I had to pick it up for my niece.

I wasn’t going to leave it as is, of course. It was just a basic solid wood chair. The owner before me seemed to have used a staple gun around the seat to put some sort of cushion and fabric on. After a good hour of prep work that involved a razor blade and pliers, I was able to remove all the jagged little staples that could possibly give my niece a good stab.

After the sanding and staple removal was complete. In came the paint! I used some FolkArt Chalk paint. Lessons I learned : The roller is a complete waste of time.  I ended up having a far easier time painting this with a regular art acrylic paint brush. And while the paint says that you don’t need a primer – for lighter shades of paint I would really recommend it. Next time! I love the super matte finish. Definitely unlike any other crafting paint that I have ever used. I have to also mention that sanding this down gave it a really great effect. The paint almost falls off like chalk. I guess they named it correctly. 🙂

I measured out the seat to make sure I would be painting my design in the middle. Personally, I wanted to hand paint it. However, I am sure if you were making a little rocking chair of your own you could transfer your design on to the wood. I ended up painting this with just two colors, and then sanding it down as well. It added some really cool texture to the red heart!  After it was all sanded to the level of distress that I wanted, I sprayed two coats of acrylic sealing spray.

My niece just loves this rocking chair.  She hasn’t seen this finished version, but she has been rocking back and forth in the original chair for weeks since I first picked this up from the thrift store. What was once junk is now her own one of a kind gypsy, country style rocking chair!