Coral Painted Dry Brushed White Cane Back Chair

Cane Back Chair Makeover Tutorial

The cane back chair makeover includes a new seat cover made from a vintage pillowcase and dry brush painting. The cane back chairs are the perfect makeover project and there are a ton of them out there.  The cane looks great painted.

Coral Painted Dry Brushed Cane Back Chair Makeover

See what I mean. How pretty is that chair. I wasn’t sure the polka dots would work with the cane but I think they do. What about you?

The chair looked like this when I found it at my fav junk shop. Not too much to look at but I saw the potential.

I painted the chair Rose Heartstring ( a Glidden paint color), the same coral paint color I used on the Nursery Dresser.

The pretty polka dot fabric with the lace trim is one of a pair of pillowcases I bought at an antique shop when we lived in Florida. I love the pillowcases. The colorful polka dots and the pretty lace trim had me at hello.  It was hard to sacrifice one of them to this chair.

But it went perfectly with my vision and the pillowcase was just taking up space in the closet. (Am I the only one with too many linens?) I use one of the pillowcases on the bed in the granddaughters bedroom.

Since the pillowcase fabric is thin and the original chair seat covering was dark I used a layer of white fabric (old sheet) under the decorative pillowcase. I have a supply of white sheets and pillowcases to use for projects like this.

You can pick up sheets at thrift stores for a dollar or two and they also make good lint free waxing cloths.I cut a piece of sheet to fit the chair seat.

The padding on the seat was still firm. I did not want to remove the original fabric so I sprayed it with Simple Green and freshened it up.

After cutting the pillowcase to size I ironed and stapled the fabric to the seat. Always staple opposing sides first and pull the fabric tight.Work the corners as best you can to get out the folds and wrinkles. If you’ve never covered a chair seat and need more details I have a complete chair seat recovering tutorial here.

The coral paint looked too one dimensional so I dry brushed it with white paint. I didn’t know if I would like the way the white paint looked on the coral but I thought what the heck. If I didn’t like it I could paint over it.

I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve changed paint plans on furniture projects. Some of my pieces have more than 4 coats of different colors of paint….really. If you don’t like it…paint over it.

I told you the cane looked good painted. And the dry brushed white really enhances the look. I painted a set of the  cane back chairs white and covered the seats with drop cloth (click here).

Another way to highlight details like the lines on this leg is to distress the paint.

Before I started painting furniture I couldn’t imagine painting a chair and recovering the seat. Now it’s old hat. It’s really, really easy. If you haven’t made over a chair give it a try.

Share your thoughts please and then visit the photo links below. My friends always have great project and we all did chairs today!

As always thanks for being here and have a great day, Kathy

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