d'oh!mestic

I look at this picture of this chair, and I make the sassy-faced expression of an embarrassed sitcom character who has to explain previous life choices to her witty friends. There’s a lot of cheek puffing and hand waving and ellipses. It was 2002 … Target … First house … and it’s not like we have an Ikea … Y’know?

But there are no escaping facts. It was an ugly chair. Its twin? Just as ugly. Curved back, MDF, maple veneer with an off white canvas seat, splattered with eight years’ worth of dining mishaps.

In my defense, I’ll tell you how the chairs were actually a house-warming present from (I think) my parents, that these chairs were purchased because we had purchased a house, and that house had an island, and that island had room to accommodate room for two tall chairs. I’ll also tell you about the little apartment that came before the house, and how our dining options were limited to a tiny two-person table because we couldn’t fit anything else in the space.

The two-person table was replaced with a sturdy farmhouse table made out of actual maple wood in 2004. In the autumn of 2008, I replaced the dining room chairs (two of which were the little brothers of these bad boys, and two of which were, sigh, folding) with four delightfully banged up black, cane-bottomed babies that I’d found in a consignment shop in Nob Hill.

See? Black and ladder-backed and awesome and seating for four.

The dining arrangements were moving up.

But that still left the island chairs.

They languished until last weekend, when, after mucking out the kitchen, doing our taxes, buying a new rug for the living room, doing a donation run to Goodwill, doing a donation run to the library and rejecting a new house in the north valley, we decided that yeah, we couldn’t it off any longer. It was time to do something about Those Chairs.

Fortunately for me, I had three yards of gray Passion Vine from Amy Butler’s Nigella home décor weight line just trashing up my project room, waiting to be turned into anything. Anything at all. ANYTHING.

And the Capt’n had two rattle cans’ worth of black engine enamel just taking up space in the garage.

Do you see where this is going? Amy Butler fabric meets automotive product. Yeah, this is one of my finer moments.

Sand, spray, staple.

Recovering those chairs has meant the world to the kitchen. Now all I have to do is repaint the walls and refinish the cabinets and it’ll be perfect.