Recycled Chair Project

Rags

• Reincarnate rags, old t-shirts, clothes that have been outgrown and old towels into a comfortable, unusual chair that you make in a couple of hours. Fold material into uniformly sized and shaped pieces to stack, insert two pieces of flexible tubing to shape the chair back, and tie sections with rope or shipping straps into a comfortable chair form. If you don't have enough t-shirts or old towels for your chair, scour garage sales, flea markets and thrift shops for inexpensive extras to complete your chair.

Paint

• Old wooden chairs and paint are the main items in a simple recycled chair project. Paint flea market or curbside wooden chair finds to breathe new life and style into them. Check and tighten all joints, sand scratches and rough edges, and replace worn or missing chair leg bottoms. Use bright, bold single colors or two or three complementary colors. Try a color wash or scratching painted surfaces with a metal scrubber to create a weathered or antiqued look. Use decals or stencils on chair backs and seats for a romantic look.

Recover

• Repair old, broken or worn chairs with new seat bottoms or swaths of fabric. Gather a screwdriver, scissors, staple gun or upholstery tacks, chair padding and fabric, and remove the seat from an old chair. Pull off the old fabric, add padding and cut new fabric to cover the seat, and tack it onto the seat bottom with staples or tacks. Add a bottom cover cut out of stiff cardboard or leather if desired. Add a matching seat back cover for a more formal look. Use beautiful fabric or clean, used flat sheets to cover padded armchairs. Cover the chair and hold the fabric in place with fabric-covered elastic. Or, turn the worn upholstered chair upside down and remove fabric staples and tacks carefully, keeping the padding in place, and recover with new fabric along the lines of the upholstery.

Plastic

• Recycle plastic lawn chairs in creative ways. Take two sun faded, scuffed plastic chairs, stack them together and wrap rope around the arms and legs for a decorative and structurally strengthening makeover. Use colorful nylon rope or traditional fiber rope for different styles.