The dumpster at my school is a magical place

I have no idea why this is, but the folks at my school tend to throw away a LOT of furniture.  I see chairs, bulletin boards, tables, and other classroom supplies tossed in the dumpster ALL the time.  It feels so sad to me, because a lot of these things that are tossed in the trash are actually just fine, they're just in need of some love and creativity.  So, one day when I was walking home I spotted this chair in the dumpster that looked SO COOL.  Definitely old and outdated, but the basic structure of it seemed perfect.  I texted Jon a picture, and he agreed that it was awesome.  When he wheeled it in our house, it felt like he had brought home flowers...ha!  You can see our engagement chairs in this pic too...I think I have a love language ; )

Isn't it cool?  Totally beat up, but SO worth rescuing.  There was absolutely nothing wrong with the wheels or frame, just the foam and upholstery.

We still have foam left over from when Jon reupholstered our navy chairs, so I knew I could use that to fix the arm in a minute.

First, I took apart the whole entire chair to clean it and remove the old upholstery.

I spray painted the chair frame an enamel gray that we had left over from another project, which made it feel fresh and clean and new.  Then, a couple of nights later, I went to Joann's to look for fabric.  Oh my word, the CHOICES.

I LOVE the print on the right.  It's navy on burlap...how awesome is that?!  I was about to buy the whole bolt : )  But then I thought that burlap might look pretty but not actually be that comfortable to sit on.  I'm still trying to think of reasons why we need this fabric!  The fabric on the left was a second runner up, but it was pretty expensive per yard even with a coupon.  Bummer.  I brought it to the cutting counter and wandered around the store one last time to see if there were any better options.  I stumbled upon a hidden little aisle that had thick cotton fabric for half of the price of the blue moroccan print (with a 40% off sale on top of that)...and in a cute ikat print instead.  Here is the chair in process...

Pretty fun, huh?  The spray paint we already had, and the chair was free from a dumpster, so I only paid $5.99 for the fabric.  I still need to finish the seat, but you can pretty much get an idea of what it will look like : ) It's so funny how experimenting with reupholstering furniture makes you look at things differently...you see the potential in things in a new way.  Just for comparison, look at how far this chair came!

Oh!  And all I did to fix the arm was hot glue on a patch of foam and cover it with fabric.  It only took about a minute!

So, the moral of the story is, go dumpster.  Seriously.  You can find some GEMS : )