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Ahhh!!! The joyous liberty to have worn out inexpensive furniture. I feel so sorry for all of you with high-end couches and chairs. The heavy burden you must feel to care for your vases, silver, and china. 🙂 Items that in my house would soon come to a sad and bitter end, which is why our house is full of cheap and relatively pet-friendly home decor.

The culprits of the destruction in our home are varied and many, as there are eight of us to choose from, but the main assailants for today’s project are theses three.

Meet culprit number one. For the purposes of this post and to protect the innocent we will refer to her as “Daredevil.” Here she is, for example, mistakenly thinking she can leisurely bathe herself on one of the Dogzillas beds.

Culprit number Two. Aka “Miss Mayhem.” Presumably no other explanation is needed.

And culprit number three. This completely lawless creature, one of the newest additions to our home, has yet to receive an alias. So I will dub her “Whirling Dervish.”

The victims of their crimes are our living room chairs. And to be completely honest, the hubby has also done some wear and tear to one of the chairs. Which doesn’t exempt the other four of us from destructive behavior, we just prefer the couch. 🙂

This story actually begins 10 years ago. When the chairs looked like this and we had two well-behaved dogs.

For many years the chairs survived in their native state. But then four years ago, after suffering from an ever-shrinking household, the hubby and I made some additions to our family in the form of two cats and two dogs. Shortly after their arrival, the cats made known their preferred scratching post(s). And soon, this was the appearance of our living room chairs.

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Of course, something had to be done, and the obvious answer was to cover the chairs with pickle-juice-glue and twine. Right? Well, of course. I mean clearly, that was the only conclusion.

You might be surprised at how they turned out. And if you are wacky enough to want to know more about this first chair repair, you can read all about it here.

Please, don’t be alarmed, this link will take you to my original blog. It is still alive and well. I just put all my new content on this site.

But onward. The faux wicker finish survived for several years and only needed an occasional touch up of glue. Then, a little over a year ago, we added 2 more pups to our household. So, as the saying goes, time and pet claws turn all things back to dust, and recently the chairs passed the point of no return.

Happily, like so many of my projects, these chairs have allowed me to try, yet again, something crazy and new. With no possible way to make them look any worse, I have the freedom to test out my latest silly experiment.

Step 1 – Strip off old finish and clean up excess dust and glue.

Step 2 – Tear brown packing paper into small pieces and use Mod Podge to attach the paper to the chair.

Of course there were periodic inspections along the way.

Step 3 – Once Mod Podge is dry use a brown gel pen or permanent marker to re-draw the stitch lines.

Step 4 – This is where the magic happens well at least in my opinion. I used my fingers to apply a layer of shoe polish to the paper giving it a faux leather look.

Step 5 – Once the shoe polish has set for a bit, the last step is to seal it with another thin coat of mod podge. I let mine sit overnight.

I know what you are thinking. “What a stupid and non-durable way to refinish your chairs.” You may be right, but as I said, I like to experiment, and I can only report that the finish didn’t tear the first time that Miss Mayhem jumped on it. And I am not worried anyway because I have a lot more packing paper. 🙂

You can find more details in the video below.

I think they look much better, but little Miss Mayhem doesn’t care what finish is on the chairs as long as we all remember one of them belongs to her.

Ms. Dervish gets steal the spot every now and again.

And Daredevil, well she has snubbed the chairs ever since they lost their cat scratcher finish.

Happy Upcycling,

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