the rescued and painted chair

There are a lot of reasons why I am so fond of second-hand things. It's cheap, it's the best option for the environment, you don't stimulate child-labour or bad working conditions by buying it, and most importantly: finding a great second-hand item is adventurous: it's like treasure-hunting.

And I happen to love the adventure of treasure-hunting :)

So when I found a little school-chair on the side of the road one day, it really felt like I had found a rare treasure. It was the kind of chair that many of us will probably know from our first years in primary school:

The only thing was that it didn't really look like that: it was sticker-ridden, dirty and scratched. But I still really liked it, plus I had found it for free, and so I took it home with me. While I peeled away all the layers of stickers and dirt, I was wondering what the history of this chair could have been. How many children had sat on it? What had they been doing? Did it once belong to a school? Why had someone decided to throw it away?

After I had cleaned it, it stood in our home for several months. I loved the industrial look of it. Thing is: I'm quite tall, and so is Joost. And we didn't quite fit into the chair. So when one of our nieces had her 3th birthday, and asked for a chair, I immediately thought of upcycling this little chair!

Since she wanted something colourfull for her room, and likes animals, I decided to paint it.
I cleaned and sanded the chair, and painted it in two layers of black, water-based paint. After that I carefully sketched an illustration on it with pencil, inspired by some illustrations of bears that I had found online.

I coated it to make sure the paint would last, and made a cushion for it using a yellow piece of felt, a pink piece of fabric and some stuffing.  I think Evie liked her new chair! She was veeeery shy on her birthday party, overwhelmed by all the guests ( I understand that feeling)  :)