A $6 Trash To Treasure Project

About a month ago, my best friend ran a half marathon.  It was early in the morning, and I stumbled out of bed to go and cheer her on.  It was the least I could do – here, she’s running 13 point something miles in serious heat.  I planned to cheer for her in a few spots along the course and at the last spot, there just so happened to be some chairs on the side of the road, with a “free” sign on them.  (picture me here, slapping my hands and rubbing them together.)  I was feeling a good trash to treasure project coming on.

In the car they went, windows down and a leg hanging out on either side.  On the ride home, I thought of all the possibilities I could do with these chairs, including fixing them up and giving them to my parents. That idea didn’t last too long because I really wanted to create a spot on our back porch were these chairs could live, and I could gaze out in to our backyard and get lost in thought.

Knowing that we had quite a bit of scrap wood in our garage, I set out to make a table where I could pull up and enjoy the scenery.  I measured the length that I wanted for the scrap table and cut the boards with my circular saw.  I cut three boards, six feet long, and I cut two pieces of wood 18 inches to hold the three long boards together.

I glued and screwed the wood to the boards to secure.  I beat the top with a metal chain to distress a bit, then stained the top with walnut stain.

As luck would have it, I had scrap plywood to cut the base of the seats for the chairs, and I had a large piece of two inch foam hanging around too, natch.  I found the fabric at Hobby Lobby and using my 40% off downloadable coupon, I bought the fabric for $6, and I upholstered the cushions, securing the fabric with a staple gun.

Now, my table needed legs.  Again, never throwing out good wood, I found some sign posts in the barn.  I screwed the legs on a diagonal to the bottom side of the table.  Only using two legs, I secured the table to the porch railing with “L” brackets.  I got out my paint brush and painted the legs white – walnut stain and white paint is my favorite combo lately, and the look blends perfectly on our back porch.

Finishing just in time for happy hour, I pulled up a trash to treasure chair and leaned on my scrap wood table, enjoying every sip of my glass of wine.

A special thank you to my sweet Melissa for running that half marathon, because if she hadn’t, I wouldn’t have stumbled upon those chairs.  ; )