New Year, New Chairs

In case you didn't know, I entertain quite a bit. I use the term entertain loosely - it's more like I get bored and invite people over at the last minute for water and microwave popcorn. But still... I also throw parties often - pretty much for any holiday. I don't think I've held an arbor day party yet, but maybe this is the year?

Point being, I have people over a lot and need chairs. Of course I have the sofa, the Target chair and the 2 parson chairs we got from TJMaxx, but for watching movies and talking I wanted some more comfortable options. I searched high and low for affordable chairs and I tell you what, they are so hard to find. I finally turned to Ikea and found exactly what I was looking for - the Jennylund chair in white. The price point was great and the look was just what I was imagining. Only problem? Ikea is 4 1/2 hours away from me. I didn't want to make that long trip, but I also didn't want to pay the outrageous Ikea shipping prices.

What did I do? There is a couple here in my town that makes trips to Ikea every few weeks. You can place orders through their site and they will bring back your Ikea items for a small fee. The fee was totally reasonable and we got our chairs within 4 days of ordering them. What more could I ask for? We put the chairs together and put the covers on to see what they looked like.

Once we put the cover on, I knew that it was too white. It was so stark white and really stuck out like a sore thumb next to our couch, which is a more natural off-white color. Did I send the chairs back? Nope! I figured this would happen and I had a plan.

Tea staining.

I had seen a post on Young House Love a while back about tea staining pillow covers and wondered if it could be done for bigger pieces. I posted a comment on the post asking if they thought it might work for our chair covers and Sherry responded positively. With that vote of confidence, I gave it a go!

I followed the directions on Young House Love pretty closely, but I had to stain the slipcovers in the bathtub since they were too large to fit in a pot on the stove. The first time I did the process I used 12 tea bags and they covers still were too white so I had to give them another tea bath. This time I used 20 tea bags (I was not messing around!).

Yep, those wooden spoons were very helpful at pushing down the slipcovers in that searing hot water.

After the second time, the covers were looking much better! I threw them into the washer on cold and hung them up to dry. Once they were a little damp, I put them back on the chairs and they looked awesome! I took some pictures with my old camera, but it didn't do the chairs justice. After I got my new camera for Christmas I knew I had to take some more pictures!

Here are the new chairs (with their new color)!

It's hard to tell the new color from pictures, but they are a creamy, off-white color. They aren't a perfect match to the sofa, but I'm OK with that. I'm just happy that they don't clash with the sofa like they did before.

Yes, I finally took down the birthday banner. About 3 hours before our New Years Eve party on Saturday. =)

And yes, that is my ironing board in the background. I was still working on my costume when I took these pictures.

I am definitely digging these new chairs and they are so comfortable. It's nice to have people over to watch movies and not have to make people sit on the floor.

Yes, I probably did take too many pictures, but the excitement over having a new camera made me do it.

This next picture, as bad as it is, shows the new color as it looks in real-life the best.

Now that I have new chairs, I have more things I want to do to the living room at some point. I want to paint the legs darker because our sofa legs are darker and I just think the chairs would look better to me if the legs were darker. I also want to get a bigger rug for the living room, but we will see what happens on down the line.