Before

   Upon moving into her new rental space, my daughter found that turning a house into a home takes a considerable amount of work. As she was moving into her house she spotted some kitchen chairs on the side of the road and having a very small furniture budget and knowing potential, she picked them up. These four little chairs had seen better days, wooden, with an outdated finish, and hideous, worn, green plaid upholstery, they had been left for dead. The following weekend she started the process of bringing these chairs back to life. With some decorating-mother tips, she was able to do just that. We went online and found some sale fabric with a cute, hip design. For $30 she had enough fabric to reupholster the chairs herself. 

Fabric from Greenhouse Fabrics

   With a fabric sample in hand she ran out to the local hardware store and quickly snatched up an entire inventory’s worth of light blue spray paint, the perfect match to the accent color in the pattern we had chosen. Armed with a spray can and a face mask, she worked diligently in the backyard on a Saturday afternoon and turned the chairs from pine-y brown into a bright and fun aqua. With step one a success, she took her fabric, staple gun, and new batting and set out to recover her chairs with our new fabric choice. Two busy days later, she had her end result: a set of chairs that matched her home and personality while providing plenty of space for her friends to sit while chatting and playing ping pong on the back porch.

After

    Sometimes the answer to "should I leave that in the garbage" is an easy and obvious "yes", and sometimes it takes some discernment. My advice, if you have a place for it, you have the skills to bring it back to life, and you have the time, then grab that "trash" in a hot second. But if you don't answer yes to all of these, it really is garbage so leave it for the trash collector.