A Chair Challenge

This weekend in Salt Lake City is the Home Show at the Expo Center and we are lucky enough to be be a part of a fun “Chair Challenge” that they have going on up there!

Here’s the deal:

6 local bloggers were each given a chair to transform using Rust-oleum paint and Vern Yip’s new home decor fabric.

This was our chair:

(Which I picked up in the pickle mobile on a snowy afternoon just before Christmas.)

Once we had the chair I took off the seat and sent it to Elizabeth’s house with the fabric.

From there she recovered the cushion, made a cable cord basket, and a doll dress.

(And I am told she will share the basket tutorial soon.)

Meanwhile I spray painted the chair in my frozen driveway and then binge watched an entire Netflix series while cross stitching a rose on the wicker chair backing.

Yesterday we met at a gas station (we are classy like that) and headed up to the Expo Center to reassemble and deliver the chair.  But the time we picked to travel happened to be during a snow storm and the roads weren’t plowed…it was slippery and scary…and at one point we discovered that we were driving down the side walk…but we arrived safely and headed in to assemble the chair.

I was prepared for the assembly process…I even brought my husbands power drill to make quick work of it.

Unfortunately after the extra fabric and padding had been added to the cushion the screws were no longer long enough to work.  Try as we might we couldn’t make them fit…we turned the chair, squished the cushion, crawled around on the floor…but to no avail.  The only success we had was in entertaining the group of workers who were eating their lunch and enjoying a live episode of I Love Lucy playing out right in front of their bench.

Finally we assembled our chair and accessories, dropped them off and left the building.

We returned again to the Expo Center this morning at 5:45….to be on a short new segment at 6:15…it was dark and early and cold, dang cold.  Negative 5 degrees cold and we were bundled up like we were traveling to the Arctic Tundra.  It was only two minutes before going on the news that we peeled off our coats only to discover that we were both wearing the same shirt.

The news segment over we hustled home to get our kids off to school and our husbands off to work.  (And to try to warm ourselves back up…which hasn’t happened yet.)

However, we have had a lot of fun and the Home Show opens today and runs through Sunday.

If you are local and want to go you can buy tickets on line and if you use the code SIMPLESIMON you can get a discount.

And while you are up there stop by the chair challenge booth and vote for your favorite chair transformation! There are some really clever chairs…and then ours is there as well….it is easy to spot….just look for the chair that is, what we are calling, “Grandma Chic”.  (Or as we explained to Casey (the news guy) what Miss Halversham’s cabin chairs would look like 🙂  )