seat belt web seating

What do you do when you find 4 good, quality chairs at a yard sale for a buck each, with no seats? That's the question my daughter-in-law posed to me. And I took on the challenge ~ first by checking out all the endless possibilities on Pinterest. I had already pinned a few ideas on my DIY board, but because these were going to be used for patio dining, I opted for the webbed seats found HERE. But then I was reminded of those painful, brittle webbed lawn chairs from my youth. You know, from too much sun exposure. And well, we live in Phoenix.
Anyway, I got the OK from Nicole to go ahead and check out the various webbing available ~ my first stop ~ Tempe SAS. Love that place. I was immediately drawn to the colorful rolls of soft, supple seat belt webbing. But the cost per yard to weave each chair would come to around $10.00 a chair. Then a gal at SAS told me that maybe Tempe Sales had the retro lawn chair webbing, that I was avoiding. But I went anyway.

Well, much to my surprise, as I entered the store there were these stacks of seat belt webbing in humungous rolls for $20.00. That's right ~ soft, supple, genuine, authentic seat belt webbing for $20.00 a roll. And just so you know, I barely made a dent in that roll doing these 4 chairs!

Because the design wasn't square, I couldn't do a tight weave, but still got the results I had hoped for ~ strong, durable and very comfortable. I actually didn't tackle the last two till they had used the first two chairs for quite some time. Thankfully, they are holding up beautifully.

This was definitely a two-person job. While I pulled and turned under the edges, my husband stapled like a madman. Very labor intensive. We got sorta testy with each other at times.

In fact, we found watching the movie Frequency while doing the last two chairs made a huge difference. A welcome distraction.

We found the outer rib cording (enlarged below) at Tempe Sales. We knew we needed something to hide the sharp, hot (from the sun) staples. Upholstery nail heads wouldn't work in the Arizona heat, nor did they fit the casual design of outdoor dining. So the cording proved perfect. The application, not so much. Very tedious work. You have to quickly spread open the ribbing mere moments before it's being stapled and hope you got your fingers out of the way in time. But as you can see, well worth the wear and tear of said fingers and hands.

And like I said, we barely made a dent in that huge roll, so I'm thinking each chair cost a cool 3 dollars each. And best of all, Shawn & Nicole love them! Oh and I found that Ikea outdoor coffee table at a yard sale for a dollar. Sanded down the top and applied several coats of outdoor poly finish. Perfect for drinks and appetizers... or sippy cups and snacks.

You can check out more creative transformations ~

TRANSFORMATION THURSDAY
SHOW AND TELL FRIDAY
FEATURE FRIDAY FREE-FOR-ALL
FRIDAY'S FAVORITE PIN
FEATHERED NEST FRIDAY