This Vintage Chair Makeover Transforms Into A Showstopping Floral Display

Old wooden chairs often boast varied and intricate design details that make them a wonderful addition to your home, particularly if you're going for an eclectic, vintage, or boho-infused style. Their solid construction and craftsmanship can add much more character and variation than many of the cookie-cutter chairs and dining sets of today's retailers. Unfortunately, this vintage furniture may not always be in the best shape, particularly after decades of use, when their materials and construction can start to break down. If an old piece you love has seen better days, there are many beautiful crafty ways to repurpose a chair for rustic decor, including an ingenious DIY that turns an ordinary caning-covered chair into a stylish floral arrangement with a lot of cottage-style flair.

If you don't have an old chair lingering at home, you can often find them for a steal at thrift stores and flea markets, especially chairs with existing cosmetic or structural damage. The best chairs for the simple DIY thrift flip have open seats with panels of wicker, caning, or mesh that allow you to add artificial flower picks easily. This project would also work with a metal chair or a woven wicker one with large enough gaps to poke flowers through. 

Unlike similar projects that use an old chair to create a chic planter for your garden, this arrangement requires no complicated measuring or special tools to create. If you have a chair that's missing the original seat material, you can easily replace it by using a piece of woven material, like rolled cane webbing, over the opening. Or add some wire mesh or chicken wire covered with moss for a rustic farmhouse look.

Begin decorating by poking the stems of your choice of faux flowers and greenery through the mesh of the perforated material, fully covering the underlying mesh. A standard seat can accommodate many bunches, but how many you need depends on how much of the seat you intend to cover. Continue adding until you reach the desired fullness. Use the remaining portion of the chair's seat to add other decorative elements, like word art signs, statues, lanterns, books, or baskets. If it will encounter moisture, you may want to add a sealant to the chair and use flowers that are amenable to outdoor conditions.

Set the chair on your porch, in a corner, or in the garden. If the chair also has a perforated material on the back, you could also add flowers or vines wound through the chair to stay in place. Or hang the chair on the wall with L-brackets to create a cute floral shelf arrangement. Because you create the arrangement without adhesive, you can also change the flowers seasonally or as desired. Make a springtime chair with a stone rabbit or a Christmas arrangement with a wooden sled filled with ornaments. Or create a spooky fall version with black flowers and skulls or faux mums and pumpkins.