Standing in a junk yard outside a shed in the industrial zone of C-town I awkwardly called out to the person making industrial sounds inside. I had purchased four sixties patio chairs (patio, what a great word); but

before(ish)

they needed some attention. They had an excellent recline and a perfect grid-frame. But they were rusty and the white plastic coating was peeling off like insect skins. The ‘before’ pictures below are not of the actual chairs (I forgot to take a snap in their original form – gah!), but you get the idea. I often buy things from second-hand stores and think to myself that I will just ‘do it up, no problems’. This rarely ends up happening. But there was something about these chairs… I negotiated with the guy in the shed who looked like he stepped out the Mad Max set. He would sandblast the chairs and send them over to his mate to powder coat them (Australian efficiency). Then, for the second time that day, I awkwardly waited outside an industrial shed. This shed was a lot more serious-looking. The powder-coating bloke found it amusing that I wanted to see the colour options: “most people just pick grey … or metallic grey”. I guessed it had been a while since he had powder-coated patio furniture. But he managed to find an old can of powder blue paint being ignored on a shelf: apparently people don’t want powder blue trailers.  I also picked up some powder blue velvet cushion covers from Ikea. Mmm velvet.

details: chairs from second-hand store, sand blasting: $50 each, powder-coating $25 each, Ikea cushion covers $10 each