Doing it yourself is so easy! It only takes one million extremely complicated steps.
1. Look at your dining room. Gaze in ambivalence at your four non-matching, VERY worn out chairs.
2. Realize that you're a 27-year-old grown woman who's been married for nearly 2 years and it's time to get matching dining room chairs.
3. Meet a friend and go to an estate sale.
4. Try not to think about the fact that all this furniture used to belong to someone who died recently.
5. Do not look at the mug that says "World's Best Grandpa," and do NOT think about how sad it is that that mug is on the shelf.
6. Stumble upon a set of chairs that have good bones.
7. Ask your friend what she thinks.
8. Text your mom to get her opinion.
9. Text your husband to get HIS opinion.
10. Congratulate yourself on being awesome at choosing husbands when his response is, "Get what you want! You're the boss!"
11. Note with glee that all four chairs are only $80.
12. Buy chairs.
13. Go to brunch and celebrate.
13. Come back the next day with husband and dog to pick up said chairs.
14. Make sure the chairs, which are not high quality, scratch the paint off your husband's Jeep (his most prized possession). It's important to add a little tension to the scenario, because otherwise it's just TOO EASY!
15. Find a tutorial online that started with similar chairs to yours and ended up looking like you want them.
16. Compile a list of supplies and ask your husband to drive you to Lowe's.
17. Convince your husband that you promise not to act up in Lowe's this time - you won't hide behind the palettes or use dowels as swords or climb the ladders and sing his name loudly when you're at the top.
18. Keep your promise (mostly).
19. Locate all your supplies, then drive to the fabric store.
20. Avoid the cute boy scouts on the way in, because they want to sell you things you don't need and you're powerless against a cute, chubby little boy scout.
21. Laugh to yourself as you pass a family where the smallest boy is suggesting a Finding Nemo print for his mom's new couch.
22. Gasp in horror at how expensive all the foam you need to re-cover the cushions and back of the chairs is going to be.
23. Ignore that the brooding teenage guy checking you out hasn't showered today (or anytime this year) and smile politely as he tells you that you have to get your foam pre-cut in order to pay for it.
24. Watch as your husband returns the foam to where it belongs and decides that the foam part can wait until another day.
25. Arrive home. Pack a lunch for your husband so he can go fly fishing.
26. Sit on your front porch, drink a beer, and seriously consider setting the chairs on fire.
27. Locate sandpaper. Start sanding the paint away. Sand until it hurts. Sand until you don't have fingerprints left.
28. Remember that your friend Wes gave your husband a palm sander as a wedding gift.
29. Go to your basement. Get bitten by a rat (or probably just an ant, but it felt like a rat). Find the sander.
30. Google "How do you use a palm sander?" and watch the tutorial.
31. Turn the sander on. Promptly sand a chunk off of one of the chair legs. And make sure it's a front leg, too - not a back leg where no one will notice.
32. Call your father in law to make him talk you through sanding stuff.
33. Decide you can TOTALLY DO THIS and you will not be defeated be an MFing power tool.
34. Sand two chairs completely.
35. Try to remove the seat cushions from the chair frame with a screwdriver. Fail. Strip the screws to make sure they're REALLY hard to get out.
36. Remember that your husband has a drill somewhere. Find it. Turn it on.
37. Shove one of the drill bits into the drill head thing and start stabbing at the screw to see if that's how it works.
38. Google "How the hell do you use an electric drill??????"
39. Figure it out and remove all but two of the screws.
40. Take a selfie to send to your father in law who can't believe you're doing this project.
41. Find the varnish and a sponge paintbrush.
42. Having not learned anything from the "start with the back legs" mistake of just a few minutes ago, start by painting the front legs. Badly.
43. Hope your neighbors aren't weirded out that you're binge watching Sex and the City while doing this. Try to turn the volume down anytime Samantha is on screen. Slime your computer with varnish.
44. Since you've sunk 4 hours into this project, welcome your husband back home from his fishing trip.
45. Watch in delight as he successfully removes the stripped screws by using a rubber band as leverage.
46. Apologize to your EXTREMELY bored dog, who won't even look at you because of how neglected he's been all day.
47. Congratulate yourself on having not permanently damaged yourself, the dog, or the chairs.
48. Congratulate yourself on having learned how to use power tools all on your own.
49. Leave the chairs on the porch, untouched, for the rest of the weekend.
50. Look at your life. Look at your choices. Hope that the chairs get eaten by bears.