A found treasure gets new life

I finally got caught up with posting all my old projects, and now I can start working on my more recent ones.  These were all projects I was working on at the same time, so they took longer than normal...multi-tasking fail!

This Windsor Dining Chair is unlike one I have ever seen before. It's definitely got a design that I couldn't describe to google, but its reminiscent of a serpentine design so thats what I decided to call it. There is a short backstory to this which I've decided to share with y'all, not just because it's funny how we came along this piece, but it's definitely a high-5 to an old cliche about one man's trash.

My husband was going on a ruck with his buddies on Camp Bullis, a huge piece of land where many military units conduct their training. One part of the base is segregated for residential living, and I'm taking a wild guess in saying this is where this chair came from. Anyway, my husband and his friends came across this chair, literally in the middle of nowhere.

We don't know how long it had been out there, who left it or even why they left it. This chair was sturdy and didn't seem to have any damage or broken pieces. So the question now was, "how to get it home?" They were 5 miles into this 18 mile ruck, so they did they only thing they could do. 

18 miles later, my husband was bruised and in pain from the chair hitting the back of his legs for hours. So if the owner of this chair is reading this blog, you got a great deal for the hours put into this!

A few weeks later, a few coats of paint and some distressing and stain really transformed this lost treasure. 

I used "Blue Slate" by the Fat Paint Company. I wanted this to be an accent piece so this color was great for literally any room in the house. I love Fat Paint because it is so smooth, and super easy to distress. The color palette is so fun and bright, but it doesn't over-do it either. Definitely one of my top 5 go-to paints. 

I wanted to highlight the "serpentine" design so I used General Finishes Java Gel to add some dimension. I used a couple coats of Minwax Polycrylic to seal.

This was my first time playing with textures, patterns, and colors in staging. I didn't realize until after how much the diamond or triangle is tied into what I picked. Overall, I very happy that I could give this discarded chair a new life!