We all have it (or had it)…the gold and maroon furniture. Though these colors still can have a place in our homes, the trend tends to be towards colors and textures that are more natural looking, in subtle tones such as the muted tans, creams and blues. If you find yourself painting your rooms with the endless variations of beige and grays, you might find that these gold and maroon furniture pieces don’t marry well with them. But you don’t have to run out and get new furniture as long as the pieces are structurally sound and comfortable.

Consider the parson chair (those armless side chairs). For a small understated piece of furniture, they are a great way to anchor the end of a table, finish off a corner of a dining room or bedroom, or just sit in an entry way with a small table and lamp ready to catch your belonging when you come home.

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My client brought these very loved parson chairs that were the purr-fect height for her table. Unfortunately, the cats loved them too, using the skirts as their purr-sonal scratching post (OK, enough with the puns). I really couldn’t wait to see the complete transformation new fabric would make on these chairs.

She found her fabric at HomeGoods, of all places. I can tell you, I roam HomeGoods a couple times a month and have never found fabric, but at this particular time and place, she happened upon fabric. Luckily she found enough as there would be some major pattern matching to do to do this fabric and chairs justice.

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Knowing that my client wanted to be able to wash the final slipcovers as her cats would likely continue to sleep on the chairs, I pretested a sample piece of the fabric to see how it would wash. I shrank a bit but washed beautifully. After washing all of the fabric and cutting off the existing skirt, I proceeded to make the very tailored, perfectly matched, skirted slipcovers. Crisp, fresh and in a beautiful color pallet that will serve her well for today’s color schemes.

Remember, just because you bought a piece of furniture for a specific space a year or even years ago, it doesn’t have to live there forever or have the same look. Maybe it is time to re-imagine a new space for it with some new clothes.

Denise