The Crying Chair Project

Last fall, a dear friend of mine lost her son to an accidental overdose of a prescription drug. As you can imagine, she is overwhelmed with grief daily. Long after the sympathy cards, phone calls and visits have ceased, the loneliness consumes the heart and mind.

I gifted this crying chair to my friend on her birthday. It's a quiet place where she can kneel and let her tears water the soil of her buried grief. It was a labor of love and the pictures below show the progress.

I started with a $5 chair purchased at Goodwill and stripped off the tattered caning. Assorted mosaic pieces were used to cover the caning holes. Although, time consuming, the end result was quite stunning (at least I think so).

I lightly sanded the chair before applying a base coat of spray paint. My plan was to spray paint all the different colors, but that proved to be a bad idea. There is no way to control the direction of the spray. I resorted to hand brushing and it worked well.


 

As you can see (right), the results from the spray paint idea failed miserably. It was a live and learn experience.

Elmer's All-Purpose glue was used to secure the mosaic pieces to the chair. Natural color grout was then applied according the the direction provided on the container. I purchased premixed craft grout online at Dick Blick's. A coat of Krylon Brand clear coat was sprayed over the tiles to help protect them from the elements.

Mosaic tiles pieces were purchased online from Oriental Trading. They offer many different color assortments and reasonable prices.

The crying chair and poem were attached to the finished chair and secretly left on my friend's deck porch. The time and energy put into this project was worth it.