Instead of a Chinaman Peeing on a Rug, it's a Chihuahua Peeing on a Couch

Painting a Couch

Yeah.  When I tell people this they look at me like I am crazy or stupid or both. Alcohol and boredom yield very peculiar results. I didn’t use fabric paint or anything nor did I look up the proper procedure for painting a fabric couch. I just did it. 

Our current kitchen table is a hand-me-down from my parents from when I was a kid. We each had our own seats where we always sat at every dinner. I now sit where my mom used to sit, which is weird (if you were wondering, we do eat at the kitchen table a lot, just me and David. It’s a good habit to get into, I feel). I painted the legs on the kitchen chairs the same purple as the wall. To kind of jazz the table up a bit since we can’t afford a new one and the table is still in pretty good condition. And while I had the paint out I started looking at the couch. 

It’s a loveseat that was, again, another hand-me-down from my parents. We aren’t too cool for used furniture. If it’s free, it’s me. 

It’s a cheap fabric loveseat that my parents threw upstairs in what people call a “playroom” for their slothful children to destroy in time with their snack food eating and non-stop tv watching (It was 1998 when it and the matching couch were bought and my sister and I were certainly old enough to know how to treat furniture, we were just slobs).  

Christy and I would fight for the couch every Sunday morning.  The first person to get up and get their beverages and snacks for the day won the couch all of Sunday.  The couch laying honor was only given up when one of us actually got up to leave the house for candy or TCBY.

There were some days when Christy would never show up on Sunday. Probably still passed out from the night before in someone’s front yard (What? This actually happened). And I would have the couch all to myself to stretch out on and watch endless TBS.  And there were many a day when the loveseat would go unused, keeping it in pretty good condition. 

David and I took the set with us to our apartment.  The couch was already covered in unidentified stains (don’t want to know) and the cushions had seen better days.  At the apartment is when we also added Stella to the Logan Family.  She was a teeny adorable puppy and potty training was in motion so both pieces of furniture were spotted with Puppy Pee as well. Some parts were actually soaked in pee but we just turned the cushions over. 

When we moved into the house, the couch was retired to the Deer Camp, where all hand-me-down anything go to die. 

The loveseat we kept, and in its years here it has sustained some hell.  It sits in front of uncovered windows and, in the sun, it has faded considerably. My one hanging inside plant that I have yet to kill hangs over it and when I do remember to water it, I tend to over water. The water then drips onto the left arm of the couch. So now we have a faded, water-stained couch spotted with aged Puppy Piss.  It’s dirty and dusty and I have had to resist the urge to burn it for a very long time. 

So the loveseat was going to be thrown away and replaced with something else. 

I finished painting the chair legs and I looked at the half-empty can of paint. Paint that will no doubt be sent to the garage to age and probably thrown out in time. I then looked at this disgusting, festering eyesore of a couch. From the paint, to the couch. And I thought “Why the hell not?”  

The end result was surprising. And I think it is going to hold up for quite some time, as well especially since it doesn’t see a lot of traffic anyway. 

Please ignore the white sheets covering the cushions.  Those will be recovered once I pick out fabric. The white sheets were given to us by our Asian neighbor.  She is a housekeeper at some hotel (she told David which hotel but he has a very hard time understanding what she is saying...and so do I. It takes some concentration).  We think it is a fancy hotel because she tells us (at least we think she does) that if the sheets have any small defect they have to be thrown away. The same goes for towels or rags.  I would never use hotel sheets for actual bedding. I am sure the sheets have been bleached to high hell and are perfectly safe, but they skeeve me out.   She has given us countless sets of sheets so I used them to cover up my grody, embarrassing loveseat.

Many other things have been painted in my time off but that is for another blog for another day.