I recently purchased a used BOB stroller so that I could jog with Mason during my stroller strides classes as well as on my own. The Orbit Baby stroller we have just isn’t good for jogging or going off-roading. It’s also not great for traveling and with a few upcoming trips this summer we wanted to have a stroller that would travel well. I love our Orbit baby stroller though and so wasn’t willing to part with it and wasn’t wanting to pay full price for another stroller. The Orbit isn’t cheap and either is the BOB. Now please don’t take this as me being a snob but the stroller wasn’t in the best condition. Everything worked which is of course most important but the fabric had some major sun fading and well it really bothered me. I took everything apart and washed everything that had fabric (sun shade, stroller seat, and fabric basket) twice to make sure they were really clean. I had noticed what looked like mold spots in a few areas and wanted to make sure it was completely out of the fabric before I had Mason sit in it. I was kind of hoping that the sun fading wouldn’t look as noticeable after having been washed but that wasn’t the case.
So I decided to give fabric paint a try. I figured what did I have to loose. I wasn’t thrilled with the way it looked in the current condition so what was the worst that could happen? You never really know until you give it a try so I went to my local craft store, Beverly’s, and found some fabric paint for upholstery. The BOB fabric I was trying to darken up was the grey areas because they were fading to a purple color. They didn’t have charcoal grey so I bought the asphalt color. I tested it out in a section that would be easily concealed in case it looked horrible.
Thankfully after I did the spray test I was happy with how it looked so I went ahead and gave all the grey sections a coat of paint, including the seat cushion and foot rest. The sides where the stroller can recline or cinch up I sprayed as well to touch up the small areas where it looked to be weathered. Now with the spray fabric paint there was some definite off spray. I’ll be honest I could have taped off the areas I didn’t want to paint but I was trying to finish this day project while Mason was napping so I cut a few corners I would have otherwise not cut. So to make it not so noticeable I ended up blending in the paint on the blue sections. The blue darkened to more of a navy then cobalt blue but I’m happy with the outcome for one days work.
I would like to apply one more coat to the grey sections to really make sure the fading is not apparent but for now it’s a big improvement from what it looked like when I bought it, wouldn’t you agree?!
