Adventures in Re-Upholstering

All cleaned up and ready for a good snuggle!

Cross another thing off my bucket list:  upholstering a wing chair and ottoman.  Let's just put aside for a moment, the fact that having this on one's bucket list is pretty wackadoodle and sad ....
 






Good bones, but funky...

I have been successfully avoiding this task for a year now (maybe two).  I found this treasure on Craiglist (oh CL, how much trouble you get me into!) for $60....including the ottoman.  Oh sure, I said to myself, how hard can it be to recover this beauty??!  (at this point I am but a babe in the woods who just fell off a turnip truck)  I tried to avoid it by thinking I could clean the fabric (yeah, not so much)...then I found a cool blog on painting the fabric (but then it would feel rough and still smell funky...maybe even funkier)  then I thought about slipcovering it (still the funky smell problem)...darnit all, I am going to have to tear this beast apart and recover it.  Plus, my dear patient hubby has been giving it the stink eye; from time to time he says slyly (when he wants to rile me up) "so, whatcha gonna do with that old chair in the garage?  donate it?  make it go away?"  I needed to rehab the beastie just as a "See, I told you:  A. I could do it and B. it IS gorgeous, you just couldn't tell because she is wearing an old dowdy dirty outfit."  Yep, the old "she has good bones" argument + my need to finish what I start (at all costs).



$$$ Linen or Drop Cloth?

I was hung up on the fabric problem for at least a year.  On the one hand, this endeavor is going to take some serious yardage...upwards of 8 yards...probably more... and I generally choose crazy expensive fabric to fall in love with.  Even if I clip coupons and compromise, I probably can't get by without spending $200 on fabric.  No way I am slipping that by hubby for my dubious project.  Then, on the other hand, there is a reasonable chance that I would be horrible at upholstering and ruin the fabric in a haze of tears and staples.  Another reason to not start at all!  Until.... I figured out that the fabric paint drop cloths at my local Fred Meyers look SO MUCH LIKE BELGIAN LINEN!!  And they come with about 5 yards of fabric (not normal 54" width, but close enough) for $14!  Who knew!?

Bought two, washed them and dried them up (to remove any sizing and to shrink them)...they ironed beautifully (however, they are most definitely not 100% cotton, because there was some melting at the highest temp on the iron...at least they will be durable and more washable!)

After spending one whole week taking the chair and the ottoman apart---can I tell you how many staples I pulled with my flathead screwdriver, needle-nose pliers and hammer (when the going got tough)?  About eleven thousandy million!  The chair wasn't heavy because of the wood--it was mostly metal staples!!!  Row after row of the vile things.  Like peeling an onion of pain and manicure mangling---and then one whole week putting them back together (with a fair amount of sewing involved because of cushions, single piping and double piping)....oh yeah, I white-washed the wood...

Voila, my chair and ottoman have been up-cycled!  I decided to get a little fancy and do an Ikat stencil print on the outside (prior to stapling) in white mixed with ivory latex paint.  It was either that or a large stripe down the center (which I could always do later, if the mood strikes).  Lucky for me that the insides of the chair (the webbing, the springs, the wadding, the foam cushions) were in perfectly good shape (all the funk was on the outside) and needed only to have a fresh layer of padding to fluff it up.....see honey, there were no mice living in it, after all!

It all turned out pretty darned good!   And now it is a week later and my hands have mostly healed up.  I recommend two things:  when you have a *professional* re-upholster your old smelly chair and the bill is way higher than you thought it should be....just pay the poor guy and smile.  Secondly, if a chair starts flirting with you on CL and says it only needs a little help, don't let it anywhere near your bucket list. 

Unless you have a solid 40-hour week to devote to the mad task.  And you are a wackadoodle like me.