The Ugliest Chairs. Ever.

No joke.  The visionary Hen spotted these beauties last fall at an estate sale and I have to admit, I wasn’t a fan in the least.  Usually I can easily make the distinction between garbage and treasure, but I was fooled big time by these. The fabric was so old that even sitting on them would cause them to tear.

And just to prove who the real decision maker is (she’ll wholeheartedly debate this with me later, I know it), we’ve had these pair of winners sitting in our basement for nearly 6 months before I couldn’t take it anymore.  The ultimatum? We either shape up these bad boys up or ship them out.  The only real problem to this whole project wasn’t necessarily desire, but rather lack of ability.  We’d never reupholstered anything before.

But the jist of the idea seemed easy enough.  Starting with the first chair, we carefully took out the staples and trim holding the largest swaths of fabric – making sure to keep the strips of torn fabric together wherever possible since our salvaged pieces would serve as the template for the new fabric.  Once again we failed miserably to document the whole procedure, but take it from me it wasn’t pretty.  The ground was littered with bent staples and fabric dust.

To help keep track of which piece went where on the chair, with a felt tipped pen I wrote down a number on each piece of fabric we had removed, putting the same number on the corresponding piece of the chair we had yet to dismantle.  We also gently removed all the fluffy innards and placed them out of reach of the 3 year old – to be used in the newly covered version.

We estimated about 3 yards of fabric per chair, but got 7 total yards, just to be sure.  Wanting something a little funky, we settled on a some zebra print, something that my mother hasn’t quite gotten over.  Part of the reason for our choice was that, just like camouflaged animals, we’d more easily be able to hide any mistakes of our maiden re-upholstery voyage.  This particular fabric was helpful in that it really didn’t matter which direction we placed it, it would still look good.

With our cutouts from the now destroyed chair, we laid them on the new zebra print which had been folded over to match the first piece.  This allowed us to cut out two sets with only the one pattern.  We were careful to help make sure that the back and seat of the chair were aligned similarly, so that they would appear almost seamless when reassembled.

The now naked chair sat in the corner – seemingly scared for what these amateurs would be doing to it next.  Having experienced a modest level of success on the fireplace, we concluded that we owed it a good sanding before proceeding to the priming stage.  Out came the trusty 100 grain sandpaper, and although the surface area was much less then on the faux fireplace, the curved nature of the wood made it much more difficult.

Having learned something from the last painting job, we actually purchased primer from a real store, at full price no less.  I think you’ll fail to see the real significance in what was just said unless you know us well.  It’s something of an irregular occurrence around here to pay full price since most of what we use is either on some sort of bargain deal.  But nevertheless, we knew we needed something better than automobile primer for this job, and Zinsser water-based white primer would do just fine.

After a quick spray of primer, Whitney decided she wanted to test out using watered-down cream paint to get a glossy smooth finish.  What resulted was nice, but not worth the outcome given the amount of time it took to do (avoiding those little paint dribbles).  As if trying one effect wasn’t quite good enough, she then took to using a small bit of furniture stain over the top of the now painted wood, trying to give it an aged, not too creamy white look.  Working quickly with one hand applying, and the other removing she covered the entire piece before allowing it to dry and topping it off with our clear water-based polyurethane.

Oh, if only the assembly of the fabric were as easy as the painting turned out to be. We decided to start with the seat, since that was the first thing we had removed on the chair – not to mention I had put that little “1” on it, so it was somewhat obligatory. Basically, here were the steps:

1- Taking the old piping we had saved from certain destruction, we wrapped it with scraps of the zebra fabric.  Once again, due to the fabric we had selected, it really didn’t matter which direction the stripes were running.

2- We stitched the three front sides of the seat together making a long “banner” that would run just above the legs.

3-Sandwiching the piping between the seat of the chair and the now stitched together sides of the chair (“pretty sides” facing in for all those that are completely lost at this point)  we sewed the seat in the same places the previous fabric had been.

This completed the entire lower half of the chair.  Not too difficult right? From that point it was just replacing the removed fluff and pulling the newly constructed seat on top.  Using a pneumatic staple gun with 5/8 staples we then carefully pulled the fabric taunt and stapled it to the bottom of the chairs.  We were careful to make sure we didn’t pull too hard maintaining the center of the seat in one place.

We then re-stapled the same piping (now recovered) to the bottom front of the chair, letting it peak just from under the chair.At this point we stopped – for days.  We had hit a roadblock of sorts and lacked the willpower to figure how to get through the next part.  You see, the back of the chair was not just pleated, but actually sewn into the potato sack backing of the chair, and included covered buttons as well.  After debating around different ideas which included taking it to a professional upholster, we decided to plow through step by step:

1- Taking the fabric, we laid it on the front of the chair back padding.  Whitney then hand-sewed down each pleat -luckily the impression was still visible.  It took quite a while to finish stitching it, but had a very similar look to the original piece by the time it was completed.  Note to self- next time, make sure to cut the piece larger then the pattern in case you don’t pull it as taunt as the original.

2- Topping button-covers with zebra fabric turned out not to be too time consuming or difficult either.  With a bit of extra-thick string we simply threaded it through the fabric, padding, and potato sack to firmly set the buttons.

3- The backside of the chair was then attached, starting with the middle top of the chair.  We actually stapled it from the inside, throwing the fabric over the front of the chair while we stapled and then in-siding-out the fabric and pulling it toward the bottom of the chair before stapling in the sides and bottom.

4- We then hot-glued the now recovered piping into the channels that lined both the inside front and the backside of the chair, covering up the staples that were holding the new pattern in place.

5- We finished off the piece by putting a square piece of fabric on the bottom to cover up the staples.Whew, the project was definitely a big one for our first re-upholstery job, but we got tons of experience and other little ditties we’ll be sharing in future posts.

Our favorite thing about this chair is the pattern – it hides a lot of our mistakes (and there are quite a few), and it still looks cool.  What projects were firsts for you?

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