Ta-da! Ugly Chair No. 2 is Finished!

Just when I thought I was getting pretty good at this upholstering thing, I hit a snag with the second ugly chair.  My stapler started messing up on me and the staples were going in all wonky.  One side of the staple was in and the other was all bent up!  I was so frustrated I was about to take " Ugly Number 2" to the Goodwill and let someone else try their hand at making her pretty.  After much aggravation and staple removing, I finally got the fabric stapled on, only to realize I hadn't pulled the fabric taught in one spot on the back and there was a big pucker!  Somebody shoot me!  I had to remove half the staples from the front of the chair to get to the back so I could pull out those staples too!  I swear I never want to see another staple for the rest of my life! 

Then there was piping issues.  The cording I bought was a smidgen smaller than than what was originally on the chair and it left a gap between the cushion and the chair frame.  I went back to Hobby Lobby and the next size up was twice the size.  I bought it anyway.  I figured if that didn't work I'd just buy some black gimp (I used white on the first chair) and trim it out that way.  In the end I used both sizes of cording and I think it looks kind of cool!  And here she is!  What do you think?

I'll take some more pictures tomorrow during the daytime.  I had every light in the room on and had my son holding a shadeless lamp towards to chair just to get it this bright!

Here she is before her make over.

 And remember how Number 1 looked before the change?

Here she is today.

My two old ugly chairs aren't so ugly anymore!

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Ugly Chair Part Deaux

I am in no way ready for the big reveal, but I did want to share a few pictures of the remaking of the second ugly chair.

Here she is, in all her tweedy, mauve glory.

I honestly don't know where we got this chair.  One day it just appeared at my house.  I think the hubs found it on the side of the road. Seriously.  I've tried on numerous occasions to throw it away, but one of my boys always fetches it from the trash and wants to keep it!  I have resigned myself to the fact that the chair is staying, but I have not resigned myself to mauve tweed.  Even in the 90s I don't think I would have liked this chair, although it would have gone perfectly with the mauve and country blue Laura Ashley loveliness I had going on at that time.

As you can see, the seat was removable, much like a dining room chair.  I just unscrewed it from underneath and it popped right off.

Then I pulled off the piping, the fabric and foam from the front of the chair.

  The back of the chair is upholstered from the front side of the chair. You can see the reverse side of the fabric from the front of the chair.

And here she is, completely disrobed and down to the frame.  The "disrobing" is really the hardest part.  Upholstery takes a lot of staples and it can be a real bear pulling those staples out.  My poor knuckles are so scratched up from prying staples out with pliers and a screwdriver and my back and arms are so sore from all the pulling and tugging, but I got it done.

I went ahead and covered the seat because I was dying to see how the new fabric looked.  I love the whimsy of the polka dots but I think the color scheme gives it a masculine feel.

Covering the seat cushion really was easy breezy.  I just centered the cushion on the fabric, folded the edges around to the backside of the seat and stapled.  When I staple I usually start at the top center and put in one staple, then I go to the bottom center and then side to side.  After I check to see if the fabric stayed centered I  go back and bring the corners in and staple them down.  When I get the corners like I like them I go back and finish the sides.  The more staples the better.  You don't want your fabric to pucker on the finished side.

I opted to cover over the original fabric because as you can see in the before picture, there is a detail seam sewn through to the cushion.  I didn't want to ruin the cushion by trying to tear the fabric off so I just covered over it.  I will add a new piece of that black backing fabric to cover the edges and give it a professional look.

I haven't attached the seat or started on the back of the chair yet because I plan on painting the frame black first.  I hope to have everything done this weekend and I will move the chair back into my son's bedroom.  I may do a little sewing with the left over fabric too.  I got this on clearance and bought the rest of the bolt, so I may have enough to make some pillow shams for the bed.  Wish me luck!

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She's a Real Looker!

I am so excited y'all!  I finally finished the ugly chair and she turned out to be a real looker! I am thrilled with how she turned out, especially since this was my first time ever upholstering anything!  She is not perfect by any stretch - there are some things about the paint finish I might go back and tweak, and the seat cushion is not as perfect as it could be, but all in all, I love her!

Remember how she used to look?

Well look at her now!

I ended up using the white gimp to trim out the chair and I love how it looks!  Thanks for the inspiration Miss Mustard Seed 

And don't you just love the monogram!  I think it really makes the chair special.  If you haven't made anything using a painters drop cloth, you really should give it a try.  I love the texture and the color of it.  I even had a little left over that I'm going to use to make a throw pillow.

I learned so much in recovering this chair.  The first thing I learned is that I did not take nearly enough pictures of the before and the during.  You might think you'll remember how things looked, but trust me, you won't.  I'm pretty sure that I did not do the back of my chair how the original was done, but I will never know, because I didn't take a picture of it.  The hardest part of the entire chair was the part you don't even see - the seat bottom under the cushion!  Trying to work around the chair arms and legs was a real bear, but I worked it out and am pleased with the results. 

Now on to the next project!

Ugly Chair #2

There isn't a single thing I like about this chair. The shape is blah, the fabric is dated, it doesn't go with anything in my house.  In fact, I'm not even sure where we got this chair.  I think The Hubs brought it home one day from who knows where!  It sits in my sons room and is usually covered in laundry.  He leaves for college in a couple of weeks, so I will wait until he is gone before I confiscate his chair.  I might do something fun with it like covering it in Georgia Bulldog fabric!  Hmmm.... we'll see.

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Monogram Sneak Preview

I am so excited!  I got the monogram for my chair back tonight, so that means tomorrow I will start putting the fabric on The Ugly Chair!  I can't wait!  I should have the chair finished and sitting in my living room this weekend if all goes as planned! Yay!

The Ugly Chair Part IV - The Cushion

I am so excited to say, that I have made my first cushion.  I'm not claiming perfection on this thing, but I think it turned out pretty well for my first try.  I layed the foam onto my fabric and traced around it leaving  enough fabric to go half way up the side of the cushion and for the seam allowance, then I cut it out. Next I layed the cording on the right side of the fabric and pinned raw edge to raw edge.  Then using my new handy dandy zipper foot (I'm telling y'all, this zipper foot has changed my life!) I sewed around the entire cushion top so the cording went all the way around.  Check out this tutorial on how to join the beginning and end pieces of the cording here .  Next  I took the bottom piece of fabric, lined it up with the top, right sides facing and sewed around 3 sides of the cushion. 

Just a quick note,  the drop cloth fabric ravels like a big dawg!   Next time I might cut my strips a little wider to cover my cording just to allow for some of the raveling.    

Then I turned the fabric right side out and slipped the cushion inside.  The most tedius part was blind stitching the cover closed.  My original cushion had a zipper so the slipcover could be removed, but I wasn't brave enough to tackle that yet.  Maybe next time.

Here is my lovely new cushion.   It's not perfect, but I'm proud of it.  Ignore the rest of the chair as it is not anywhere near being done. 

I have hit a bit of a snag with the double welt cording for the rest of the chair, so Plan B is to try it with single cording.  If that's not wide enough to do the job then  Plan C is to use gimp.  Gimp is a kind of braided trim. Miss Mustard Seed  uses it a lot on her gorgeous chairs, so I know it will look good on mine too!

The Ugly Chair

Well, here we go. Time to tackle the... UGLY CHAIR! I began the "un-upholstering" of the Ugly Chair one bright sunny morning and 1 million staples later I finished on one hot-as-all-get-out afternoon! Let me tell y'all, that fabric and trim was on good! My poor hand was so sore that my fingers couldn't move from their death-grip-on-the-pliers position! I'll be honest, I began to wonder what I had gotten myself into, but after some thought, and some Motrin, and a big glass of sweet tea, I decided I could do this thing! Here are a few pictures of the process. Here is Ugly Chair prior to the un-upholstering.

The fabric is dreadful and the wood finish is from the "I've got geese in neckerchiefs in my kitchen" era, but I've always loved the shape, so I believe there is great potential here. I'll admit, while I was pulling off the fabric I was secretly praying that someone had used this chair to hide their life savings, but instead I found an ice pop wrapper, what is possibly "droppings" of some sort and a dime.

I added the dime to my laundry room All Monies Found in the Washer/Dryer Become Mama's piggy bank and got back to work on Ol' Ugly. Here she is after I stripped the fabric and trim off (except I forgot to take it off the arm rest thingies until after the picture was taken).

The next step was dealing with the wood. I decided after reading many a blog that I would paint that baby white. I've been reading lots of good things about Annie Sloan's Chalk Paint here and I am definitely going to order some for my next project, but I was impatient and decided while I was at Home Depot I'd just grab a couple cans of Rust-oleum Painters Touch in Satin heirloom white. The can said it gave 2x coverage and was ideal for wood, metal, wicker and more! SOLD!

Before I began painting I lightly sanded the wood with a sanding block I had on hand, then wiped it down to remove the dust.  Now, the key to looking good while spray painting is to use pretty pink plastic party table clothes as drop clothes! haha  Actually I was just using what I had left from a baby shower I threw a while back and since they were cheap and I don't know of any other baby showers I'll be hosting anytime soon I decided to use them.  That and I didn't want to run back to the store to buy a drop cloth!

And here she is all painted.

This last picture is a little blurry, but you can see how I sanded some of the paint off to give it a worn look.  That's right, old is the new new!

I'm so happy with how the paint finish turned out. I sanded around the edges to give it a distressed look, wiped it down to remove any dust and then applied a clear wax to seal it. I've got a long way to go, but my ugly chair is starting to look pretty again! Stay tuned for my adventures in covering double welt cording! YIKES!