The Chair!

Soon after graduating from college, I bought my very first antique item for my very first place in Boston - an old wingback chair with cute character and a tiny bit of life left for a whopping $40. I was quite proud of it, despite it's dated and worn-out appearance, and had grand plans to refinish it at some point.

Fast foward 9 years, through 5 moves, a destructive dog, and a busy kids' playroom, and here sat this old chair in our very tiny house. Torn and stained, on its last leg, and with no place to live in our 1200 square foot home without disturbing us (/me) with a significant amount of ugly.

Seriously people, I tried to GIFT it away on a free community resource site, and no one would even take it.

Then we moved it into the garage and waited for an opportune time for a run to the transfer center. While it sat there, sad and abandoned, I started to feel a strange pity for the thing. I mean, it had been with me for 9 YEARS and I had always given it the impression that I wasn't going to give up on it, and that one day, it'd be beautiful again. I simultaneously started to realize that we didn't have a chair for our 4th baby's nursery yet, since the one we've used in the past was being utilized in the living room now. But friends, I was ***9 months pregnant*** when I starting having all these feelings. (Which is probably why I started having them), and taking on a major reupholstery/refinishing project at this point was probably not the smartest decision.

So of course that's what I did. As opposed to the common "nesting" instincts that most women experience during a pregnancy, my friends affectionally call this phenomenon "messting."

The nursery suddenly became a warzone of glue, carpet tacks, paint, power tools, sewing accessories, and old, dusty, ripped up fabric. My plan was to do a "cheat" reupholstery, and only recover the existing fabric as much as possible by removing the edging embellishment, stretching the new fabric over the existing fabric, nailing into place with carpet tacks, and adding new matching embellishment around the edges to cover the tacks. This was my *PLAN."

Disclaimer: I have never, ever done anything remotely like this, and just kind of skimmed through a couple YouTube videos. Don't try this at home.

So, I got to work trying to remove the embellishment. And that didn't work because it was all glued into the deteriorating fabric and as soon as I pulled, everything just started coming off. There was actually kind of a cool vintage fabric underneath the armrests, so I left that there. All around the outside of the chair, I kept each piece of old fabric intact and used it to measure my pieces of new fabric.

Before replacing with new fabric, I sanded down and painted the wood white. I figured if a little paint got on the unfinished edges of the old fabric, it wouldn't be the end of the world. The white looked great after a few coats over the course of about a week, and a little sanding and cleaning inbetween. It was a careful process, but it paid off.

THEN I TRIED TO FINISH IT WITH A CLEAR COAT. Hugest mistake ever. Apparently, there exists NOWHERE on this PLANET a clear finish coat that will go over white furniture without YELLOWING the heck out of it!!!!!!!!! Sorry, but this was such a huge, indigestion-covered hiccup in the project. I'm still mad about it. I even used the recommended "crystal clear finish" stuff from Minwax and followed the instructions exactly. When that failed, I was in such denial that I actually started to reupholster the chair with the new fabric, convinced it was just my eyes playing tricks on me. Needless to say, when all was said and done, I was left with a beautifully reupholstered chair and disgustingly yellow wood. When I finally came to my senses, I repainted the wood white again (with a small paintbrush to avoid ruining the fabric), and marched into Home Depot, determined to find something that would work as a clear furniture finish. They were basically no help because nothing like that really exists, and handed me a can of spray paint that said "non-yellowing" ....SPRAY. PAINT. Over my already-upholstered chair. The thought of having to move it to the garage, tape it off and cover it in trash bags, etc....was almost too much for me and my 37.5 week pregnant self.

So, I researched online like a madwoman (including Minwax furniture wax, all other options of paint that don't require a finish, etc. etc. etc...), and finally decided to try spraying the paint into a cup and painting it on carefully with a paint brush in an inconspicuous spot FIRST. It worked sufficiently well, and definitely didn't yellow as much as the canned polycrylic paint, but it did make it a tad off-white. I could deal with that, so while it's not the bright white I was looking for, I didn't spend a gazillion dollars or go into labor doing the stupid thing, so yeah. Win in my book.

For the new fabric, I found a soft heather grey linen type fabric at Joann's for 40% off, then an additional coupon brought it down by at least another 50%...all in all, I spent $20 on 4-5 yards of uhpholstery fabric!!! I WAS SO PROUD of my money-saving skillz!!! YES!

The inside sides of the chair were a little trickier because I didn't want to remove all the old fabric and lose the shape - I wanted the easy way out. So, I ended up nailing a few corners deep into the inner crevices, then used a curved upholstery needle (thank you to my husband for suggesting this) to sew in the new fabric along the bottom sides. That way, I didn't have to remove all the fabric all over the entire chair to pull the fabric through to the back, etc. It definitely saved a lot of time, and none of the sewing details will be seen because they are well below the seat cushion. But I definitely cheated ;)

For the seat cushion, I really loved the cording details around the edges that the existing cushion had. So I removed the cording (so it was cut to exactly the right length) and sewed it directly in to the new fabric to make a seat cushion cover. Again, first time doing anything like this, and I did it free of YouTube videos!! I'm sure there is a more technical way to do it, but this worked and it looks nice. I also used some cording detail on the front bottom piece of the chair.

I stretched the fabric, nailed in the carpet tacks, and then once all the paint was finished and I was decently satisfied, I glued the embellishment onto the edges (a pretty grey edging ribbon that matched the grey chair perfectly!).

And it was like the freakin 6th day of creation, my friends. I sat back, saw that it was good, and took a 

seriously 

majorly 

long

nap. (But not in the chair because I still need some sort of ottoman/foot rest to get the whole effect)

But really, I am pretty proud of how everything turned out. Overall including the cost of the chair itself, I'd say I spent about $75-80 on this project, and it's an absolutely perfect and personal addition to Micah's nursery. I'm kind of having a little Joanna Gaines moment right now, and feeling pretty thrifty, too. Ok Micah! We're ready for you!!

Just please don't get any ideas from the crazy pregnant lady.