That time I reupholstered a chair.

So, do you ever have those moments when you think of a project and you're all like, "Pssshhhh. Oh yeah...I could totally do that myself. No prob." And then you go and get everything to do said project and then you step back and think again and you're like, "Oh s$*t. I don't know what I'm doing." But then you're too stubborn to admit you're a dumbass for thinking you could ever do a project that big and so you keep moving forward anyways?

I sure hope I'm not the only one out there. 

Anyways, that was how I found myself four months ago, sitting in front of a chair my husband has had for years and always wanted to recover. It was a week before Father's Day and I had the best surprise ever! I was going to reupholster his chair. A gift! Such a thoughtful gift at that. He'd never guess it, and would be over the moon when he saw his fancy new chair.

Two days later, as I found myself starting to dig my way through the project and in the middle of re-upholstering hell, I had to tell him about my project, because, well, who seriously thinks they can recover a chair in a few days?!?!

I did.

So when I told him he was all super excited and thought it would be awesome and I was sitting there kicking myself in the face for stupidly thinking I could actually do something like this when I had never done anything remotely close to dealing with fabric.

Then Father's Day came and went. Then summer came and went. Then I went back to work. The fall came. Then came Adam's birthday. Finally, our two year anniversary was approaching and I just knew I had to finally complete this project. So I set to it.

And would you believe...I actually finished it! Well, almost. I still have to sew the cushion cover and I'm waiting on a sewing machine to do that. But I have a feeling that will be peanuts compared to the staple-gunning, hand sewing, staple pulling, plier pulling hell I've subjected myself to over the last four months.

So after all that, if you think this is something you want to try your hand at, don't say I didn't warn you. It takes a lot of time. It takes a lot of trying, redoing, trying, sometimes redoing again and again. And the staples....the staples never end! But when all is said and done, I'd say it was worth it. Here's how I did it, in all the pics I could manage to take in between swear words and pained fingertips.

And I have to say, it turned out pretty awesome! So, hey. Yeah, now I'm totally a chair reupholsterer.

The chair. Before.

 Just the beginning. When I was young and naive. 

You need pliers, a flathead screwdriver, a bucket for the discarded staples and whole lot of patience. 

Starting at the bottom of the chair, peel away, layer by layer. Like an onion. 

This is back when I thought there were SO many staples. There were thousands more to go. 

Peeling away the back. 

These metal teeth were frightening to put back on. But they work so well, after they tore up my fingers. 

Once all of the fabric is off, lay the pieces out over the new fabric to cut. 

Use only fabric scissors! Adam's aunt KK got me these to help me out. For a wingback chair, I used 5 yards of fabric. If I had to do it again, I'd cut with a little extra room on the new fabric. Some pieces were pretty tight putting back on. 

Once all of the fabric is off, have a drink (or ten) and begin stapling on the new fabric piece by piece.

You will also need some random fabric to put underneath the cushion area. I didn't forsee this, so I used a piece of fabric I had laying around, hence the clashing green fabric. 

Admiring the piping. 

Ahh, the wingbacks. These were the biggest bitches of all, if you ask me. I swear I stapled, pulled, swore, stapled and hammered the damn things together at minimum eight times. Now, this might be my own fault from not following directions and/or waiting three months before putting them back together, but thats besides the point. By the final time I did it, I had them down and thankfully, I'm quite happy with them.

Before I did the backside, I learned from the wingback debacle and only had to redo it three times.

The (almost) finished project. 

While there are certainly little things I can see that still need fixing, I don't think a blind eye would notice most of them. In the end, I'm quite proud of the project and am happy I stuck with it. Who knew? I know how to work a chair.