Re-upholstery Magic

Presto-Change-o!

Most of you know that just about everything in our house is either from D.I. or it was given to us. Here we have the highest in country charm fashion from 1990, a hand-me-down from somebody I used to babysit for. While it boasts high quality construction and upholsteryship (made that term up myself) the fabric was getting worn and....stained. Ah, here's the matching ottoman. Beautiful. Perfect for rolling down the hallway like a boogie board in the ocean. It, too, suffers tears and stains unbefitting a furniture piece of its caliber. (Note in this picture my uber sweet log bed)

What these fine furniture needed was someone with a loving, patient touch; Someone with skilled hands and an unabashed flair for high fashion.

You can assume they never got that. What they got was ME. You know me: impatient, cheap, with reckless abandon. This nice set was practically begging me to just LEAVE it in its shabby state rather than endure the tortures of my "Chester-quality" job. (Chester is my dad and he does odd jobs just as well as I do...which a lot of times means the job gets done and fast, but not always well.)

But I couldn't. I wanted to recover them. So, I went to the Home Fabrics in Arm (Orem) found cool gold fabric for $3.50 a yard and bought a bunch. Then with meticulous precision I ripped off most of the fabric and pulled out hundreds of staples. See:


Poor chair and ottoman!

Then I cut out huge pieces of fabric, laid them over the chair and did my best to jimmy rig them in place with Chet's electric stapler. The arm pieces, shown below, were cut out wrong. So, after I cut out all my other pieces to staple on I realized I had just enough fabric left over that I could cut out new arm pieces. So I did. And then five seconds later I realized I CUT THE FABRIC IN THE WRONG DIRECTION!!!!!!! Aargh!

Here they are finished. You see that cushion looking so unpresuming and cute? Well the little punk took me FOUR hours to make and the piping still looks like a cub scout did it! If I ever do another reupholstery project again, piping will NOT be included!

Don't look close, fools! This is a Chesterized Beth Williams project! Why do you think I chose such blurry photos?

In all, this project took me about three years to complete (...or 1 month) It was a lot of headaches and I have a bruise on my shoulder from the kickback of the staple gun (really). But if you're a woman of leisure, like me, you've got plenty of time for these little crafts.

Whenever I do these projects I'm always diving in before really thinking through things, assuming the project will figure itself out. I don't like to think about step two until I'm halfway through step one. Afterwards I often feel a bit of remorse that I didn't plan better or try harder to do a better quality job. Then I console myself by thinking how it looks better than it did before (though not much) and that the whole project came in under $25.

If you think you'd like to Chesterize a chair or two of your own, here's some words of advice:

1. Don't plan ahead.

2. Rip off the fabric way before you buy your replacement fabric so that your kids will roll all over the batting/foam for a few days to dingey it up.

3. Don't worry about having the right size of staples. Just use whatever you have (1/4") for half of the chair and then switch to a bigger size when you realize your two year old could pull all the fabric off by herself.

4. Buy as little fabric as needed. You don't want to spend an extra $5 on fabric when you could piecemeal the back of the chair...nobody looks back there, anyway. Plus, you love taking another hour out of your day to go back to the store to buy more.

5. Don't worry your head about taking all the old fabric and piping off before you put the new stuff on. Everybody LOVES seeing piping from the old job under your new fabric. It's really cool.

6. Clean up can be saved for a rainy day! Scissors, electric staple guns still plugged in, loose staples and jewelry pliers are FINE where they are when you have shag carpet and small children running around.

7. Buy as much time away from your kids as you need to finish this job by turning on PBS kids...for educational purposes. Every good re-upholstery mom wants to expand her children's minds.

8. Finally, put your finished product in the baby's room because it will NEVER get beaten up there.