This week I have worked in fits and starts.  I few weeks ago I saw a Queen Ann desk chair at the Restore Store.  It grabbed me as most things I purchase do.  It had gold metallic brittle leather on it that had seen better days and the seat was sinking in the middle.   

The wheels started turning and I thought hmmm,  the husband has been wanting a chair for the bedroom and I thought it would be the perfect chair to recover so I started to look it over.  On turning it upside down I discovered that the coils were falling out the bottom of the webbing.  

But, the chair seemed solid and had a delicacy to the arms and legs to it that told me it was much older than the 1990’s counterpart that I sold when I was working at Ethan Allen back in the day.  I am guessing this chair goes back to 1930-1940.

I haven’t recovered anything except a tufted ottoman in a very long time and have never had to tie up coils.  In my research I discovered there is a difference between coils and springs.  Who knew!  I thought this might be a great exercise and precursor to recovering “The Beast”.  My 1920’s Kittenger Camel Back.

Taking two full days just to strip the chair of it’s gross sweat stained leather I discovered that this too was to become a beast.  And maybe just maybe more then I wanted to tackle. 

 I contacted an upholsterer (my upholsterer is getting ready to retire and not taking any new business) to get a quote on the recover and it came in at 365.00 for an already stripped chair not including fabric, more then I wanted to spend on my 35.00 find.  So I resolved myself to redoing it myself.  For 365.00 I can buy myself a nice antique!

I got the chair stripped and then sanded the arms and legs hoping to put a coat of wax on it for a bare wood look only to discover the arms and legs were mahogany and thus the wood was very red. Well da of course they were mahogany!  On to plan B. 

 I picked up some walnut stain hoping to cancel out the red only to have the beautiful walnut stain come out like ebony!  Lovely but not the look I was going for. 

 So then I picked up a sample pot of Magnolia Home Chalk Paint from Ace Hardware (not a sponsored post) and came home and tried dry brushing over the walnut stain.  Well I couldn’t get that to my liking either so I ended up just painting it and then sanding most of the paint off.  Then I waxed it and I am now content with the finish.  I think!

Next was fabric.  My bedroom is in a state of rebooting.  I found a quilt I love, love, love and am working with that.  More on that later.  With millions of fabrics at my disposal I just didn’t want to spend $$$ for three yards of fabric and I was trying to think outside the box.  I thought ticking would be perfect but I couldn’t find any black and white locally.  Everything was blue and white.  I ended up with black denim.  Yup plain old black denim.   I love embroidered upholstery fabric.  Then I got an idea.  What if I embroidered a design for the back panel.  Now I’m still a novice at this machine embroidery stuff, and I still don’t know how to do so many things so this was a pretty simple design. But I got the panel done to my liking and I thought it would be good.

One day the husband suggested I take the chair down to Joe (my soon to be retired upholsterer for a consult) on the coil issue. 

 I thought this was brilliant so downtown I went with my 35.00 stripped chair in the back of my car.  Joe took one look at it and just laughed at me and said he’d do it for me for you guest it, 365.00.  Still determined however, I sought out his sage advice.  The ever present master to student.  My concern was the coils, I just wasn’t certain they were in good enough condition to work with.  He assured me they were and that all I needed to do was replace the webbing and resew the coils to the webbing which would pull the springs back up into the seat and create the crown I needed for a good fit.

Driving home with new confidence I vowed to reattach the beast with enthusiasm and good intentions.

Which leads me to this week.  After getting the arms and legs stained and then painted and waxed I took a big gulp and knew it was time to face my fears!  I replaced the webbing in the bottom of the seat only to find that the coils proudly stood back up.  I didn’t need to retie them.  The rest was just following my gut.  Rather than adding back wadding, I used a piece of one inch foam on the seat, then wrapped it with batting and put a piece of muslin over it.  Then I just placed a square piece of the denim over the seat and began to cut and pleat and shape the fabric to the seat cushion.  Trial and error!  With that small bit completed I took it as a victory.  

With the seat almost done it was time to add the front back.  My embroidered piece. 

I again started with a square piece of fabric and started cutting and shaping it the same way I did the seat, cutting around the arms and making sure my design was centered in the back.

That done it was time to add the welting.  I quick trip to Hobby Lobby yesterday morning found me with a ticking stripe that I had been searching for along.  This is just a quilting fabric and not appropriate for upholstery but I felt that the bang for the buck was worth it.  Where the welting is on this chair it won’t receive any wear and tear.  Working steadily through the day  I was determined to get the beast out of may hair and out of my office and I just quit.  I quit taking pictures and didn’t even realize it until I searched for them.  Ugg!!!

I learned so much from this project and the things that I was most afraid of were just process and needed to be worked thru.  From the beginning when I stripped off this metal tack strip

I knew this was going to be scary to replace.  I had never seen it before and didn’t even know what it was called but I found some on Amazon and ordered it.  I spent 50.00 on books and ended up not using them but did go to You Tube to find a tutorial on replacing the metal tack strip.  Took my fears away and it is such a slick system.

And, at 2:30 this morning I declared the beast done and went to bed.  The chair isn’t perfect but not to bad for my first recover job in 40 years.

I’m thrilled to have tackled this project and learned a new skill, I like the way it came out.  I may still add nailheads to it.  For now I’m living with it.

What do you think?  Should I add the nailheads.  Leave your thoughts in comments.  

Onto the walls!!! 

Thanks for stopping

Shelley