Chair Redo in the longest ever tutorial

It's finally done!!!! I can finally share my chair redo with you that I told you about in this post.  Okay, so I am quite the thrifter. I try and make it out thrifting at least once a week. About a month ago, I was at the D.I. and there was this one worker rearranging things right where I was looking around. Anytime I would ask about something he would rip off the tag and tell me it was a few dollars less than the tag said. (I've never had this happen before, I don't think it's what he's supposed to do. But I wasn't about to argue haha) So when I saw this chair for $8, I was more than happy to pay that. It is a really well built chair, I could tell by examining it. When I asked the guy for a ticket so I could go pay for it, he ripped off the tag and said "I'll give it to you for 5 dollars. Happy Saturday." He was quite the salesman.

I really liked the structure of it but the upholstry? Not so much.  So I started tearing it apart.  Now people. When you hear "oh reupholstering is so fun! You get to rip the chair apart! DON'T BE FOOLED. Maybe I picked the chair made by a staple happy person but seriously, this process gave me blisters. Not to mention it took about 6-7 hours to get it apart.

As you take your chair apart, remember how you're doing it so you can put it back together easily.  Luckily this chair was pretty straight forward: unscrew the seat from underneath, take off the backing. If you're having a hard time finding staples to start taking a piece apart, (it took me a minute to figure out where they were for the back) flip the chair over.  This is on the underside of the back of the chair.

This is maybe half (or less) of the staples I took out of the seat alone. Seriously, every layer of fabric was stapled 1/2 inch apart. Who was this mad stapler person?? Luckily my sweet mom was helping me with this.

Once I had all of the upholstery off, we put this stripper all over the wood.  There are a lot of different products but this one is really potent making the process easier and faster. Follow the directions on your bottle. (this one said to put it in a spray bottle for application)

We let it sit for about 10-15 minutes and wearing gloves, scraped it off with a credit card. I strongly recommend wearing thick rubber gloves for this.  We were wearing surgical-type gloves and had to take breaks because our hands would start burning. Like I said, this stuff is potent and got the job done in basically one to two coats.

Side note- I couldn't help but giggle everytime my mom referred to the stripping agent: "Let me go get the stripper out of the basement. Let's let the stripper sit on the chair for a while." haha oh the immaturity.

Not pictured: I sprayed the chair down with the hose to get the bulk of the stripper off and then wiped it down with a bucket of warm soapy water and a rag.

Next we gave it a really good sanding with a medium grit sand paper to take the rest of the stain off. Then I used Minwax special walnut stain to apply one thin coat. I let it dry and added 3 coats of gloss polyurethane (sanding between coats with very fine sand paper).

Here's where my mom really came in.  She is an amazing seamstress (like, made hers and my sister's beautiful wedding dresses, makes luv-sacs type of amazing).  She had a big bolt of this pretty black leather type fabric on hand and that's what I decided to recover the chair in- can you say free ninety-nine?? So this is the cording and the only picture I took of the sewing process. Basically we used the old seat cover as a pattern and cut the pieces out to be the same size.

I'm not going to go into detail on the sewing portion because A: I didn't take any pictures and B: my mom was the magic behind that portion. For example, she figured out the yardage we needed and cut it all out, I just sewed it all together under her direction.

Skip forward to the cushion part.  I bought a 3 inch camping pad from my grocery/market place for $21.  I felt good about this since foam is pricey and it was a big piece of foam I can use for multiple projects. So I traced the original board onto the foam and used an electric knife to cut out the shape. Next I put the foam inside the chair cover with the board on top, wrapped the fabric around and stapled it. Does that make sense? You're going to want your fabric pulled tight, so if you kneel on your board it will help push it down while you staple.

After that was all attached, I took the cording and stapled it around the bottom edge so the round part sticks out. Sorry if you can't tell in the picture, I took in on my phone.  

Once that was done, I stapled the back pieces to the back of the chair with a piece of 1 inch foam in between.  I just hot glued an edge I had bought at the fabric store around the back to cover up the staples. Once I had the back done, I screwed the seat back on and I was done!

And here she is in all her glory.

Much better than that orangey wood and ugly blue upholstery.

I'm still trying to decide which pillow I like more.  The bigger square one is what I bought for the chair but I grabbed that long rectangular one off my bed and I think it fits better. What do you think?

One more before and after:

Total cost: $5 chair, about $5 worth of foam, fabric, staples, sand paper, and stain on hand, $4 polyurethane 

= about $14

plus a $10 pillow (on clearance at Hobby Lobby) 

And if you've made it to the end of this giant post, congrats!! Here's a stella picture as your reward :)

She's a weird one.

Happy weekend!! We're off to the family cabin to ride some 4wheelers and stuff our faces.