A chair makeover you will not believe

I don't know if you noticed or not, but Brittany has done most of the posting lately.  Sorry, guys.  In the past 3 weeks I was left without a camera, had to pack and move, got sick, and went on vacation to Idaho.

Before

But while we were in Idaho, my mother-in-law asked my husband to reupholster a chair.  No, he had never done this before.  But if you know him at all, you know that he is meticulously good at everyting he does, and he decided he could do this. Here's how it goes.

He started off by removing all of the fabric from the chair.  This required pulling off some very old nailhead trim and yanking hundreds of staples. 

It was important to notice in what order the peices came off.  He labeled them and drew an arrow to indicate which side was towards the top of the chair.

Then it was time for me to freak out.  I never realized how ugly chairs look when they're naked.  This one was also who-know-how old, and looked like it had been stuffed with birds' nests and asbestos.  We had to make some structural adjustments.

We laid the peices out to see how much fabric we needed (it ended up being 5 yards of 54" material) and cut them out of the new material.  I was surprised at how little sewing was actually required; most of the work is pulling and stapling (a good staple gun is a must for this project).  For those parts, you don't need a very precise cut because you can just trim any excess at the end.

Then he started putting it back together, remembering how he took it apart.  This isn't a very good picture but you can see the staples around the wooden part.  For the wing we had to pleat the fabric by hand, tuck in the edges, and staple it as close to the wood as possible.  It wasn't as hard as it sounds.  The staples will be covered up with a braided trim later. The original ones were covered by nailhead trim.

The back was nailed on by some tacks left over from the nailhead trim.  These didn't have to be covered up like the staples.

And here is the final product (minus the braided trim).  I know what you're thinking-- "Would it kill him to do it a little less perfectly?  Because he's making the rest of us look like losers."  Yeah, this is pretty awesome.

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