There is a first for everything! And this self-proclaimed designer had one of those just this week: my very first reupholstery project! And you must be thinking that this is going to be one of the most epic DIY posts on this blog, right?
Yeah... Wrong. I think it is safe to say that reupholstering is never going to be my area of DIY expertise. It's just too overwhelmingly hard! I think I must be admitting to another first here, by the way: owning up to something I am unable to do...
But back to the project! I have had this very interesting orange chair for a few years. It is sort of an egg chair replica, but not quite. Major differences include price (the cheapest egg chair costs more than $6,000 and this chair was technically free - it came with the house), the seams (mine sports quite a few more seams making it far easier to reupholster but quite less cool) and, I dare say, comfort (I think my chair is clearly the winner here, merely a result of more seams and thus more cushioning).
The only problem was that it looked like this... (And, oh, hey there, dad!).
(A little side note here: let's just agree that taste is an ever-evolving thing... So, hey, hold back your kind judgment on my lapses of design judgment from 8 years ago :) (e.g. dear Ikea footstool, I am sure you sounded like a great idea back then but black velvet and two pets just don't gel well!).
So, as you can see, the chair had some gorgeous lines and some seriously awful color. Therefore, for the last 6 years, it hid upstairs. That is, until my most recent living room rearrangement, during which I moved my two (replica) Barcelona chairs in front of my large windows thus effectively removing all sitting furniture from my sitting area other than my sofa.
My initial thought was to proceed with procuring a brand new piece of furniture. But three to four failed almost $1,000 purchases later, I decided I can be smarter about this. Enter this thought: "What about that orange chair?" Yup, the seed was planted and so I started thinking... If I were to reupholster the chair... what color would it be? Hmmm.... Options, please?
I love having options :). And I took this one to a vote (because I couldn't make up my mind). Everyone overwhelmingly voted for number three. And since I clearly spoiled the surprise by having a picture of the chair at the beginning, you have probably noticed that I picked none of the above. To be fair, I had every intention of going with the popular cognac color. But something quickly dawned on me as I was going through the piles of fabric at High Fashion Home. That all of these designs assumed white floors! What about my awesome rich wooden floors underneath? Yeah, that will quickly get you to a nice brown overload. Which led me to selecting the very polar opposite instead: a creamy and soft white:
A few key things I had to consider (aka lessons learned) when picking the fabric. First, stretch. In reupholstering such crazy shapes as this chair's, one should always go for fabric that has just a bit of stretch in it. I didn't (mistake!). But thankfully, it was a mistake I didn't have to deal with (see there? outsourcing is always a smart option). Second? The type of fabric. In my experience, microfiber is the only fabric that can stand up to both having a dog and a cat (and as you can tell, Rebel is already taking a liking to his new digs). And last, but not least, price. There's always a possibility for a bargain - you just have to look long enough (e.g. about three hours in the fabric section of the store). I needed 8 yards for this project and I found the perfect fabric buried way, way back that was $15.99/yard with a healthy 50% off. A total steal!
So, there... for the small price of $265 ($200 for labor plus $65 for fabric), I got myself a gorgeous classic chair to my color and fabric liking. And even though it may be an oldie, we certainly taught this chair some new tricks, don't you think??
Happy inspired Monday!
A few months back, a co-worker of mine convinced me to join my company's Spartan Race team. He didn't talk it up much: he mentioned it's a long-ish run with a few fun obstacles. You know, no big deal. Something someone who runs as much as me should complete more than easily (read, you don't really need to train for it). Ha ha ha.