Relent, Recoil, Reupholster!

I am so proud of myself! No really. I'm hang-it-on-the-refrigerator, I-deserve-a-medal, blinking-applause-sign, spell-it-out-pommie-style P-R-O-U-D! Proud!

Perhaps, this feels slightly over the top. And no doubt it is. But please, allow me to explain.

Just before we first moved to Denver, Landon's Grandma graciously gave us two chairs that she no longer needed. As we had almost no furniture at the time, we were very very grateful for anything that meant we didn't have to sit on the floor. This is what the chairs looked like.

I don't know if you can tell or not, but these are very comfy chairs. However, as you can tell they had seen some wear and tear. And so I decided that I would reupholster them eventually. A couple of weeks ago, when my fantastic friend Becky was visiting, we decided that "eventually" had arrived and it was time to attempt the task. Tear off the old fabric, slap on some new, a few staples and we're in business. Seems pretty straight-forward, right? Not so.

Truth be told, I had no idea how to reupholster before I started tearing the old faux leather off. (Thanks, Becky, for your help on this part). Only then did I begin to realize what I'd gotten myself into. Here's a picture of one of the chairs completely disassembled.

After I took this picture I realized that it's actually missing several pieces including the arms of the chair and the hardware that holds the buttons in place, along with two missing fabric pieces, but I'm guessing you get the idea.

This is Griffin laughing at me, he liked poking at the disassembled chair with a screwdriver and fought with me for whatever tool I was using at the time. Yeah, he thinks he's a big help.

I'm sorely tempted to go into the nitty gritty detail about sewing technique, staple guns, and unexpected hand-stitching, but instead I'll just say that this was a lot of detail-oriented work with a mean learning curve. Anyway, after a few weeks of work (the most productive work getting done during Griffin's naps) I'm happy to unveil the finished product:

DRUMROLL........

Ta-da!

Seriously, I couldn't be happier with how these turned out. Don't they make a nice little sitting area for our bedroom? Here's a close-up of the fabric:

And another angle, just for fun...and to stroke my ego a little. Tell me what you think.