Renovate Brooklyn! Day Twenty-Four: Don't Quit Your Day Job.

So I finished the chair.
Holy mackerel. Reupholstery is no f--- joke.

But with no further ado: 

The Upholstered Chair Hall of Fame...

BEFORE: The chair, stripped down to its bare bones. Remember, before it looked like this, it was a mass of duct tape, packing tape, and decaying damask. It is still gross to think about. Ew. If you want to see all of the various stages the chair went through, click here to revisit that entry.

AFTER: Ta-da! The chair, revitalized!
Note that the fabric on the chair is actually the shower curtains I was previously using to separate Mummy's guest bedroom from our hallway. I only needing 1 1/2 shower curtains to reupholster this chair, so the other ones remain hanging to provide privacy for our next guests.















A couple of awe-inspiring close-ups on the chair. Hammering in each of the individual nail heads was a delight! The idea is that they are a tidy little row, but these ones look like they were installed by a drunken miner. What can I say? I've got a gift.

As someone who does a lot of Do-It-Yourself projects, you frequently encounter these projects that are really about endurance and patience and less about skill, so you're like "Sure! I can be patient. I have endurance." Well, for one thing, I'm not really that patient so that went out the window right away, but for two, this project was not that kind of project. This project is all about skill and actual ability, and as it turns out, I have very little of either of those in this particular field. I have a whole new appreciation for every upholstered thing I have ever encountered. How do they get the fabric to stay on!?!

I'm seriously considering taking an upholstery class solely to illuminate some of the unsolvable mysteries I have experienced while working on this god-forsaken chair. "Free chair" my eye. It cost me my soul and spirit! Okay, maybe that's a little overboard, but blimey! This was hard. It's possible that at one point I said to John that my recovering this chair was the worst thing to happen to it since it was put out on the street a few weeks ago.

At right: the chair "in situ" as they say. I still have some extra fabric left over, not including the other curtain, and I'm planning to make a throw pillow out of it this weekend. I can put it on the bed and get a nice link between the chair and bed linens, and then the fabric doesn't go to waste either.

The total budget for the revitalization of this chair, for those who are wondering, worked out to:
        
        $35.00 for webbing, batting, thread, etc.
        $20.00 for one and a half shower curtains
   +   Three Nights when I could have been doing something more fun  
        $55.00 

(Oh! Not to be forgotten were the two nights of sleep lost while I fretted about getting bed bugs. They have to be worth something too, right?)

Despite all of my griping, I am actually tremendously pleased with the outcome of this project. It looks great in the room, used fabric I already had, didn't cost much to do... I just wish I was slightly better at doing it. But hey-- almost free is a great price for a new chair.

 Onto the next project! Arriba!