Chair Project!

About 2 years ago I scored this little side chair for $5 at a lawn sale. I really liked the size and shape of the chair, and the low price didn't hurt either. The chair itself had definitely seen better days, and the seat itself was in need of some repair. 

The underside of the chair. A mess.

It actually took me quite a while to remove the old fabric- because it wasn't secured with staples which allow some leverage, but with small carpet nails. In addition to the hundreds of nails I had to remove (stabbing myself in the leg with a screw driver in the process...don't worry, I'm ok) this chair was dusty. Yuck. 

Working on removing all those tacks

Close up of where the buttons were...naw, this fabric isn't dirty at all!

What the frame of the chair looked like after I removed the fabric
and the cats helped with a little scratching

Originally I was planning to use a piece of textured grey fabric I scored for about $4 a yard. It was on a clearance table for something like $10 a yard at Joann's, and on that particular day it was 50% off all clearance, AND I had a coupon for an additional percentage off my entire purchase. I didn't have quite two yards, but more than one.

But when I put this fabric onto the chair to see how it might look, I was bored. It looked clean and nice, but just not exciting. So I looked through my fabric stash (yup, I have a stash now) for something that was appropriate to use for this chair, and found some fabric that I have left over from another project that I thought fit the bill.

Much more interesting, right?

 Honestly, this is not a tutorial. But the picture below shows how I used the old fabric to make a template for the new fabric. I literally just traced.

And its done!?

It's hard to tell from these messy pictures (keeping it real, people.) but something wasn't right. The original upholstery was structured, where in this iteration, I just covered it the way you would a dining chair.

I lived with it for a day, but it just really didn't look the way I wanted it to. So I removed the fabric off the seat portion, and made a more structured cover using my sewing machine. I considered adding some pipping, but this project was already dragging on, and I've never done pipping before, so for my sanity, I decided that would be for my next project (which I already have in queue...wink wink).

So here are some final after pictures of the chair, and my cats being total hams. You should know, I took these pictures early in the morning, BEFORE I headed out to work, because the light was good--or at least as good as it was going to be. This is serious, guys.

For the back, I am considering adding some nail head trim, sort of like what's pictured below. Still thinking about it. Not sure yet. What do you think? Should I add nail head trim?

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