Tuesday, July 20, 2010

Chair Facelift

I found these two fabulous ratan chairs at a small vintage store off N.Burnett and I fell in love with not only them, but the price. Hold your breath....
$6. I can't really argue with two ratan chairs for $12.
When I found them they were rather dirty and their cushions were rather stained. But there is nothing a magic eraser and some $5/yard-fabric-from-Ikea won't fix.
I had never reupholstered something before (other than my headboard project, which you can find in the archives), so my mom showed me what to do. And it was surprising simple.
After I gave both the chairs a good scrub down with a Brawny Magic Eraser to get rid of any grubby marks and scruffs, We removed the old fabric off the cushions.
We cut the fabric finding the pattern piece we wanted and actually darted the corners to give it a more polished look.
Then we simply used a staple gun to secure it back on to the cushion and reattached them to the chairs!! So simple, it took us about an hour total for both chairs.
I had one fabric from Ikea picked out that I ADORED for them, but they were out of stock. So I chose a rather funky Viking and Maid print instead and decided to make a "His & Her" chair. For a first time project having a center focal point wasn't the best choice as this made centering them and stapling them correctly very difficult. I give my mom many thanks for helping me pull this project off.
"Hers" Chair.

The end result with chairs in place. A simple conversation area!