Reupholstering a wing back chair

Let me start out this post by saying this was by far the most time consuming, most draining, and most complicated project I have ever taken on.  I bought two wing back chairs at a garage sale last June for $3.00 a piece.  The chairs were in AMAZING condition but the color was very outdated. With my personality I was dying to try a new project, save money and say … I DID IT!!

So, I have watched my friend Tenille refinish chair after chair after chair and I thought for sure if she could do it then I surely could. Wrong thinking with an impatient person. My number one weakness (besides food) is patience.  This chair took a lot of that.

Here are the pretty pink chairs right after I brought them home in June 2011.

Now I felt pretty ambitious at the beginning. I tore into the first chair within a week of bringing them home.  I took 48 pictures along the way so I would remember how to put it back together.

I spent an entire Saturday pulling out staple after staple and nail after nail.  I found myself getting tired of the chair rather fast especially after I had learned how many staples were in it.   I was trying to be extra careful to save the fabric so I could reuse it for templates to use for my new fabric.

I finally got burned out enough to stop working on the chair. I told myself I would just give it a rest for a few days but deep down I loathed that chair and wanted to chuck both chairs.  My days turned into weeks, my weeks turned into months.  Fall came and went and my husband started complaining more and more of my unfinished chairs.  Christmas came and went , those chairs just sat for 6 months.  One day I decided to attack again but not without cussing and cutting myself along the way.  I somehow recruited my son to start pulling staples but he too learned to hate the chair…. and only after 2 hours of working on it.   I finally got it stripped to the point where I could begin to recover it.  I searched and searched for the exact fabric I wanted and found it.  I used  a coupon to pay for half of it and got 6 yards.   I busily set out cutting out the templates and sewing the cushion.    My family room at one point even looked like this!

Yes, I am not proud of this but at that point in the chair I didn’t care! I just wanted the dang thing done.  So I invested in an air staple gun, brought it home all excited to use it to find out it was leaking air where the trigger was.  Of course hubby was out of town for a week so the next day I went back and exchanged it for another one.  Same problem, and my patience was beyond gone.  I finally gave up and borrowed a friends electric stapler (she is such a lifesaver)  I stayed home from work and spent another 5 hours completing the chair.    I was originally going to do a tutorial on this but I wouldn’t even know where to begin to explain what I did.  All I know is one is completely finished and I have one more to go.

The finished chair!

I am so glad it is finally done and I am loving the way it turned out.

I have the second one to do but it may take some time to build up the ambition to finish it also. Anyone have another 20 hours worth of time to finish it for me 😉
I admire anyone who does re upholstering and I see now why they charge as much as they do. I went into a few furniture stores and realized I saved myself hundreds of dollars by redoing this chair myself. I have around $50 into it total. If I choose to do anymore reupholstering I will definately stick to smaller projects!