Weekend Makeover Project

Tags

antique, chair, damask, DIY, furniture, makeover, project, tutorial, upholstery

I love DIY and I love antiques. Put those two together and you get some amazing furniture makeovers. I rescued a pair of chairs this past fall that were on their way to the garbage pile. They were worn, outdated, and dusty, but they had beautiful lines. So they came home with me and waited for their make over.

Since I had never actually done a big upholstery job before, off I went to scour Pinterest for some inspiration and guidance. I found this tutorial on reupholstering a chair which was exactly what I was looking for. I found the perfect fabric for this chair at our local fabric store. It is blackout curtain material and was on sale for $3 a meter!!! I picked up 10 meters in total for these chairs, plus two extra meters because I wanted to cover my dining room chairs in the same material…perhaps that will be another post.

Now on to the fun part. I had to strip the entire chair down to the bones while keeping the old material intact so it could be used as a pattern for the new material. This was a very well made chair with lots of hand stitched seams and lots of tacks and staples!

I took lots of pictures during the disassembly process to use as a reference later when putting it all back together again. Finally, she was ready for her new look!

Ready for a new look!

Luckily, I didn’t have to replace very much of the batting as most of it was still good. I positioned each pattern piece on the new material and started the transformation.

Using the old seat fabric as a template for the new seat fabric

With lots of hand stitching, staples, and a bit of blood, she is finally ready for her reveal! My talented neighbor Jody took the pictures for the reveal. I will be painting the legs when the weather warms up a little. Other than that, I think this is the most glamorous chair I have ever seen! And so comfy too. Considering the only thing I had to buy was the material and some cord for the piping, these chairs were made over for under $35 for both!!!!