Have a Seat...Or Six

When my parents were here in Thanksgiving, my mom and I decided to check out the new location of Another Man's Treasure, which is one of our consignment stores here in Lexington. When we walked in, we found 6 matching chairs, wood and upholstery, for less than $200. Needless to say we jumped on the deal. The only issue was that they needed to be cleaned up a little.

We loved being able to snatch them up right before Thanksgiving because it meant that we would have plenty of seating for the meal. We still had to use some folding chairs, but only 4 rather than the 9 we would have had to have used otherwise. When we went to set the table, though, surrounded by the chairs and with the leaf extension, we realized that our tiny dining area right off the kitchen wasn't going to cut it.

Instead, we switched the room configurations and put the dining table in the front room. We not only had plenty of space for chairs and the extended table, but we also could use my old desk/sideboard and another table to set out the food. It all worked out so well, we even switched out the lights a week later (more on that in another post).

The table was pretty inviting and the room switch worked out well. The only problem was that the chairs that we bought were a bit lackluster compared to our awesome new table. That's when the O'Leary family went to work on an upholstery mission.

First, we detached the seat of one of the chairs.

Then we used a flat head screwdriver and pliers to pull out what felt like 10 billion staples.

We were then able take off the old fabric and cushioning, both of which was being replaced.

Then we were able to start working on taking the back portion off. This involved getting the staples out of the crevasse up underneath the back piece of wood. There were about 40 thousand more of them hiding in there and they were by far the most difficult to remove.

When the first chair was bare, it looked a little something like this.

We eventually got an assembly line going to remove the rest.

Mom and I had checked out a LOT of upholstery stores in Lexington, but ended up at Hancock Fabrics. We also bought the new foam for the seats so that they would be nice and comfortable for the many meals and board games that they would host (as well as butts....lots of butts, lol).

Of course, some living things in the house were more helpful than others.

We used the seat boards to mark out on the foam where to cut.

Thankfully we were then able to use the electric knife that Patrick brought with him for the turkey to cut it out. It made the job pretty easy because foam can sometimes be tricky.

We were then able to use the dining table to cut the fabric that would cover each seat and back.

We also cut batting to cover the sharp edges of the wooden seat to make each chair a little more comfortable. Leela was very helpful.

Then it was time to staple. We were able to use our Christmas present (an air compressor with staple gun/nail gun attachment) to make the job go easier. Moooore Poooower!

(You see a regular staple gun here. We started out with it, but quickly realized it wasn't as efficient.)

Mostly finished with one, we were looking much better than what we had started with.

Then we continued the assembly line to finished the rest. The backs were a little more difficult since they had piping around the edges. We replaced the piping and wrapped the fabric around it, then just directly stapled it in place. Thankfully we were able to keep the piping and not have to do any sewing.

The old piping 

The backs were then wrapped in batting (no foam was really needed for the backs), which got a couple of staples to hold it in place.

The fabric was then wrapped around. We used tacks tucked under the folded fabric around the sides to hold it in place right up against the piping. The extra was tucked under and stapled multiple times into the guttered area at the bottom of the wood itself. Mom, Dad and Scott did most of this since I was sick (what terrible timing!), but they really knocked it out of the park.

As you can tell, the assembly line was a very important part in this three-day makeover.

In the end it was totally worth it. Dad even took the first finished chair for a test run.

Once they had all been moved back into the dining room, they really helped bring some color and interest to our dining space.

Before:

After:

What a difference!

(Sorry that the updates have been scarce lately. We have been traveling a lot for the holidays and I was having some issues with getting images on the site. Hopefully now that Blogspot seems to be fixed, I can get down to some bid-ness!)