My first Re-uphostery project: Done!

 

Yikes....here we go!  no turning back now.

From whence it came: This chair and ottoman were handed down to me from my grandfather's house; I have no idea how old they are, but I do know they are build solid.  The red vinyl?, plastic? covering wasn't wearing so well, and I decided it had to come off.

When I removed the red "covering", the underside was stamped "rubber"!  Well, that wasn't what I was expecting!


I saved each piece of rubber product.  As I took each piece off, I took pictures, and made really careful mental notes of the order of how pieces came over so I would know how to put them back on.  I learned a lot by doing that.

 

 

And here is the after:

 I wanted to have this beautiful "Bloom" motif in the center, with other planting words of wisdom around the fabric.

 

 

This is where I started after it was all stripped off.  I folded the first piece over the top, and folded in around the corners as I had seen on the old covering.   

 I started out using my new staple gun, but it wasn't working well in this hard wood.  So I switched to nails. 

 I tacked down the edges and added a brown piping to the edge to see how that would look.  In retrospect, I think I would have skipped the piping at this point for my first project; there are so many things going on in the learning stages of your first project, I think I should have kept it simple.

 But it's OK, and not something I will go back and tear out to fix.  I am a perfectionist, and would love certain areas to look better, but based on the time it would take, I'm not willing to change it all at this point.

  I found out that reupholstering is quite similar to sewing.  Put your seams right side together, and use tacks and tack strip as opposed to seams.   I lapped edges over when I needed to make a "seam", remembering that the finished edge should be on the bottom. 

 When it's folded back over, the nice folded edge is what is showing.
Upholstery tack strip i used to secure the fabric.  More important, it provides a crisp edge between the pieces above and below it. Once that is nailed together (and I used a lot more nails than I though I would, it makes for a nice tight "seam".  Once secure, fold down the next layer and repeat the process.



Here is my finished project, of which I am very proud!  I think my Pop-pop would approve of the result and of my can-try attitude.  And if you wonder why the ottoman is living on top of another ottoman right now?  Well, if you have cats, they love to check out a new piece of anything; until I get some sticky strips to protect the corners and deflect their curiosity, it will be in time out for a few more days.

So after doing the ottoman, would I attempt the chair? I'm not sure.

 I've learned a bit that I think will make a next project easier, but I'm not sure I'm ready for the next project to be as complicated as a  chair as opposed to another simple ottoman type project. 

These are two pieces that are built solid and I would love to use more.  They will definitely be more usable in a "non-rubber" type of covering.