Reupholstering a Thrift Store Chair

     So sadly my friends I just moved into an apartment without any furniture. I do have furniture, but it resides in my previous place of residence, Maryland and I am now in Indiana. My father was supposed to bring it out to me a week after I moved in, but for unforeseen circumstances it was not meant to be. Now I am two weeks in with no furniture. I started brainstorming then, what pieces of furniture I could obtain now that would be in addition to what I already had.

     I realized then that I needed either a chair or loveseat, since I threw my last loveseat away (it had had a good run and was not in good shape anymore). I then began my search for the perfect chair. I looked online and at every local store imaginable. I could not find a new chair worth buying. Then I started searching my local thrift stores for something usable or something I could fix up. The idea came to me after searching Pinterest for reupholstery ideas. I knew that using the site I could learn almost any skill I wished, with ease. I was nervous about the idea of tearing apart a chair, but I knew with my creative talents I could tackle it. I wanted to prove to myself I could do it, instead of copping out and buying a new chair. I also knew I could save a lot of money and that I would then have a piece of art I could be proud of. The first night of thrift store searching yielded nothing. The second night, a different store, I found the perfect chair. It was not the prettiest chair, but it had wonderful bones; a good shape. I then started imagining how I could reupholster it as I was looking at it in the store. I saw that the chair was $29.99; for that price I could afford to tear it apart. I asked the clerk how to proceed with buying the chair since I was sure it would not fit in my tiny car. He assured me that they could make it work. I grabbed the ticket and bought the chair and by using my discount card, I only paid $28 for it.

     The chair did not fit in my car. I barely fit in the trunk. The employees asked if I had bungees or rope and I said no. I really had no hopes of finding a chair I liked, so I was not prepared at all. They then devised a plan to tie trash bags together to secure the chair in my trunk, with the trunk left open. I figured it just might work. I only had 3 miles to drive, approximately down the road the store was on to my apartment and I would just drive with my flashers on. It worked! I got it home and I breathed a sigh of relief. I cut the trash bags and dragged the chair upstairs all by myself. As I did, coins started falling out of the cushion, lol. I guess I got even more of a discount, because the folks that donated the chair had forgot to check the cushions before doing so.

     Now the chair sits in my living room and is waiting to be transformed.

     I immediately went back out (on what happened to be Veterans Day) to pick out the chairs upholstery fabric. I bought fabric from the red tag home decor fabrics at JoAnns. It was $18 a yard on sale for half price, because of the holiday, so it ended up being $9 a yard. I am not even sure what the original price was, but I got a good deal of savings on it I would say. I also got a percentage off at the register on my final bill. So I paid about $55 for 7 yards of upholstery fabric. Then I bought $10 worth of supplies such as staples, fabric glue and piping to do the reupholstery with. So for about $95 so far I will have a nice upholstered armchair. A new chair does not even come close to this in price.

     So, if you are having thoughts about redressing a piece of furniture, with this tutorial and others on Pinterest, you can do it! If you are not a good sewer, reupholstery is easier than making a slipcover, as it involves very little sewing. Below I am providing a tutorial on how to do just that.

Here are all of the materials I bought in order to complete this project.

• Decor Fabric Roll (to figure out yardage, see this chart)
• Piping (measure the amount of piping already on your chair)
• Thread
• Needle
• Sewing machine (there is very little sewing and maybe you could get away with just hand sewing)
• Upholstery Grade Staples
• Staple Gun
• Iron
• Permanent Fabric Glue
• Sewing Pins
• Chalk Pencil (or other marking pen)
  

       The first thing you need to decide is whether you are going to go right over the current upholstery or start fresh, by ripping the old upholstery out. If you know your chairs history and you are not concerned about the previous upholstery you can go right over the old upholstery. Since I bought my chair from the thrift store and I did not know anything about its previous owner and the way it was taken care of, I decided to take all the upholstery off and go for a fresh start. This was more time consuming, but worth the effort, because it looked a lot more professional when it was done and was basically like a brand new chair. It is more time consuming to take off the upholstery, but then you have fabric you can use as patterns to create the new pieces to go back on and you can do a better job securing the new pieces to the frame underneath the upholstery. Otherwise you just have to cut big pieces of fabric and stuff them in around the chair and hope they fit, if you decide not to remove all of the upholstery.

     Second, if you decide to do as I did and take the upholstery off, start with the bottom mesh fabric and start ripping out staples.

     Once I pulled off the bottom black mesh piece of fabric, it exposed a lot of the other upholstery staples. I then started removing those. One thing lead to another and each piece was systematically removed. However, I worked in small patches, because I was completing this project over several nights, so I did not want to forget how the pieces went back on. I would remove a piece of old upholstery and then replace it with new upholstery. 

     When removing each piece I would use that piece as a template for the new upholstery. If two or more pieces were sewn together I would remove the stitching first. The seat piece was sewn together, but I only removed the stitching and pieces from one side of the seat fabric. I did this so that one side would be a template and the other side would allow me to see how the pieces go together. I just had to trace half of the piece and then fold it over to get the other half to be exactly the same.

     If there were any felt-like pieces attached to the upholstery on the underside, I saved those and reused them. If you carefully remove pieces or stitching you can reuse many of the pieces. I carefully removed some of the tack strips and reused them as well.

     Then as I was removing old upholstery I would expose foam and batting layers. I wanted to make sure these were still firmly attached even after I removed the staples and upholstery layers, so I added a few staples for good measure. I would then add more as I reapplied the upholstery layer.

     Anywhere there were cut ends of fabric that might be exposed I would fold those under and then staple or glue them (with fabric glue, if they were on the outer most layer). One side note to this is that I was having trouble remember how the arms went back together. I ripped out the stitching two or three times before I got it right. Actually on the first arm, I could not figure it out for the life of me, so I just used fabric glue to put it back together. I lined the front facing of the arm with fabric glue and attached the arm fabric wrong side up, with the majority of the fabric going away from the arm, so it could then be folded back on itself to create the same basic affect as a sewn seem. This is something you could do if you do not wish to sew anything on your chair re-upholstery project. The fabric glue is Alene’s and it is permanent.  However, the second arm I was able to sew with a little more trial and error. I then compared the two arms and I like the sewn side a lot better. The glued side looks a little more puckered; it does not lay as flat. It all worked out in the end, basically, though.

     I just continued removing pieces of old fabric, using them as templates for new fabric pieces and replacing them with the new pieces. I got all of the pieces done except for the back and the bottom. Those pieces had to be done last. The reason being they would conceal most of the inner workings and the staples. Once I replaced those two pieces I was done.

 

     I would say the whole project took 15 hours to do over the course of three days, working on it whenever I could. I worked non-stop honestly when I was home. That is just the way I am, once I have an idea for a project, I want to see it completed. I am not a very patient person when it comes to some things. However, I worked hard over those three days and I feel like I did a good job. Of course I did learn some things along the way that I would do different next time, but that is always the case when learning a new skill. I would give myself a 90% if it was a course grade. It looks great, but there are some areas you cannot see where the upholstery was not properly attached to the inner frame. I meant to go back and do that, but those parts just got over-looked somehow. Oh well, it just means that when I sit on it, sometimes I have to tuck the upholstery back in when I get up, no big deal.

     This was my first attempt at upholstery and it was largely a success. I am not sure I could have done it if I did not use the original pieces as a pattern. With that being said, I would highly encourage you to try it. If you have a chair that just isn’t doing it for you anymore, but you still like the shape of it, maybe all it needs is an upholstery update. Just look for a good JoAnn’s or Hobby Lobby, etc. coupon or sale and then buy your fabric. That can be the hardest part, because you will need a lot of fabric yardage and it can be expensive, but a good sale or coupon will help tremendously. It worked for me. If you need a chair or other piece of furniture, consider visiting a thrift store and imaging the possibilities of a piece with new upholstery. I think it’s a less expensive way to get a piece of furniture that is like new. The frame and inner workings might be old, but the fabric is brand new. 

     I priced chairs at many different stores and they ranged from $150-500 dollars. I spent about $95 on this one (everything included) and it’s totally customized to my space’s décor. I will post again later when my whole living room is updated, and discuss all the projects I took on there, not just this chair.

 

Wild Edibles Dishes (Healthy meets Delicious!)

As summer dawns upon us, my family and I look forward to picking wild and garden berries. I have already started by picking mulberries and cherries. Right now I am unemployed so everyday I try to pick a different local park to walk my dog at while there I bring my tools for picking any edibles we find. This helps because if I find some berries at one park, I can come back a few days later and more of those berries will be ripe. I only take a small portion each time leaving plenty for the wildlife. As I pick a couple cups of a certain kind of berry, I try to find interesting recipes to use them in. I love to bake with wild edibles. I am often not satisfied enough to eat the fruit on its own although, there are many times that while I am picking (especially in my own yard) I do just that. Last year I had a lot of fun making cakes, pies and other things. However, as delicious as these were, they were not the healthiest dishes. I still want to do some of those same dishes to some extent, but I want to challenge myself to make those dishes healthier or to find healthier dishes to make. I will divulge one of my biggest secrets. You will not believe this coming from someone like myself who tries to live a pretty active and healthy lifestyle. I HATE GREENS (SALAD)! I think they taste terrible, but thats just me. I do eat greens (I even grow spinach), because they are extremely good for you, I just have to mask them in fruit and veggie smoothies. So, I dutifully get my greens in nonetheless. So, of course if you like salad, just throw your favorite wild edibles into that. Thats the healthiest option of all, besides fruit salad of course, which I do like. But if you like to indulge your sweet tooth every once in a while here are a few of my favorites recipes and I have variations on them you can feel less guilty about.

My first dish was a cherry-apple crisp. Here is the recipe and in bold are the changes I made and the rest in bold green are changes that I would suggest making or would make if I had all the money in the world to buy everything organic.

• 2 pounds Granny Smith apples - peeled, cored and thinly sliced (Organic Apples are a Must- Pesticides are the Reason)
• 3/4 cup cranberries (or cherries, whichever- organic if at all possible)
• 1/4 cup white sugar (organic coconut palm sugar or the like)
• 3 teaspoons ground cinnamon (organic cinnamon)
• 1 teaspoon ground nutmeg (organic nutmeg)
• 1/3 cup quick-cooking oats (organic oats)
• 1/3 cup all-purpose flour (un-bleached all-purpose flour would be best)
• 1/2 cup packed light brown sugar (organic brown sugar)
• 1/4 cup butter, cut into pieces (organic butter)
• 1/2 cup chopped pecans (organic pecans)
• Addition of Organic Ground Flax Meal and added to the cherries some cherry jelly I made from last year, since I was a little short on the cherries.

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 375 degrees F (190 degrees C.) Butter an 8 inch square baking dish.
2. In a large bowl, mix together apples, cranberries, white sugar, cinnamon and nutmeg. Place evenly into baking dish.
3. In the same bowl, combine oats, flour and brown sugar. With a fork, mix in butter until crumbly. Stir in pecans. Sprinkle over apples.
4. Bake in preheated oven for 40 to 50 minutes, or until topping is golden brown, and apples are tender.

Next we have one of my favorite recipes to add wild edibles to (either in the recipe or afterwards) Granola. This time I chose to make a cherry chocolate granola.

Ingredients

• 3 cups rolled oats (organic oats)
• 1 cup slivered almonds (organic almonds)
• 1 cup cashews (organic cashews)
• 1/4 cup plus 2 tablespoons dark brown sugar (organic brown sugar, plus I use the 2 tbsp for coconut palm sugar instead)
• 1/4 cup plus 2 tablespoons maple syrup (real maple syrup, organic even better)
• 1/4 cup vegetable oil (use organic safflower or coconut oil for cooking, do not cook with olive oil or vegetable oil in oven heres why)
• 3/4 teaspoon salt (sea salt)
• additional ingredients I used are:
• flax meal (3 tbsp)
• artichoke powder (which is usually used in smoothies, but I sometimes use it in other recipes as well its called Artichoke Vitae Plus)
• raw organic pumpkin seed (chopped up, but if you like them whole then go ahead and use them that way, 1/4 cup)
• organic cocoa nibs (I use about 1/4 cup or whatever looks satisfactory when mixed in)
• cherries (pitted and again I dump some in and keep dumping them in and mixing until I get a consistency I like)

 Follow recipe as below, but add or change ingredients along the way where necessary.

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 250 degrees F.
2. In a large bowl, combine the oats, nuts, and brown sugar.
3. In a separate bowl, combine maple syrup, oil, and salt. Combine both mixtures and pour onto 2 sheet pans. Cook for 1 hour and 15 minutes, stirring every 15 minutes to achieve an even color.
4. Remove from oven and transfer into a large bowl.

Original Recipe