Re-upholstery, project one!

Once we finished tiling the floor in the dining room we needed some chairs to put around the nice Pompanoosuc Mills table.  Someone had some chairs on FREECYCLE which we picked  up.   They were disgustingly dirty so I threw towels over them so we could stand to use them. Nice sturdy wooden chairs with cushions.

Well...last week I decided to try reupholstering those chairs.  Bob bought into it, too, so I picked up a few tools at Home Depot including an electric stapler---VERY worth the money--about $30, and a glue gun from Joann to go along with the heavy tapestry fabric we previously used for a tablecloth on the table.

Blue FREECYCLE chair before.  Notice the disgusting filth...

When I went to Home Depot a really nice boy on his first night in the hardware department helped me search out a number of things.  While I was looking for some other things he kept searching for staple-puller hardware.  I had found something for about $20 which I had thrown in my cart.  When I was almost done shopping, he found me with a packet of 4 different tools for $5!  I brought those home and, wowee!  did they ever do the job.  I had no problem at all pulling out about 200 staples from the chair.

Bob helped me unscrew the long screws in the seat (four of them per chair) and got me his allen wrench bundle to use for removal of the seat back.  Once those were off I saw how truly awful the chairs were...and took the second one outside onto the porch to clean up with a putty knife.  I won't even go into how nasty they were.

While I was working on the back and seat Bob was sanding the chairs and then varnishing them.  We both finished our part of the project at about the same time and last weekend we put the chairs back together.

We have placed them in the living room side by side so they form a more or less loveseat on the north wall beside the woodstove.  I love they way they look and I love the way they feel sitting on them.  Having been successful with this project, I feel more confident that we can reupholster the two wingback chairs, one from the porch and one from the living room.  Very exciting to learn new things that are so useful.