My God daughter helps me on many projects. She also goes to auctions and garage sales with me occasionally. She has a great eye and sometimes points our potential project that I may have overlooked. She spied a pair of wooden chair frames at an auction last summer.
They were frames only, no padding, no upholstery. On one hand, this is a good situation. It's a blank slate and all the work of removing the old upholstery, which can be tedious and disgusting, had already been done. On the other hand, there is no guide as to how it originally looked or the technical aspects of how it was upholstered.
But they detail on the chairs is beautiful and they came back to the workshop with us.
Lauren (my God daughter) cleaned them and applied two coats of Rustoleum Chalked Paint in the Chiffon Cream color. Then we sanded and heavily distressed the chairs. We thought a heavy handed distressed look would pair well with the fabric we (she) chose.
Lauren chose this beautiful duck canvas floral fabric. It matched the paint really well. Lauren is a huge fan of florals—much more so than I am. This one isn't over the top flower-y and I really liked it.
I added new chair webbing on the seat and back, added new foam and batting under the fabric. I figured out how to upholster the chair—a little by trial and error. Unless it is a straight seat covering, each upholstery project is different and I do appreciate learning how it was created when I am deconstructing the project. This one worked out.
Figuring out how to reupholster one chair was challenging and then I had to do it again with the second one!
Each chair took a couple of hours to upholster.
We put them in the window at The Standard in Bourbon, Indiana. I have a booth in this shop. It is a wonderful little ice cream/bakery/antique shop in a small town. The Standard lets me fulfill my dream of being a window dresser. The theme of the window was "Pairs" or "Things that Go Together". I received a call from the owner of the shop the next day. They had sold! Less than 24 hours! Boo ya! Of course that meant, I had to have something to fill the window....Yikes!
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