Extreme Chair Makeover!

Hello!!! I have promised this post for a couple of days now and I'm sorry it has taken me so long to get it finished.  LET ME TELL YOU.....nail head trim....... I have no words....... It's so beautiful and I love it and I want to  used to want to put it on everything in my house.  It was seriously tedious and finger cramping work, but I got it done! It took me way longer than I thought and it isn't perfect....but I still love my final result.  Part of my problem was that I was trying to squeeze it in a very small space, a crack if you will.  I wonder if it would be easier if I were adding it to something that was flat.  I guess we'll see!  I must be crazy, because I totally have more plans for our friend, nail head trim.

Anyways....on with the show....

Here's my beautiful, lovely chair.  I think I'll call her Chairyl (funny?... no? ....whatever...)  She needs a name because she now means much more to me than just an ordinary chair, after all of the backbreaking work that went into it!

Here's some before pictures....it's really scary.  Don't say you weren't warned.  

The back

A close up of the seat....I know, this is horribly disgusting....I can't believe I am putting this on the internet.  We have had this chair for many many years.  The black hand prints were the last straw.  My son took it up to his bedroom to change a lightbulb and left it up there for a day....during which, my then three year old daughter found some black craft paint I had left out (dumb dumb dumb Anna) and decided to make hand prints all over this and my son's couch cushions.  I cried.  So, this chair was put out to pasture until I decided to fix it up! 

I started by sanding down all of the wood.  Then I pretty much started yanking and prying until I figured out how this back piece of fabric was held on (I had no clue).  Once I got it to rip away a little, I started pulling out staples.  Each piece of furniture you re-upholster will basically tell you how to re-do it once you get in and see how it's assembled.  (I will pause for a moment so you can laugh at my purple pants)..........................ready? Let's go!

You can see how I just yanked the fabric and the staples came halfway out....and then I just pulled them out with needle nose pliers.  

Until I got to only the bottom part left hanging on.  

 I had to remove the cushion to get to the very bottom staples.  It was glued on....so I carefully pulled it off.  

Next I just continued removing the fabric and staples until it was free from the chair. 

It was a TON of staples.  I cut my hand all up too...

Under the cushion was literally the back of the chair's fabric, stapled taut to the inside of the wooden frame.  The only thing giving it a little bit of support was an extra layer of muslin stapled in with it.  I was surprised it held up so well. 

I decided to leave these pieces attached and to cover them with the new fabric.  I didn't want to try and re-stretch the fabric across the open chair frame.  I figured out another method for attaching the back piece of fabric.

Next I unscrewed the seat base from the frame.  

 Once I got all of the fabric off, I painted the entire thing with three coats of Valspar Notre Dame....I had a full test pot of it in the garage, so I used it.  It was a happy accident.  After that I added a coat of Minwax polycrilic for a top coat.  I totally forgot to get a picture of me painting, but I'm sure your imaginations are right on point.  ;)

The seat base had piping around it.  I decided to leave the fabric on the seat base for extra support, and just take off the piping.  Do you see how there's two sets of staples.  One going around the perimeter and one stapling down the folded fabric?  I just took off the one around the perimeter...which was just the piping.  

Next I cut out my fabric (this is the back cushion actually...guess I didn't get the picture for the base cushion).  I made sure to give myself plenty of excess, that will be trimmed off later.  And of course, I lined up the pattern in a way that I liked.  This is this fabric from fabric.com and I used about 1 yard for this project. 

I started by stretching the fabric taut and stapling on the back of the cushion once in the center of each side.  

After I did that, I worked my way from the middle out, alternating sides as I went...so that way it would be very even.  I also made sure to check the front side for wrinkles and funky lines often throughout this process.  

Once I got to the corners, I just folded them over as you see in the picture and sort of fudged around with it until I got it to look seamless on the front.  It took a little playing around to get it right.  

After that I went on to the back of the chair.  This is my fool proof method.  Measure for an approximate fit...and shove the edges under with a butter knife.  That's it!  I didn't staple or anything....ha!  It held really well.  If I ever have a problem with it coming out, I'll add a bit of glue under the ledge and re-do it...but for now I think it's just fine.  

This was a tricky part.  I re-glued the foam back to the muslin fabric backing (like it was before) using some spray adhesive.  Next, I shoved the fabric down into all of the cracks.  The foam padding fit into that frame exactly, so there was a well defined "crack".  That's what I was working with.  At first I thought there wouldn't be room to add any sort of trim around this to hide the ugly edge, or even staple it for that matter, and I started sweating it....but as you can see, foam is squishy...

I just shoved the foam down with the stapler and was able to staple into the side of the wood frame.

After that, I used scissors to cut as close to the edge of the staple line as I could and to trim off all of the excess fabric.  

Next came the nail head trim.  These were the tools I used.  Well, not the screwdriver....not sure why that's in this picture.  A hammer, needle nose pliers, an exacto knife and silver nail heads. 

This was hard at first, I had a very small space to add the nail heads.  Like I said before, I had to squish down the foam to make it work.  What I did was take the exacto knife and try to trim the excess fabric off....which was unsuccessful.  I guess exacto knife was dull....so then I used it to carefully tuck and fold over the excess pieces under each nail head as I went along. I used the needle nose pliers to hold the nail heads in place.

And then I hit it with the hammer until I set the nail head, and then I removed the pliers and tapped it the rest of the way in place.  (no, I'm not left handed....I was staging this shot with a camera in my hand, so the hammer went lefty...lol) 

You have to be careful that you hit the nail heads strait on...they bend and warp reeeeeally easily.  It was SUCH a pain in the butt! There was a lot of starting over.  

Another thing I could have prevented, had I taped off my wood before doing this, was the beating my lovely paint job took while I was "tapping" those nail heads in.  If you look close you can see all of the scratches.   Oh and I totally didn't iron the fabric either....but it straitened out after all of the nails were in (phew).  YOU should definitely iron YOUR fabric :) 

Slowly coming along......

And finally after three days of "nailing" She's all done!  

I went back with a teensy craft brush and re-painted all of those little scratches, and then I went over them with a clear coat again too.  

 In case you wanted to know what the entry to my kitchen looks like. 

 sigh.....so much better! 

This is actually phase 1 for this little chair.  I have plans to add more nail heads to her in a few other places, but I decided to give it a break for a bit.  She is passable right now, and that's good enough.  My hands need a break!  

Hope everybody has a great weekend!  

xoxo

Anna 

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