That Ugly Green Chair

Well, here goes nothing!  I've been told by many to create a blog about some of my bargain "finds" that I repurpose, yard sale tips and awesome finds, etc. so....here it goes!  I'll start with this ugly ugly green pleather chair that I found at St. Vincent during their usual Friday morning "make offer" sale.  It was sitting all alone, just waiting for someone to take it home.  I sat down in it (afterwards lysol-ing everything) and viola, love at first sit.  I asked the lady what they were wanting for the chair, and she said, of course, "make offer".  So, being the low-ball-offerer that I am and always probably will be, I offered $5....she took the offer.  I put the lovely green chair in my SUV and took it home, of course making people think I was crazy.  See below for the "before" shot:

First step was to remove all 1,476,992 brass brads that were probably about 150 years old (give or take ;-) ), then remove all 3,651,935 rusty nails underneath the brass brads.  Time to remove brads and nails: approximately 4 hours.  

After all that was removed, the nasty green pleather could be removed, and boy was that messy.  Underneath the pleather was "batting", and a straw material used for padding.  After that, cleaning out all the nasty cherrios, crumbs, a couple centipedes, and rusty nails from the batting I again Lysol'ed everything.  Time to remove nasty green pleather: 3 hours. 

After removing the pleather, I sanded the wood parts and restained them which thankfully only took 30 minutes, WHEW! 

After that, I took each piece of pleather, and wrote down where each piece went on the chair (VERY helpful, I might add....) Next step was to drag my loving boyfriend to Joann Fabrics to carefully choose the appropriate fabric for the chair that would match our decor (and I had him calculate how much I would need......).  After that, I laid down each and every piece (18 to be exact), traced, and cut out the pieces.  Next it was time to whip out my staple gun and get staplin'!  This part was not as frustrating as taking out all the nails, but it ranked pretty high, along with sewing the damned cushion!  Once all the fabric was stapled on all pretty-like (about 3-4 hours), the old brass brads made a reappearance!!  I only allowed a small percentage of them to come back home as there was no way in hell I was going to go through that torture again.  So, after about half of the nails became bent and my thumb being hammered, that process was done in about 1 hour. 

WHEW my first reupholstry project is done.....but wait, wouldn't it be lovely to add a nice little pillow too??  Okay, after 12ish hours, the chair was FINALLY done. 

Mind you, this was not done in one day or even one week.....Here is the finished project (although no where near perfect, I love it :-)  )