Chair Dance- Part 1

Long time, no blog. *Sigh* The auction was a HUGE success. So glad it's over. Ready to work on the next one. In two years.

Also, not working anymore. Quit. Life does that sometimes. Makes you think about direction and where you are going and where you'd like to be going. Then you make changes. Scary, good, nerve wracking, amazing, changes. Usually something spurs this line of change and thinking- something like death. Of your DH's parent. Who is/was trans-gendered-- Used to be a male but became a female. Seriously? Yes. Weird? Of course. For reals? Do you think I'd make this up? Will tell the story later. You won't believe, most of our IRL friends don't believe either, but again, why would we make it up?

So.... what do you get when your trans-gendered father-in-law dies? Not sure how to answer that one? I don't know why you're struggling... everybody knows, you get chairs! OK. Not everyone is lucky enough to have a trans-gendered FIL and even fewer are lucky enough to get chairs out of the deal. But I am-- Lucky on both fronts! Yay me. And, I get to do the chair dance!

How do you do a chair dance you ask? Hiding in plain sight in the icky yucky garage of my FIL's house were two amazing chairs. Here's one.

(That's MY messy garage...I really can't do justice to the messy garage at my FIL's.) DH was kind of appalled that I wanted to drag them home with us. I was ridiculously excited about the chairs. They are amazing. Great lines, comfortable, and ripe for reupholstering! I've always wanted to learn how to do that, but I've never found anything that NEEDED to be reupholstered. Most of the things that I would want to re-do are already re-done and that's silly.

After they were hauled up here, I decided that they were too awesome for me to screw up and maybe I should have them done professionally. I called around and asked about prices and timeline, you know, I did research. Did you know in the Portland Metro area reupholstering is very popular and most folks that do it are 1-2 months out in taking new projects? I didn't. Also, in the 'burbs, where I live, there is a shop that will do it, and it will only be $740, plus fabric. Oh, fabric starts (STARTS) at $35/yard! (We need 8 yards for our project) Crap! I so totally could have bought the chairs for less than re-doing them could cost me! Maybe I will be doing this myself.

Off to the Mill End store I went. Armed with my photos and three books I checked out from the library--this isn't going to be a new career, I thought borrowing books was better than buying. At the Mill End Store I met lots of really nice helpful folks who, having only met me one time for less than 10 minutes, are completely confident that I can do this project all by myself AND I can do a good job. (Note: If you are feeling at all puny, you should go to the Mill End Store and talk to the folks in Home Dec. They will make you feel MUCH better about yourself.) So, I bought fabric-- that was only $15.99/yard, I'm sure it's not nearly as amazing as the other fabric, but I really like it. The backs of the chairs will be the print and the seats will be the solid. They only had 1.5 yards of the print and it is PERFECT for the vintage of the chair, so, I'm making it work.

Last weekend we started pulling apart one of them. Well, I started to pull the back of one apart then I decided to wait for DH- he's better (more patient) than I am with destruction and since I need the deconstruction to be fairly orderly so that I can use the old as a pattern for the new, he helped me. And, this is as far as we got.

Cool huh? It's going a lot smoother than I anticipated- I thought for sure there would be sewing and glue and just general strife in this part of the process and so far, nothing. Nada. Not to say that it's not coming, we haven't started on the seat part... yet.

I did get a call from a very nice lady who does upholstery, she can't get to my project 'till September or October, but she is willing to help me since she, too, is sure that I can do this after speaking to me on the phone for 5 minutes. I will email her photos and questions and she'll direct me. How nice is that? I'm thrilled that there are helpful souls out there who will rescue me when I screw this up royally.

I'm going to go get an air compressor (YAY!) and staple gun (DOUBLE YAY!) first, then we will attempt the deconstruction of the seat. I will keep you updated.