If you aren't familiar with bulk trash - it is something my neighborhood does once a month - you can put ANYTHING on the curb and waste management will take it away for FREE. It is truly awesome. But what is even MORE awesome is all the AMAZING finds I have had in other people's bulk trash. To name a few - FULL bedroom set, bookshelves, desks, pool furniture, leftover wood from someone's project, seriously, it UNREAL what I find.
Anyway, I found these chairs and thought, hmmmmm - its always nice to have extra chairs - and the TV show FRIENDS taught me that they don't need to match. I could redo them, right, I mean, I had never done that - but I'll just follow a tutorial. So, I took them home. There were two of them and within the first 10 days of having them home I took them apart (they had fabric seats) and sanded the heck out of the wood. They appeared to have been in a fire - they had weird melted stuff on the wood and the fabric seats were truly falling apart. MUCH to my surprise - when I took the seats off - I found tags still intact and hanging telling the age/the make - it was awesome - I was looking at antique chairs. They are beautiful. I looked them up online and found that each chair was worth over $800. Seriously, who throws them out!! Here is a picture of how dilapidated the seats were before I tore them apart. It did take some (wo-)man-power to pull all the staples out.
Well, it took me a few years to go any further - but I finally found the perfect fabric and the resolve to finish the job. I love birds and the color in this fabric, well, I just love it.
After many hours of staple pulling - this is the "frame" of the seat that I found underneath all the gucky fire-ruined fabric and padding.
Interestingly enough, this is what the OTHER "frame" looked like. Which one do you think is original? LOL! When I took it to the fabric store - the sweet lady who helped was in awe - saying she'd never seen a frame like the one above. Antique, I tell you. AWESOMENESS!
So, I forgot to take a picture of it all laid out before I started stapling again. Sorry. But basically, I bought an upholstery stapler from JoAnn's. I secured the corners first (all four) and then just stapled over and over until it was the tautness that I wanted.
Here are my finished chairs. I absolutely love how they turned out. You can tell that they have kind of a shabby chic look to them because I didn't re stain them after I sanded off all the guck. I was going to paint them - but ended up falling in love with the grainy look - so for now, I will just keep them how they are.
That is the beauty of DIY projects. For now, I am in love and when my love starts to fade - I'll make if over again with new fabric and fall in love again.
Till next time - for there is ALWAYS moore to tell . . .
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