Who says atthecounter is only a food blog? Not me. I’ve been meaning to post about this and finally found the opportunity. When I first moved to Davis for school, I wanted a chair that I could use to sit in my room. After searching the internet and stores, I decided that I wanted to check out some flea markets to see if I could find a winning chair. Unfortunately, I was unable to find a chair at the flea market so I continued my search. I stumbled upon a company called Move It Elsewhere in San Jose, CA. It’s basically a consignment shop to help the elderly downsize when they move into retirement homes.
When I approached the property, there was a lot of furniture outside. I was handed a piece of paper that read “everything outside $20. The showroom is 75% off.” Shocked at how affordable everything was, I was eager to check everything out.
Inside the showroom, all the furniture was extremely overpriced. However, with a 90% off discount the furniture was reasonable. In the end, I bought a small desk for $20 and a Ethan Allen $375 chair that I purchased for $37.50.
With the help of my mother, we decided to reupholster the chair. The original fabric was an ugly stained pink color so I decided to go with a striped green and black fabric instead. After reading several articles on how easy it is to reupholster I thought this was going to be a piece of cake. Boy was I wrong! The fabric had been stapled to the chair and then glued with trim. There was no popping off the bottom like what I read. Instead there was hours of removing staples and glue.
My mom and I decided to spray paint the wood with an pearl color which required a great deal of time sanding first since there was a finish on the wood and small details. However, once we got it all sanded and all painted it really started to come together nicely.
Adding the new fabric was a difficult task as my mom and I needed to tightly pull the fabric around the cushion. It took us a couple of hours with the staple gun to finally finish.
The last touch was some trim that we hot glued around the bottom of the fabric.
Once it was finished I was thrilled with my new chair! However, I am so thankful for my mother’s help for she really put in a lot of labor. I now have a whole new appreciate for those HDTV shows that take on the task of reupholstering furniture.
What do you think?