The Ugly Chair, Pt. Dos

I talked to my mom this weekend.

 

She kindly asked me to start taking pictures of our house.  Mom.  She’s pretty much the reason I started this blog in the first place, so it seems reasonable to start taking pictures of our house.

 

But I protested.  Because it’s what I do.  And I still protest… so. many. projects. not. quite. complete.  But I decided that it’s alright, I’ll take pictures anyway.  It’s been raining for days (okay, two or three), but this morning the sun broke out which knocked all of my protests out of the park.  

 

During the restoration process, I thought about taking a bunch of pictures but there are plenty of good upholstery tutorials out there.  Also, those tutorials would tell you that every chair is different.  Not every ugly chair is The Ugly Chair, you know what I’m saying?

 

So, let’s recall the… “uniqueness” of The Ugly Chair before, shall we?

 

 

 

Reusing the springs could have been an option, but there were two missing.

Look at all that delicious stuffing.

 

Instead of trying to find more springs, we got a piece of plywood and trimmed it to the hole and screwed it in place (correction, Jared did these things).  

 

I knew I wanted to use foam but I hadn’t really thought through the price of foam.  It’s pretty expensive.  In the future, I would probably try to find an ugly chair that had great foam.  But, I was already into the journey with The Ugly Chair so it was faaaaaaaaaar too late to back out.  So, Jared and I started looking for creative ways to get foam.  We even discussed getting a free couch off craigslist and harvesting its foam.  But, then we would have had a whole couch to deal with.  While we were garage sale-ing one Saturday morning Jared found an ottoman for $3.  It had two layers of foam, a thick one and a thin one and it was perfect.  And it was $3.  

 

I waffled on the color–I really did want to refinish the legs, but I realized that our living room has a lot of wood already and that things might get a little dark.

 

And…

It’s plain and simple.  

 

We painted it with paint leftover from painting our dining set.  The fabric is drop cloth, the same fabric we used for the couch.  I distressed it all a little

just for kicks.   I finished it in a clear wax. 

 

I relied heavily on Miss Mustard Seed.  She has lots of great info on drop cloths and painting, because, quite frankly, she’s fanfreakintastic.  Her fanfreakintasticness introduced me to Shauna at Perfectly Imperfect.  If you’re thinking about messing around with any sort of furniture restoration you’ll find them both incredibly helpful.  And inspiring.  And delightful.  I didn’t start dreaming about furniture until I found them.  I wish I meant dreaming in a metaphorical sense, but I don’t.  I’ve dreamt of furniture twice in the last two weeks.  Maybe I shouldn’t look at craigslist so much, eh?

She’s not as wrinkly as she looks in the picture.  

 

 

I finished the back with some piping I had leftover from the couch.  I attached it with hot glue to hide the seams.  It’s not perfect but I decided that I’m going to be totally peachy with it.  I don’t need perfection.  It’s official.

 

So now, we have The Ugly Chair!  

 

We still call it The Ugly Chair, and I’m a little afraid that someone is going to come over and hear us call it The Ugly Chair and think that we think it’s ugly.  

But we think it’s great. 

 

It’ll be all awkward because they’ll think it’s ugly, but we think it’s beautiful…

 

So that’s it, Mom.  There’s The Ugly Chair.