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I am happy to report that one of them has been successfully reupholstered! A few weeks ago, I had given up on re-doing them myself & got permission from my husband to take them to a local upholstery shop. I decided I should stain the the wood on the chairs first, since it was in pretty bad shape.
![20140609_172958 20140609_172958](http://lh4.ggpht.com/-b2du3qHzDwg/U63airYIxtI/AAAAAAAAE5Y/5-WDbX2EzHg/20140609_172958_thumb%25255B4%25255D.jpg?imgmax=800)
After a quick sanding, I used a small paintbrush to cover the wood in one coat of Minwax Polyshades in Tudor with a satin sheen.
Then, I called the upholstery shop & was told it would cost around $550 per chair! Yikes! Needless to say, after hearing the price tag, Mark came home from work & immediately started stripping the fabric off one of the chairs! (You can see how nice & dark the wood is now in the photo below.) We decided to work one chair at a time so we could use the other chair to reference how it had been upholstered.
![20140627_160001 20140627_160001](http://lh6.ggpht.com/-o3rzkiGDKpQ/U63akfkviZI/AAAAAAAAE5o/dwJE6QpqHFU/20140627_160001_thumb%25255B4%25255D.jpg?imgmax=800)
When it came time to put on the new fabric (a 6’x9’ drop cloth) we started with the inside back. We used the pieces we removed as a pattern & cut each piece out as we went.
We folded the fabric back to prevent fraying & then put a nail in the middle of the top & worked our way out. We had to pull the fabric through the sides & bottom & then stapled it to the back. Next we used the same approach for the insides of the arms.
![IMG_20140614_151522 IMG_20140614_151522](http://lh5.ggpht.com/-mgaspJ4qpkw/U63amrilEeI/AAAAAAAAE58/Prtz_Sx8Wyo/IMG_20140614_151522_thumb%25255B4%25255D.jpg?imgmax=800)
We then laid the fabric on the seat bottom & pulled the back through the crack (not sure what to call that!) & stapled it to the back. We did the same thing to the sides.
![20140614_191553 20140614_191553](http://lh4.ggpht.com/-hBc1ocd1vNo/U63aoG8-9KI/AAAAAAAAE6M/TfyEQ6ozrRc/20140614_191553_thumb%25255B4%25255D.jpg?imgmax=800)
To get a nice seam in the front, I cut a long strip of cardboard from a box of canned drinks. With fabric folded underneath it, we stapled it to the bottom front of the chair & once we had the top part finished, we stapled it under the chair. I’m pretty sure that doesn’t make sense, so here is the video we watched. You’ll see him do it around 3:30.)
![DSCF2882 DSCF2882](http://lh5.ggpht.com/-SeX2qb4xC14/U63ar7HkHUI/AAAAAAAAE6c/5xcjjyHfhfw/DSCF2882_thumb%25255B4%25255D.jpg?imgmax=800)
Next, we tackled the outside sides, which were fairly simple.
![IMG_20140620_220903 IMG_20140620_220903](http://lh6.ggpht.com/-_VUoqFNlb3Q/U63atSF7yuI/AAAAAAAAE6o/wfLkUmM8ye0/IMG_20140620_220903_thumb%25255B4%25255D.jpg?imgmax=800)
The part that had us worried the most was the back, since we couldn’t just nail the back sides into the wood, since we weren’t going to cover that part in trim. We ended up putting a few staples in the top, middle, of the back & working our way towards the side. When we got close to the side, we used these upholstery tack strips to give us a nice, clean, staple free edge. Before using them we watched this video to figure out how to use them. It ended up being the easiest part of the entire chair! (I’m just holding the tack strip up next to the finished chair so you can see where we held it. Then we punctured the fabric & folded them 180 degrees away from the chair & nailed them in with a rubber mallet.)
![IMG_8704 IMG_8704](http://lh3.ggpht.com/-OyuwICzr8lI/U63au5W2mjI/AAAAAAAAE68/8nkqLJ4ydxU/IMG_8704%25255B1%25255D_thumb%25255B3%25255D.jpg?imgmax=800)
![IMG_8706 IMG_8706](http://lh4.ggpht.com/-XguKyQI8y5o/U63awqcseVI/AAAAAAAAE7M/_eF8S1QIjA0/IMG_8706%25255B1%25255D_thumb%25255B3%25255D.jpg?imgmax=800)
The final strip was gluing on the trim. Originally, the chairs had double welting around them, but I don’t have much patience with my sewing machine, so I just bought some trim instead.
![DSCF2879 DSCF2879](http://lh5.ggpht.com/-bgAKZmA5mKk/U63aycn6j1I/AAAAAAAAE7c/G-6WNMVwRoM/DSCF2879_thumb%25255B5%25255D.jpg?imgmax=800)
I am so happy with how this turned out!
![DSCF2855 DSCF2855](http://lh5.ggpht.com/-P801umX-D8U/U63azyzU_xI/AAAAAAAAE7o/hTV8mQfdBzs/DSCF2855_thumb%25255B5%25255D.jpg?imgmax=800)
One more to go! Mark is stripping the fabric off the other chair as we speak! Hopefully, we’ll have a living room reveal soon!
![DSCF2883 DSCF2883](http://lh5.ggpht.com/-objYs3K6HTo/U63a1MlX5NI/AAAAAAAAE74/9OQGRDaAhlY/DSCF2883_thumb%25255B5%25255D.jpg?imgmax=800)