Do you remember last week when I said I was excited for the potential of the upcoming weekend? Well, I went and jinxed myself with that one. The weekend was good for the most part, but I came down with some sort of a super bug sinus cold at some point on Saturday and I've been as sick as a dog all week. While I had planned to add Tuesday and Friday to my Monday off, enabling me to knock out a whole bunch of chores around the house so we could go marching into spring with the lengthy backlog of our DIY tasks knocked off of our list, that's not how this weekend really ended up going. You know what they say, "The best laid plans of mice and men oft go astray." 

So I've been hobbling around our house in a zip up fleece while toting a consistently depleted box of tissues or half used roll of TP. I'll walk from one room to another, notice a little project that needs to be done, glare at it longingly trying to muster the energy to put together a plan of execution, only to find myself on the couch watching TV or in bed taking a nap, in a fog of congestion. 

Rather than fill your reading with unpleasantries of how my snoring is undoubtedly torturing Wendy and Lulu all night, I'll shift gears a little and show you something that we can officially check off of our list as "complete and finished!" 

Do you recall Wendy's Great-Great-Grandmother's (that we originally thought was Wendy's Great-Grandfather's) chair that we refinished last year? After allowing this poor chair to sit in basement after basement for 40 or more years, eight of them in our basement, we finally got a move on and did something about it. For those who were not following along before, here's a quick recap starting with a decidedly "before" photo.

We took the sad chair completely apart and sanded it back down to its bare wood.

After sanding, we carefully reassembled its various pieces, adding much needed structure and stability in the way of glue.

Once assembled, we tried our hand at staining the chair, or rather dyeing it using aniline dye. 

We followed that up with several coats of shellac. We were quite thrilled with the results, especially given the shape the chair was in when we took ownership.

Finally, I used our new pneumatic staple gun to add a jute-like webbing for the seat...

...followed by a burlap covering, hopefully giving this great chair another lease on life that can be appreciated for many generations to come. 

But that's not where this story ends. Though we had taken the chair as far as our skills were able to go, we still had the issue of final upholstery of the piece. Wendy had selected a wonderful gray fabric from West Elm and ordered a couple yards just for this project.

As much as we would both love to be amazing upholsterers and seamstresses (yes, this is a dream of mine yet to be fulfilled, honestly), we don't own a sewing machine, were horrible at it when we had one, and I don't even think we were able to sew a single thing properly. We're deficient in the area of sewing, it's a sad truth, but becoming adequate is on my list of life goals.

Until that day comes we have a list of other seamstresses and upholsters that we've used in the past. In the case of our chair we opted to enlist the help of a local company, Mt. Vernon Upholstery. They actually upholstered our mid century couch in our living room. They did a wonderful job and we were so happy with the outcome that we entrusted Wendy's heirloom chair to them for the final touches. I dropped the chair off at the shop several weeks ago and hoped for the best. We weren't sure of exactly what we wanted so we left it in their capable hands. 

Here's a photo of their shop. In my opinion this is the type of look you typically want to see in an upholsterer. Reminds me of the window shop I worked in when I was younger. Utilitarian, not fussy, they're there to do a job and do it well.

Last week we received word that he had completed the work on the chair and I headed out to pick it up. What I arrived home with was a complete and finished piece that we often thought we might never actually see.

I was a bit disappointed to see the upholsterer covered the burlap I had spent so long on with the fabric we had provided (sigh). He also added a double piping around the perimeter of the area below the cushion to ensure a clean and finished edge since you'll be able to see it below the pillow. Though my wonderful burlap had been covered, I understand why, because it looks so much better this way.

In addition, they used standard furniture fabric (not sure what the technical name is) for the underside of the chair, covering the bottom of the webbing I had labored over for hours. Again, I understand why this is in place, but now I just have to imagine the work I put into the seat now that I can no longer see it with my own eyes.

I actually talked to the owner for a few minutes when I picked up the chair and asked him about the job I had done on the webbing and burlap. I was wondering if I had done it correctly, but he was surprised that I had done it myself and said that it seemed very secure and like it will last for a while. He said the best thing I had done was properly weave the webbing and also that I had used staples that were evenly placed and sturdy enough to hold. I asked him about stretching or fraying of the ends of the straps over time and if we had to worry. His opinion was the webbing I had used won't come apart like jute would have, since it's covered in a sort of rubber. I felt quite good about my decisions after speaking with him.

The final touch, the cushion for the seat, isn't entirely what we were expecting, but we're happy with it nonetheless. 

I think we had expected the cushion to have more structure than it does. This cushion is more of a simple pillow than a seat cushion. We were thinking it would be more like a chair seat with a true top, bottom, and sides. When we first placed it in its spot, I think we were somewhat thrown by the fluffed up height of the pillow. 

But now that Mel has made it his new favorite napping spot, and several humans have done their job weighing it down, we really like the way it's looking. 

We're very happy to have our chair back in its rightful home in the corner of our newly finished sun porch. We think it really fits in wonderfully with the room and gives Mel yet another spot where he can relax and enjoy the day. 

Oh, I guess it also gives some extra seating for our guests, but that's surely secondary to its primary function as "cat throne."

Sure, we love projects that are finished in a blink of an eye as much as the next person, but sometimes you need to slow down to do things the right way. In this case, I feel like we've ended up with a pretty great finished product. What do you think of our end result? 

Have you ever tackled a furniture restoration or upholstery job of your own? Would you do it again? We'd love to hear about your experiences.