While adjusting to life with a newborn and hosting out of town family, the last three weeks have been a blur. Actually, thus far 2012 has been a blur. As a result there are a few changes around the house that I haven't written about. They include the near-completion of Cole's nursery, further attempts at growing-up our master bedroom, and the make-over of three chairs. For now, lets focus on the chairs.
As Peter and I have set up our home we've been fortunate to receive hand-me-down furniture from our parents. Unfortunately, when our dogs were still puppies each one decided to attack a chair necessitating reupholstery. Up until recently, I was under the impression that reupholstery was way out of our home budget. We put the chairs in the attic and simply dealt with the lack of seating with apologizes and smiles. In December I learned of a local reupholsterer whose prices were more than reasonable. In the mean time, I found two fabric store with bargain pricing. Early this year I bought some fabric and finally called the reupholsterer. In January, she pick up three chairs (the two that the dogs attacked and one with a palm tree print that simply didn't fit our decor). Recently, we got the chairs back and they are beautiful!
The chair Gunther attacked goes in our bedroom. I still need to add trim to the bottom of the seat but it's nearly finished. I love the new fabric and the way it brings in the coral from our
bathroom.
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The chair Lily attacked goes in the living room. This poor chair suffered irreparable damage to the cushion and the arms had to be reconstructed. After being reupholstered, the chair looks as good as new and is perfectly neutral in our living room without being boring.
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Lastly, I had the two box cushions from my "Grandparent Rocker" recovered. The palm trees on the cushions were cute at the beach but they look a bit out of place in our guest room. I found a honeycomb-textured orange fabric remnant at
Premier for the cushions and then bought a yard of tan striped fabric for the piping.
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I'd say the reupholstery was well worth the $180 we spent. It took ages and a bit of comparison shopping but our diligence paid off. We ended up extending the life of our hand-me-downs significantly for way less then the cost of new seating.
