Vintage Chair Yeti-Over

Long-time readers may remember this vintage chair make over from way back in 2010. Sadly, when I moved into my house, the chair sat in the workshop for a while and someone left something metal on the seat, where it promptly rusted and left a big stain on the cream chenille. I tried cleaning it and only made it worse. It was a sad, sad day at the Rosenfeld Cottage.

Until! I saw this awesome chair on Apartment Therapy.

Not surprisingly, it's super difficult to find a gorgeous skin like that for an affordable price. But West Elm sells these Mongolian lamb's wool pillow covers for slightly less than a fortune (and I had a gift certificate that covered a big chunk of the cost).

I don't know how well these will hold up, so I didn't want to go through all the pain of actually reupholstering the chair - plus I didn't want to cut the pillows up. Who knows what would happen with all that fur? So I basically laid one pillow cover over the seat, and loosely basted it to the piping on the upholstery in the front and back. Then I looped the second cover over the back and did the same thing. 

Here is the before (without the tragic seat stain)...

And here is the after...

Maybe not quite as luxurious as the original inspiration, but it's definitely fun and adds a lot of texture to the living room. What do you think?

Chair Makeover

As I was walking my dog last November, I came across this little beauty sitting on the street corner. Don't worry, it had only been out there a few minutes before I snagged it (not long enough for the hobos to pee on it).



I had been hankering to try a tailored slipcover like the kind they're always making on Trading Spaces, and this free chair was the perfect way to break in my new staple gun. A few yards of Lena fabric from Ikea, and some high gloss brown paint for the legs, and I was in business!

Mimicking what I had seen on TV, I cut largish pieces of fabric, and pinned them directly to the chair. Then I put pins all along where the seams were in the current design. The curved back created some difficulties that I had to improvise around, and fitting the cover back on the chair after it had been sewn was a bit of a problem. Since the top of the chair is wider than the base, I ended up hand-sewing the final seam to make it fit. Overall, the process was trial by error, but I think the results are pretty satisfactory!



Right?