real upholstery: round 1

During the summer of 2009, I started accumulating furniture that needed to be refinished or reupholstered. At the time, I was still sharing an apartment with my brother, and most of the furniture we were using was his. Two years later, I am finally living in a place where I want to use this furniture, and I recently got around to the chair below. I purchased it at an estate shop for $60, and the fabrics were super cheap remnants. About a month ago, Mom and I looked at some upholstery books and got to work. After 2 weeks and literally pouring our blood, sweat, and tears into it, I have a beautiful antique horsehair stuffed chair, remade to custom match my living room.

The chair before:

During (this is where we discovered the horsehair and quality cotton batting):

We removed the skirt and unnecessary cording, added larger buttons, made the tufts in the back/seat deeper, and ... after:

The chair is happily nestled in the corner between our two bookcases (one for books, one for games!), and you can see the beautiful print on the back right when you walk in the front door. I have a teeny tiny table that I want to paint and tuck in between the chair and the tall bookcase to make this reading corner complete, but that's another project. For now, I'm so happy and in love with this chair!

free furniture

Last semester, I was headed out the door of the building when I spotted a piece of furniture that was out of place in the lobby. It had a sign that said "free", so of course I stopped to look closer. It was filthy and the paint was peeling off of it, but it had good lines and a ton of storage. So I called Ricky and asked if he and our friend Jacob could bring it upstairs. I cleaned the whole thing with bleach, pushed it into the unused portion of our front hallway(biggest waste of space, and the worst part of our weirdo floorplan), and there it sat for months.
At long last, when Winter break began, I finally got around to sanding, re-painting, and adding new hardware to the piece. I already had the paint, and the hardware cost $3. I left the piece in the hallway to dry, but when I came back a week ago, Ricky and I moved it into it's new space in the living room. It now serves as a backdrop to Henry's living room play area, and houses all of our DVDs and CDs inside it's drawers. The surface on top is perfect for displaying Henry's books and some of his favorite wooden toys, and there is room underneath for baskets to stash more toys. Re-arranging made the room feel much bigger, and I'm thrilled at all of the extra drawer-space we have now - we could do away with stacks of DVDs that were piling up around the television, and Henry's space is more organized. The piece isn't perfect, but it was free and I love it, so take a look!

Before - the chest sat in the hallway in pieces:

After - painted and moved to it's new home in the living room:

thinking about it

I found this sofa (actually an extremely comfy futon) yesterday, and I'm thinking about buying it. I don't need it right now, but I researched it and found out I'd be getting a really good deal (50% off), so it's tempting. I would have to store it for a year until I get a new apartment and have a place to put it. It would be nice to start out in a new place with new furniture. I've started thinking that futons are really frumpy, but that's just because we've been using the standard metal kind for years (don't get me wrong, we're still grateful for it Chip!) I love the sleek armless look of this one though, and it's the perfect size for an apartment. I might go get it while it's available... what do you think?