onewild&preciouslife: The Chair: Part 1

So now that I'm back on the waggon for a minute, I'll mention the chair. My grandparents had a set of armchairs in their livingroom that I always liked. When I was a kid I thought they were elegant and fancy and were fit for a French palace. When their house was sold the chairs went into a garage where they sat for about a year and a half. I decided I wanted to save them from that languish.

So I drove down to D.C. to take a look at them (and celebrate my grandpa's 90th birthday), and I was surprised by what everyone else knew: they looked like shit. I should mention, in addition to sitting out in an uninsulated garage which has had it's share of squirrel residents, in their former lives the chairs spent at the very least 20 years in a home with three chain smokers. And six children. And 9 grandchildren.

Well, I could only fit one of the pair in my car to come home with me, so I picked the better of the two. Here's what it looked like:

As you can see the chair itself is in good shape, but the material had definitely past its prime. It had stains, wear, a cigarette burn, and some serious discoloration. Also, I had to leave it out on my desk because it stank so badly of stale cigarettes. Ew.

I've tried reupholstering furniture before, but always stupid things that I didn't care about. So I've been sitting on it (ha!) for about three months, contemplating how to best restore the chair and whether I wanted to change the look or just clean it up. I even called a local reupholstery expert to get a quote. When they told me it would be more than $500 I shit a brick and said kthxbye! But yesterday I got bored, had me some wine, and got to work.

Every piece of advice I had read suggested taking copious amount of photographs as you work to help you remember how to put everything back together. So here are some more before pictures, looking at what I anticipate being some of the trickier spots.