Greetings!

Several months ago, my husband and I purchased two well-worn chairs from a thrift shop. The upholstery was old, tired, and stained and needed to be refreshed. The chair legs also had some condition issues but the overall bones of the chair looked good.

We removed all the old upholstery to use as a pattern and replaced the foam cushions. For the legs, we removed years worth of dirt and stripped off the old stain. This process was pretty time consuming and took about a month, just working on it in our spare time on the weekends.

Thrift Store Chairs (Before)

Close-up of worn and dated upholstery

I looked through many, many fabric swatches before we settled on a neutral brown home decor fabric with a darker brown swirling pattern called Rooftop Pecan by Jaclyn Smith. This color and pattern worked well with the colors in our house.

We re-stained the legs a rich mahogany color to match existing wood furniture and to pair with a small little antique bistro table that we purchased several weeks ago.

We also added some rubbed bronze upholstery tacks to the backs of the chair for a little extra charm. I really love how they look in person.

Here’s a look at the refreshed chairs (in bright sunshine so the colors are a little different in person):

Re-upholstered chairs, front and back

Re-upholstered Chairs!

Close-Up of Rubbed Bronze Tack Accents

My next step is to make some little lumbar cushions for those of us who are vertically challenged! I always like to be able to touch the floor with my feet. I’m going to use the reverse side of leftover scraps from re-upholstering the chairs.

One more look with the before and after pictures side-by-side:

Chair Transformation

For my next upholstery project, I’m going to redo the sewing chair that I got from my mom. It’s the chair that came with her original New Home sewing machine from the early 1970s, and the fabric is starting to tear in places. I hope to do that project sometime this winter.

Enjoy,

~Jennifer