D.I.Y. Projects

No more do-it-yourself projects for this girl! My club chair and ottoman have been showing their ages. I bought the set 18 years ago. The material is getting a little thread bare and there are actually a few rips. For several months I have been looking at material to reupholster them. Last week I fell into my somewhat crazed D.I.Y. mood and realized that I had 2 sets of curtains that I wasn't using. The curtains have small blue flowers on a white background. Not exactly what I was hoping for, but hey, I had the curtains and it wouldn't cost me anything.

You may be asking yourself at this point if I have ever reupholstered anything before and my answer would be no, but I've thought about it a lot. That should count for something, almost as good as staying at a Holiday Inn Express, right?!? I decide to start with the ottoman--it

should be much easier than the chair..

The first step was to take off the old material. It would have been easier to leave the material on and just cover it, but since the old color was burgundy and the new color is white I was afraid that the burgundy would show through. No problem, I jump in with my handy dandy seam ripper. The material was stapled on with about a gazillion staples, so I have to cut the material around the staples. This will leave a mess underneath the ottoman, but who will see it? About this time, I had my first real doubts about this project, but there was no other choice other than to proceed on.

The second step was to put the skirt around the base of the ottoman. The matching valances were about the perfect size, so it was just a matter of gathering them a bit before stapling them to the base of the ottoman. Did I do the sensible step of sewing the gathers in place--No, I don't want to take the extra time to sew this, so I decided it would probably work well

enough just to pin them in place.

For the third step I needed Tom's help. He got his handy dandy staple gun and was ready to get to work. Unfortunately, there were metal stays in the way, so he had to staple around them. Because of this, he missed a few of those gathered areas. But, I figure that once the pillow top is stapled on the base you won't be able to tell that there are a few gaps.

Finally, he had to stapled the pillow top on. Here again we ran into the little problem... he had to staple it from an awkward position, plus the material was just a smidgen too small. So we basically did like we did before, he stapled where he could. We ended up with the same result as before--some of the gathers didn't get stapled.

Now, is where the real problems began. I have a white somewhat upholstered ottoman. I know that there is no way that I can reupholster the chair to match. I have no money to buy more material and have them professionally done. So it looks like I am stuck with a burgundy chair and a white with blue flowers ottoman until I can save up to have them both redone!

Even Cocoa can't make the chair and ottoman look good together. Now you can understand the declaration that there will be no more D.I.Y. projects in my future! If I can't afford to buy something, I'll wait until I can. I believe it is called patience and self-control!