Upholstering for the First Time...Kind of

I have been looking on Pinterest at cool looking chairs that are custom made.  They are absolutely beautiful but the price is about $1500 and up for a single chair.  I love expensive things but I don't have the budget for that.  Even if I had the budget for it I am unsure that I would spend the money on it.  It just seems like too much.  Instead I did a bunch of research on how to reupholstering a chair and figured I would dive in. The worst thing would be that it didn't work and I would go back to buying furniture from others.  I went on Facebook marketplace and found a pair of chairs that said they had horse hair stuffing in it.  Something made me think that if it had horsehair that it was worth rebuilding.  Here is a picture of one of the chairs.

---

My pictures and directions will not be amazing on this blog because I wasn't blogging at the time of the chair.  I have another to do so that post will be more of the how to.  Basically to do these chairs I had to rip them completely apart.  Every blog said to do this carefully.  To take lots of pictures and to save each piece of fabric so that I could use it as a template.  I did that.  I took video, I saved pieces and then I proceeded to reupholster the chair completely different than how the original chair was put together so none of that actually helped me on this one.  If you were recreating the exact same way though it would save you a ton of time and guessing to have those pieces.

I washed the horsehair stuffing in pillowcases.  It was pretty simple.  I took it all out and then just tied a knot at the top and washed it like you would any other clothing.  Do not put it in the dryer.  You are going to want to separate and spread out the horsehair on a counter or something and let it air dry.  It's fast but you will really want to not skip steps.  The chair is time consuming so you need to think of it as enjoying a process and not how quick you can get it done.

---

You will want a pneumatic stable gun, (one that hooks up to a air hose and compressor) and there are some different upholstery items that allow you to get clean edges.  On a future post I will go through what I used.  I also made my own piping for this chair.  

This chair took LOTS of time because I honestly had no clue at what I was doing.  Some things that are important is that you want the fabric tight.  The chair will "settle" after being sat in for awhile so taunt fabric is important.  You will also need to make sure you pad your chair well.  I used the horsehair and bought new batting and foam for the seat.  You will have a ton of time and if you choose to do something like mine, several hundred dollars in materials so don't skimp on the simple things like batting.  

Basically I stapled, nailed and sewed this chair into existence.  I used brass head nail trim where the cowhide came into play because it gave the best edge.  Real cowhide does not always work to fold the edges under and so the nail head trim finished the look.  I also love to use the kind that you actually nail each one in instead of having them connected on  line of them.  In my opinion you can see the difference and if I was going to put the time into chair, I wanted to not cut corners in the finishes.  

I am absolutely in love with the chair and it happened to be super comfortable too.  Every time I come home one of the kids is siting in it.  I will do a play by play on the next chair so that you can get the actual how to.  I would encourage you to dive in.  The worst thing that can happen is that the chair you rescued needs to be rescued from you!  You never know what you can do until you try.

Once you get that washed you will start to put the chair back together.  What made these chairs  custom and worth doing for me was the different fabrics and style.  Southwestern fabric is very hard to find.  I ended up using a blanket that I loved because I could not find any fabric that I loved.  If you are planning on doing a southwestern style, be prepared to pay for the materials and to get creative.  I've seen others use rugs, curtain or even table cloths.  You want to know that the fabric can hold up to the use.  The grey fabric was bought at Jo Annes and the cowhide is real.  I bought the cowhide on Ebay.  There are all kinds of cowhide rugs and you can get them at a great price if you watch.  A lot of DIY projects are about collecting the right materials and those always take some research.  It's part of the fun though.

---