Chairs, chairs, and more chairs!!

A plague o' both your houses ... Jeff and I are at home sick. Ick. I know this may sound rather obvious, but being sick totally sucks. I had sort of forgotten about it, since it has been a while since I've had a head cold.

We did manage to get out on Saturday for a bit (before the illness took hold). A trip to American Way Thrift turned into a gold mine. I'll go ahead and apologize for the lack of pictures for this post, but remember I'm sick.

We found a totally awesome old-school Coleman cooler in great shape for $2.00. It looks really similar to this one -- same color, but minus some of the scratches and dings.

We also got a great chair for the office. I've been wanting to exchange our office chair for something a bit more stylish. We found a great old rolley-style chair with a sweet metal base and fabric that blends perfectly with our darker office colors. Score.

One major find was this old school recliner Jeff spied. It was in decent shape -- it had a smooth recline, the foot rest sprung out without snagging, but it did have some mysterious spots on it. I figured we could try and clean it, but worse-case-scenario would be having to replace the seat cover or carefully placing a throw in just the right position. So we brought it home.

I could shoot myself for not taking a before picture, but oh well. Halfway into "redesigning" the armrests, I snapped this shot. Most of the spots had already been removed using some carpet/fabric cleaner. But, you can see the original armrests and some buttons missing.

It was time for me to take this bad boy on! In true make-over fashion, my first plan failed and I went through many trials and errors. I wanted to recover the armrests, but one was kind of flimsy, so I just scrapped them both. I found some extra padding in my craft room, and fashioned new fluffy armrests with a cloth napkin I had purchased to make a pillow (but never did).

Next were the buttons. Jeff and I did a bit of research learning how best to reupholster the buttons. Oh, here's a pretty good explanation on the basics of reupholster a chair. I'm skipping all the details of the button ordeal, but you can find a fabulous explanation here. It's not as difficult as you might think. I covered the buttons (some were originals from the chair and some I had in my supply cabinet) with matching fabric that I used on the armrest -- one because I thought it would look really great, and two because I needed a way to make a matching set of nine.

After much debate about where to place our new friend, we settled with a slight re-arrangment in our office/library. We now have a new cozy corner to work and read. I love it ... Jeff does too.

Happy creating, y'all ...