The Taming of the Shrew Colored Chair

For a reason still unknown to me, I embarked on a mission at the beginning of the summer to re-upholster an arm chair.

oh. my. gosh.

Disclaimer: what I am about to tell you is most likely the most incorrect and dysfunctional way of making this happen. I am not crafty but I am ambitious, making a challenge, rather than skill, the fuel behind this endeavor. Eesh.

Before I could recover a chair, I had to find one worth sitting in. This was a process in and of itself, and I naturally went straight to Craigslist as my chair search engine. After a week of wading through late 70s fabric disasters and itty bitty chairs meant for small school children, I finally spotted the object of my affection.

Beautiful chair, but I'm 22. And fun. So I wanted a chair more fun than just green.

To make a long story very short - the chair was great, the people we picked it up from were weird. My boyfriend and his friend went with me to pick up the chair, and apparently the former owners liked what they saw, as they wanted to go on a double date with us the next week and kept texting me the next day. Ew, sick, gross, weird. Craigslist is for making money, not friends.

Moving right along..I just started taking out staples as soon as I got the chair home. I had no guide book since Google was pretty unhelpful and I didn't really know what to look for, so I just made up this process as I went. I took off the feet and the dust cover since they were attached first. And then I just started removing whatever piece was stapled on top and worked my way backwards until only the frame was left. I numbered pieces so I would know to work backwards and could keep everything straight, since a lot of the pieces looked very similar. I also took an annoying amount pictures the entire time to fulfill the first-born in me that just couldn't throw all caution to the wind. A couple sample pics..

And for each one of those, there's about a hundred more. Not even kidding, I literally took around 300 pictures "just in case".

All in all, I spent about a week taking out staples, keeping the pieces organized, and eventually got my chair down to the bare bones:

At this point, I grabbed my staple gun and just started reattaching things in the reverse order I took them off. I am sure there were far simpler ways to make this happen, but this was the only way I knew undoubtedly I was putting everything back where it belonged.
The front of the chair had funky staples that were attaching the front without being seen. I wasn't ambitious enough to recreate this design, so I used a few strategically placed nails followed by super cheap fabric tacks I found at JoAnn's.

Just a few days of fabric, tacks, and a staple gun, and I came up with this:

I know my limits and stopped with the pillows, hopefully I'll be getting them done in the near future by someone much more qualified than I. All in all, it is extremely gratifying to know I did this all by myself, and I'm extremely happy with how it turned out. Can't wait to get the pillows done and a cute colored throw to put it all together!