Tuesday, February 17, 2009

Tackle It Tuesday: My Computer Chair

Tackle It Tuesday Meme


Meet my computer chair:



I bought this computer chair 8 years ago - and have hated it since. The material is kind of like this threaded-together-corduroy and just a few weeks after I bought it I noticed the seat threads began to thread and fray. Not long after that I noticed the right arm rest began to separate and fray also. It was a slow process but it slowly got worse and worse over the years. I don't know what I was thinking when I bought this chair - for one - I HATE the color. It's dark, grey, depressing and it never does your mood good to sit in a torn up, ugly depressing chair everyday.

The past several months has been very frustrating as the arm has gotten so bad I couldn't even stand sitting in the chair. The arm had gotten so bad I little cushion fuzzies kept falling off all over the floor or on my clothes.

So the time had come to where I needed to make a decision. I either needed to pry open my wallet and buy a new one - OR I could MAKE a new one. I wasn't sure if I could or not, but what did I have to loose by trying, right?

So, I went up to my fabric closet and got out all my heavier or thicker fabrics. I didn't really have enough of one fabric to do the entire chair so it was going to be a patchwork deal. I played around and matched some stuff up and here is my rough draft:


On the first day I did the arm rest. I unscrewed them from the chair and had the utmost joy of prying about 500 industrial staples out of the arm rest. I took off the old fabric, measured out my the new fabric and re-stapled it back on.I think the hardest part was figuring out how to do the ends so they would look okay. The fabric was a very thick soft wool so the ends kept coming out bulky from the thickness of the material. In the end, I decided to do it something like this:


I cut the end into a 'T' and then folded them over and stapled. This eliminated all the extra fabric and reduced the bulkiness I was getting on the ends before. I'm not sure if this is a proper upholstery procedure - but it worked great for me.

About a week later I decided to brave the rest of the chair and I took the rest of the chair apart, and prying about A Thousand more staples from under the chair to release the old fabric and here is what I got:


I decided, sense I was being so brave and clever I wanted to add some extra padding to the chair. There was some padding sewn into the old fabric but it had to go when it was removed. So, I kind of, tried, to follow the same guide that was used for the old padding, which basically was just yarn lead down through holes in the bottom of the chair and tied off.

Did that even make any sense? Explain' this stuff in words is painful. Anyways, here is a picture that maybe can explain better of how I added the new extra padding on:

The 2 grey square foam-things where from a package I got in the mail and I had been saving them hoping they would come in handy. They did!
So, anyways, after measuring the fabric for the seat, stapling til my hand was going to fall off, screwing everything back together - here is what I got:

BEFORE:
















After:
















Overall I think I did a great job for it being my first 'upholstery' project and not having a clue as to what I was doing. I especially love the new fabric on the arm rest - the bright red really brightens things up and makes me feel all warm and fuzzy. The seat didn't turn out as well as I would have liked, but I am happy with it and it feels good to sit on something nice, neat and clean.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Wow, great job .. you made it look so easy! I would have tossed the chair and got a new one.

Controlling My Chaos said...

You did an excellent job. I don't think I would have had the patience for a job like that. it must feel great.

BTW, I think that first comment is spam. You might want to delete it. Those kinds of comments make me craaaazy (er).

Anonymous said...

Thanks Jill! Blame the spammers the next time we wig out for making us so crazy (er)!

Anonymous said...

Visiting from Tackle It Tuesday ...
Great job! I'm laughing about the fact that the company used the cheapest possible fabric, but spared no expense when it came to staples!

Mrs. Frogster said...

wow - you are brave to tackle this project! It looks really good! I agree with Faith - I probably would have just ditched the chair!:)

Lisa @ Crazy Adventures in Parenting said...

The red on the arms is GORGEOUS! Great job!

 
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