Busy Recovering !

Well, the students all came back a couple of weeks ago and everyone has been catching the dreaded fresher's flu. I had it last weekend so didn't get any work done on my furniture. Poor Russell has it this weekend :( He is really sick today but insists he has to go in to work tomorrow as he has teaching sessions till lunchtime. 

I am feeling a lot better but still recovering so didn't get as much done as I would have liked this weekend. It didn't help that the clocks went back an hour last night and it now gets dark at 5pm!!
I did manage to get all six chairs reupholstered....Yay!!

The retro fabric I ordered was a bit uninteresting so I deceided to stick with my original choice of this nice 100% cotton fabric from the Imperial Fabric Collection called Sayuri. I removed all the old fabric and recovered carefully with the help of my trusty electric staple gun :) So, here are the tools I use to remove the staples from the old upholstery.

A sturdy pair of pliers, a staple remover, and in the centre is a sharp chisel as I find it easier to start working the staples out with this before going in with the staple remover. Any staples it can't handle I can pull out with the pliers. The staple remover slides under the staple....

The you push down to clamp it, then lever it out. They come out easily once you get a good grip on them, but it did take me ages to get them all out of 6 chair pads !!

Once they were all removed I took off the old fabric, but kept the black lining to put back on again.

If you are doing this make sure you allow around 4" of extra fabric all round the seat pad. Pull the fabric tight as you staple, and when you come to the corners make them as neat as you can.

You will end up with a lovely finish. I replaced the black liner and screwed the pads back into the chair frames.

So here we have the before and after pics, quite a transformation :) All the hard work paid off in the end and I am very happy with the end result. Now listed for sale on ebay.

BEFORE

AFTER

Now that I have sold my own shabby chic dining set and gone for a more retro look I decided to sell my lovely shabby chic corner unit. This one is painted in Annie Sloan French Linen, and to add a bit of quirkiness I painted the inside with a custon mixed contracsting pink. I will be sorry to see it go, but I do like how my decor constantly changes and is never boring !

I am looking forward to starting a new project next week, not sure what yet, but I have plenty of choice, if not a bit too much choice, as I have lapsed back into my hoarding/buying everything I like mode. I am actually finding it hard to find space in my workshop to work!
Next weekend is also Halloween ! A night out with work colleagues on Friday night, followed by a weekend of scary movies sounds perfect to me!

 Have a great week and a fab Halloween weekend!!