put your feet up

It's been awhile. But we've finally completed the ottoman! Remember this thing?

It doesn't look anything like that now!

Awhile back, we had ripped out the cushion and spray painted the legs, then went on a long fabric hunt. We found the the fabric and just kind of ... stopped. Life happened, and I also needed to figure out the best way to reupholster the foam and attach it to the ottoman. Most tutorials we found simply wrapped the fabric around the cushion and the frame, but that wasn't going to fly with ours.

So, I finally got around to buying some board to use as a cushion backing, and we borrowed Mike's dad's staple gun. One evening, Mike and I set to work. I cut the fabric (and we learned I definitely cannot eyeball a straight cut), and we did a test fit around the foam and board. But then we had to pause. Once the fabric was stapled in place, how were we going to bolt the cushion to the frame?

Mike figured it out. 

He drilled holes through the wood into the corners of the frame. 

Then we lifted the board off, kept the bolts in, and could then upholster around them.

By the way, there is something very power-tripping about using the staple gun + compressor. In our foyer, the loud pop bounced off the tile floor and our laughter got a little manic. Mostly because we were rather nervous and imagining nails shooting into feet and thighs. But it didn't happen. We were careful, promise!

Then we got to the corners and had to pause, trawl the web for good pictures/videos, and then concluded there's a big conspiracy out there with DIY reupholsters. So many pictured tutorials seemed to skip the shot we needed, and hands were in the way or the camera zoomed out on the videos. Or it could simply be that it's hard to explain, because I still can't tell you exactly how we managed it. Only that we did.

The best tip we did pick up was to go ahead and staple nearly to the corners until you've got ears.

Sometimes we would end up trimming the ear down a bit for easier folding. The best way to explain the fold was that it's like wrapping a present, except you're not trying to make that triangular shape on end. Yeah, I fail at instructions. It was a total "mess with it until it looks good, then staple, staple, staple!"

Once we were done, all we had to was flip it over and slip the bolts into their slots.

But we weren't done yet. To cover up the embedded staples I couldn't rip out when we removed the original, icky fabric, we decided to find some nice, white rope and glue it all around the rim. You would think this would be the easy part, but it turned into another frustrating tour of the city's fabric stores. While I could find plenty of ropes and cords in gold, purple, pink, blue, and I swear 10 shades of beige at one store, it was nearly impossible to find a nice, true white in our diameter.

Then, low and behold, I found a spool at Walmart. It was only a yard, but I bought it, figuring if I did need more, maybe another Walmart would have more (there was only one left at this store). Ha. HA. Not the case. And a yard definitely wasn't going to cut it. But it looked like 2 would do it, so off I went to what felt like every Walmart in 20 miles. And they were all out.

But I remembered seeing a skinnier version that you could buy by the yard, not in a set spool, so I bought 4 yards, figuring I could wrap the cord twice. Got it and came home dreaming of the success awaiting me.

Yeah. No. I was a foot short. I cannot eyeball worth a damn. It took me a few days to get back to Walmart to buy another yard, and in that time, I guess every single bride had bought up every inch of decorative white rope, because it was gone. Now I was mad. After another tour of craft stores, I was left with only angry astonishment that you can have 10 shades of beige and the only white available looked like shoe strings. Oh, and you can get pink rope threaded with gold sparkly stuff. No thanks.

Mike urged me to check out Lowe's, so I finally did. For $7, I got 25 feet (you know, just in case) of white rope that had a slight yellow undertone and wasn't quite as thick as I wanted, but at that point I didn't bloody care anymore. It's not a perfect match to the white paint, but whatever, close enough.

Then life got busy and the project sat until this weekend. With some Supernatural playing on the computer, I set to work gluing on the rope. Glue a section at a time, and then use a heavy book to keep everything in place while the glue sets. I recommend the Harry Potter series, or any Norton anthologies you might have laying around from your college days. Both sets work great for smoothing wrinkles out of rugs, too.

It worked great! It's an easy project to do in between other things. We have plenty of fabric and rope left to do matching pillows, which will probably be a winter project.

Yeah, we need to tuck our cords back. Don't judge.

fabric, furniture, and frustration

So, we’re going to do some time traveling, because I haven’t been the most diligent when it comes to posting In Real Time. This won’t exactly be a montage, but feel free to crank on some 80s power music.

In early May, we bought a reading chair for the library. It was an arduous, multi-day task because style and comfort were at war with one another. It was down to this comfy swivel/rocker chair and a comfortable but more stylish armchair. We were leaning toward the armchair, though I had some issues letting go of the fun rocker. But when we went back for the armchair, it was gone. Turns out it was a discontinued item. But wait! They could special order it! It was Berkshire weekend, where they like to make you think you're wheeling and dealing, but let's be honest, folks. Mr. Buffett didn't get rich by being a softy (however, I have to say the Buffett full-ride scholarship is awesome!).

The favored chair on the left, comfy rockin' Charisma on the right.

But we needed to Pick Out the Fabric. This deserves capitalization, because it’s a Big Deal. And the price of the chair changes with the fabric, so while the sales manager went to get us pricing all on the different tiers, we went through the swatch books. Our lack of confidence in fabric translated into lack of confidence in the chair. It was gone, so we couldn’t sit in it again for a good comparison.

So, out to the sales floor we went to look at Charisma’s awesome swivel rocker chair that totally wasn’t the look we envisioned, but once you sit in it, you go to a happy place. So then we started grabbing fabrics for this one. Mike kept leaning toward solids with texture, whereas I was wanting to find a fun pattern to inspire our direction in the library. 

As we wrung our hands and dithered, a living room set next to us was getting lots of traffic. The fabric looked sophisticated, a shiny weave of black, silver, and a subtle red brown up close, and we liked the legs (something Mike always focuses on with furniture). When a group cleared out, we sat down and found the set to be comfy. It also had an armchair; wider than the one that got away and a little bit more expensive, but it was also by a better brand.

Yep, we wound up buying it and in the display fabric. We envisioned draping a red throw over it for the pop of color we’d been going for (but couldn’t seem to settle on). A week later it arrived and we brought it home.

It looks good in the corner, though it also seems to emphasize our lack of decoration in here. It’s comfortable to read in as well, but it’s lacking a foot rest (we weren’t about to pay $200 for its companion ottoman!). So, we decided we’d find one on Craigslist and reupholster it with something fun and splashy.

On a cold, drizzly weeknight, Mike spotted an old school ottoman on Craigslist and negotiated down to $30. At 9 p.m., we threw our jackets on and went out to pick it up. Mike was pretty darned excited with the find, though it was quite apparent it needed a makeover. 

With the antique legs, we think it would be fun to paint them and pair with a modern geometric print.

We got it home and presented it to the chair. It was a little tall. That’s okay, we could always remove some of the foam.

A couple days later, I set to destroying the ottoman. I cut into the fabric and then ripped it off in chunks. But the fabric was super stapled all the way around, so this became war.

You might think that removing the industrial staples instead of ripping at the fabric would be easier. It’s not. I have the wounds to prove it. Some of the staples were already popping out, so I went for that low hanging fruit with a flathead screwdriver. Sometimes they popped out nicely, other times … not so much. The staple would split and I’d have two poky ends to contend with. Usually I could wiggle those out with pliers, and when that failed, I’d squish them flat.

Some of the staples were so embedded that there was just no way they’d come out without damaging the wood. With my fingers, scissors, and the flathead, I tried pulling, wiggling, begging the entrapped threads to come out. After some stab wounds in my hand, I finally realized that eyebrow tweezers might have better luck.

And they worked beautifully. It was still tedious work, but that’s what Netflix is for. Finally, I had enough of the old crud cleared out to prime. First, I rubbed the legs down with TSP to clear off dust and grime. Then, I sprayed it with Zinsser’s Cover Stain.

Be careful not to “linger” in your spray movements, or you’ll get thick spots like I did when my brain apparently wandered off. I grabbed a towel, hoping to wipe it off right away and respray, but I just made a goopy spot that needs some light sanding. It seems that sometimes the primer went on very smoothly, and other times (probably depending on the angle), it looked good but was gritty to the touch. So we sanded a few areas smooth.

Now that we were primed, we needed to paint. But in order to choose a paint color, we needed our fabric.

Bum-bum-buuuuuum!

We are in year 3 of our marriage and picking out fabrics/decorations is definitely a test. If we found a fabric that we both liked, it didn’t remotely mesh with the fun “modern meets antique” idea, because it would either emphasis the filigree details or just blend in with the room. And we wanted POP! Or, we liked the pattern, but the fabric wasn’t right for upholstery, or it was blue, and Mike wants to make sure we don’t become “the blue house” (I have blue tendencies). There was a fun, blue sailboat fabric we both liked and initially decided against because we didn’t want to be kitschy, but after multiple trips to fabric stores, it was starting to appeal.

We did take some fabric swatches home but wound up saying no to them. Btw, it’s really hard to pick fabric out of little two-inch swatches. At this point, I was looking at fun curtains at Target and considering buying a panel to turn into the cushion and pillow. We also were searching online for fabric because, man, it’s expensive in stores! But we were wary of judging the quality through a photo.

Then we decided that maybe we should just go for the blue sailboats. Worst case scenario? We get tired of it in a few months and have to reupholster. It won’t be fun, but it’s not the apocalypse or anything.

So, I went back to the store … and it was gone.

Weirdly enough, there was an orange-red version in the closeout section. It was discounted 70%, so around $3.50/yard. I said what the heck and grabbed 4 yards, figuring if it didn’t look good with the ottoman, we’ll use it for something else. It’s just a fun fabric!

Primed legs, folded fabric

It's not remotely what we originally had in mind, but we dig it's fun and funkiness. You'll just have to wait to see the finished product! Hopefully this week. =)