Before and After Party: Buh Bye Pleather

So….you remember that one time, when I was redoing my office? Yeah. It’s taken a while. I’m just so easily distracted, really.

A few weeks ago one of my very best bloggy friends came up to help me out with a project. Traci from Beneath My Heart came to town and I could NOT have done it without her help. That’s what we told her hubby anyway. ;)

I wanted to reupholster the chair in my office:

I got it from Bombay Company years ago, and it’s a great chair, just not the look I’m going for in this space. I wanted to reuse it if at all possible.

My plan all along was actually to make a slipcover for it. But when we sat down to check it out, we realized a slipcover wouldn’t work with the pleather – it would slip and slide all over the place.

So we decided to take it apart and just cover each part individually:

Because this was in no-spend July, we used some fabric I bought months ago to make a bed skirt for our bed. That never happened. :)

I think we had plenty:

;)

We covered the seat like I’ve shown you a few times:

Then we stopped to tickle a Bub:

OH my goodness, I think the Bub loved Traci more than I do…and that’s a lot. :) He still talks about her.

The original plan was to tuft the back of the chair (it was already tufted), so we took the back portion off:

And then put a dog on it:

He wasn’t helpful. Really.

We left the pleather on the rest of it and just covered it, much like the seat:

We used a staple gun for all of the recovering, which was a bit of a pain. The staples were too shallow and wouldn’t grab the wood. We had to do each staple at least twice.

That part was SUPER FUN!

Then we took a nap:

Trace loved the new sofa. ;)

The next day, we put the chair back together and started the skirt. I knew I wanted it skirted because of all of the legs on the desk -- I thought having the chair legs hidden may help to break up all the legginess (word?) a bit.

Traci showed me a bahhhhrilliant way to fake a custom skirt. We hemmed up little corner pieces and then just stapled them along each leg:

When were done, this is what it looked like:

Then Traci had to go, and she left me to fend for myself. We all cried. OK, not really, but my eyes welled up. A lot. :)

It only took three weeks, but I finally finished it up. You all know how efficient I am, so this should not surprise you.

We had hemmed up more fabric, and then I cut it to fit along the sides and just hot glued them on, leaving the corners exposed a bit:

Yes, hot glue baby. It works. It does the job. You can’t tell. It’s not perfect. (Never is.)

Once I trimmed up the fabric, I needed to cover the raw edges, but I didn’t have anything that would work. I was determined to make this happen without spending anything, so I went to some extra fabric I’ve been using in the space:

I cut the blue stripe out of the fabric, then used my hemming tape to fold it over and make a “trim.”

I had to do the same for the back:

By the way, we didn’t end up tufting the back of the chair because 1.) it was going to be a pain in to booty and 2.) the fabric looked like it would tear if we poked through it too much and 3.) it was going to be a pain. :)

Once the trim was in place, it covered all the glue gun sins perfectly:

I came up with a nifty little way to hide where the pieces came together on the back – I just took some of my DIY trim and hot glued it around the edges of the blue banding:

And I LOVE how it turned out!!:

You can see I threw together a little pillow, with my cutie little sewing machine I showed you here. Traci was not a fan of my little Pixie machine. Pixie’s a little slow going, and you have to be patient with her…but she gets the job done.

Just like me and this office. ;)

Like I said, it’s not perfect, not even close. But I’m totally OK with that, if you haven’t noticed.

So here’s some before and afters for ya – a WAY before of the chair in the other corner, as it was before:

Geez, that seems like forever ago! OH, that’s right…it was forever ago. I swear I’ll finish this room soon. :)

And now:

Can you even believe it’s the same chair? Nuts!

You’ll notice from the first pic (up on top) that I changed up the orientation of the desk. The chair was hidden behind the desk before, and I wanted to show it off! I just feel like this way works better in the space.

But who knows if it will stay this way. I’m still not 100 percent sure anything in the room will stay where it is. :)

Here’s a before of the corner where the desk and chair sit:

And as it is now:

And…NO. I still have not painted the board and batten. It WILL happen this week – it. will. happen.

If I say it out loud it will come true, yes? ;)

Really though, I will have this space done this month, I’m sure of it. It’s about time. I’m painting tomorrow…swear.

So there’s my before and after for this month! I can’t wait to see yours!

Link them up folks, and remember to use the html from your specific post, and not your blog. This will be open for a week, so you’ve got plenty of time to add your post!

Have fun!