If you’ve been following along the past few weeks, you know I’ve been doing a lot of upholstery.  Upholstering is a skill I learned out of necessity.  I had a slate blue & mauve overstuffed freebie chair that wasn’t working with the fabrics I wanted to use, so I sort of reupholstered it.  I was too afraid to really pull the chair apart, so I did a totally made-up half-slipcover-half-upholstery sort of thing.  “Slipholstery”, if you will.  It was a bit of a mess, but I was so proud of that chair.  It gave me the courage to purchase other chairs that needed to be reupholstered. I started working on more yard sale finds and I learned on each one along the way.  I’m still learning.  I still have a lot of limitations when it comes to upholstery and I still make some things up as I go along, but my

I hope you like chair makeovers, because I have chairs galore in the studio! This is another one I found on Craig’s List.  It was quite a bargain, because a couple of the legs were loose.  This would’ve been a much harder fix on an older chair, but this one had bolts that just needed to be tightened. We stripped off the old upholstery and removed the piping around the bottom edge of the seat.  I added an additional layer of batting, because I wanted to upholster down to the curvy trim.  I think it looks better that way and works with the lines of the chair. The wood frame was shiny and pretty banged up, so I decided to paint it in MMSMP Linen, which is a creamy white.  I sanded the glossy finish first and added the Bonding Agent. While I want to do everything in blues, grays and whites,

I have a lot on my plate for the next couple of months and my mind has been churning trying to sort and prioritize.  When I hit these busy seasons, it helps me to get things checked off the to-do list, so I decided to get going right away on things this morning.  Before heading to the studio, I worked some more on the wallpaper mural in the upstairs bath.  Hanging wallpaper is tedious work, so I can only take it in doses.  I just have a few more rows to hang and then it will be all done.  I’m loving how it’s looking, though! I was a bit scattered when I arrived at the studio.  I wanted to work on about ten things at a time, so I sort of scurried from one thing to the next.  Kriste is great at helping me settle down.  She organized the furniture

I have been in an upholstery mood lately and I’ve learned I need to take advantage of that sort of mood and get some upholstery done.  Kriste worked on stripping a couple of chairs we had hanging in the stash and I started upholstering this beauty.  One of my regular shoppers at Lucketts sent me pictures of it, asking if I would be interested.  Well, of course!  So, we negotiated a trade.  Jeff’s face was a riot when he saw someone bringing a piece of furniture to our booth instead of away from it.  Especially a chair with grass hanging out of it.  But he didn’t see what I saw.  I saw the gorgeous patina on the wood frame and the old straw and horse hair stuffing.  I knew I could bring this old girl back to life and she would be worth it. I’ve also been really into checks lately.  I’ve added

We are finally at our final installment of this video tutorial series on reupholstering a French style chair.  It’s time to frame out those upholstered panels and cover the staples with some gimp trim. In case you missed the first five parts, or need to reference them, here are the links… Part 1 – stripping the chair Part 2 – painting the frames Part 3 – distressing & waxing the frames Part 4 – selecting & cutting the fabric Part 5 – reupholstering the chair I often get asked what the “trick” is to applying trim.  Honestly, there is no trick.  It’s just hot-glued on!  Really.  At first I thought I might be taking a short cut, but I’ve taken apart dozens and dozens of chairs and settees and almost all of them have been glued.  One or two of them were just tacked into place, but I’ve seen enough

We are finally here…get your staple guns out and let’s start upholstering!!  I know it’s hard to believe that it takes four parts to get to the point when you can actually upholster, but that’s often how DIY projects are – you have to do several steps to get to the fun part (or at least the part when it starts looking like an improvement and not an epic fail.) This episode is the longest, because I wanted to show each step in detail, especially the tricky places.  I know it also helps visual learners to actually see what I’m doing as opposed to just hearing me describe it.  I also wanted to do a bit of hand-holding for people who are brand new to upholstery. I talk about the staple gun I use in the video, but I thought I would link to it here as well.  It’s a