DIY: See? It Got Better.

Let’s revisit my little upholstery project shall we?  Here’s where we last left off:

We went from this to this. Awesome.

I did a bunch of research beforehand but ended up kind of winging it.  Isn’t that how things always go?  This series from Design Sponge is a great resource for seeing how the pros do it.  The step by step photos are great. There are lots of helpful tutorials all over the internet so I’ll just run through the basics.  Google is my friend!

After cleaning out all of the hay, it was time to tie the springs back down.  As you can see in the top left photo below, they were a little wonky.  Most of the old strings had snapped so I clipped off the ends but left the knots so I could use them as a guide for tying the new strings (bottom right).

After the springs were tied, I used the old fabric as a template for cutting out some scrap fabric to cover them.  I stapled it to the top edge of the seat frame and trimmed the excess.  A layer of thick foam came next, which I secured with a layer of batting. I topped off the whole shebang with fabric.

I rolled the edges under a bit before stapling on the finish fabric.  Originally, I bought a bunch of cotton cord thinking that I’d make my own piping.  I quickly decided that that was more work that I was up for.  I used my hot glue gun to run a double layer of the cord around the edges and then added nails in between.

Let’s be real for a second.  Those nails were a bitch to hammer in.  They kept bending, going in sideways, or breaking.  For the thirty or so nails that I got in, 11 bent in half and were unusable.  It’s not all roses in DIY land.   Overall, the springs took about 45 minutes and the seat took me a couple of hours.  Here’s the finished product:

I decided to keep the wood natural and just cleaned it up with a bit of Murphy’s Oil Soap.  I love it!  We had a Christmas party this past Saturday and it held up to lots of testing.  The pillow is one of a pair I picked up from Fab.com a few weeks ago. It was a lot of trial and error but I’m so happy I went for it!