Upholstered! Sad and Saggy Armchair

A simple premise: “new” does not always = “awesome” where furniture is concerned. A simple illustration: this chair.


This is clearly not an old chair, nor is it a cheap chair (at least not in terms of retail pricing). In fact, you can buy this exact chair right now from its Pier1.com listing for $400. Yet, when I was hired to give this chair a makeover, the fabric was sagging, wrinkled, and quite frankly a little sad. It needed help!

Which is exactly why I brought in this team of experts to assist with the project.

The chair’s owner had a really clear picture of what she wanted–a design based on a Pottery Barn chair that included linen, button tufting, nailhead trim. Any fabric would have been a huge improvement, but these choices really helped give the finished product a crisp and classic look.

It also gave me a fun excuse to play with my tufting needles.


A view of the back all tied up. Adding some fabric when knotting the button twine helps add greater stability.

And a somewhat less fun but still very worthwhile excuse to whack some stuff with a mallet. This baby required over 200 nailhead tacks, all applied individually.

In the end, I was happy with the outcome and–more importantly!–so was its owner.
 

5 yards of fabric + 6 boxes of nailhead + 7 newly covered buttons = a chair transformed from lackluster to lovely!