The great chair makeover!

This past week, Joel's mom Shirley gave me a wonderful old chair that used to be her fathers. With it, she also gave me permission to give it a makeover! I could just feel Joel's excitement when I took it home.
Cute, no? I love the detail on the bottom.

Something had happened to the finish, since it had been stored in an attic for the past several years.

The first thing I started off by doing was removing these little pins that are all around the chair. I wanted to peek under the fabric to see if the cushions were still in acceptable condition. They aren't really, but that's no big deal - I can just cover what's there now with the new fabric, and then put the pins back in.

Here's all the little buttons. I moved on to removing the finish on the chair. This took the better part of my afternoon, since it's just so hot and it has to be done outside.

Can you see a difference? A LOT of gunk came off!

After I was finished stripping it, I had the big test: How many coats of paint would this thing need?
Based on the test spot, definitely more than one, probably 3. Sigh.
Coat number one!
This was coat number... three I think? It needed more.
In the end, I did about 4 coats, plus I did a coat of spray paint afterward just to fill in all of the cracks.

So next part is the best part: covering the chair!! This is the part that really makes the difference.
I was debating between these two fabricsbut then I saw this one and it was perfect.
So then it was just a matter of covering it!
Taking flattering pictures of a chair at 10pm is not an easy task, but you get the gist of it.
It took a surprisingly long time to cover it, and there's still a few finishing touches I'd like to do this week on it to cover some seams. I also haven't been able to get those little pins back into it - Joel and I both tried, and they just won't go back in. Joel thinks I should try and scrape the paint up to give it an antiqued look, which would probably look really good! If I do end up doing that, I'll make sure to post some pictures.