Adventures in Upholstering

During the last hurrah with the fellow volunteers from my group, someone decided that we all needed nicknames.  Then, someone decided that mine would be sexy grandma.  The grandma was in reference to my love of crafting, and the sexy was probably to make me feel better about being called a grandma at age twenty-six...also, as numerous Nicaraguans have pointed out, I am nalgona.

Anyway, the love of crafting and diy is definitely true, and as I face a more domesticated life here in the states, I have been fixated on getting an ottoman.  Not sure why, I just really wanted one.  So when I found my old little seat stuffed in the back of a hall closet, I knew what I had to do.

I remember being a little girl, sitting on this vanity chair and making silly faces at myself in the mirror.  I thought the pink checkers were great back then, but I now wanted to give it an update.  Luckily, I was able to travel to Portland in May for a friend's wedding, and while I was there, my ever crafty friend took me to Bolt, where I found this fun fabric.

With my brother's staple gun in hand, and pinterest instructions on how to upholster (favorite tip: don't try to upholster something unless it is puffy and has ledges that scream, "staple gun me here!"), I began.

First, I had to remove all of the previous staples...this was not as easy as I had thought.

There were layer upon layer of staples, and all at difficult angles, so that I couldn't really get at them with the staple remover.  I had to use my tapestry needle to get up under them and pry them up.  It took me the length of an entire movie just to get the piping off.

And under that were more staples.  They were so close to the bottom that I couldn't fit anything under them to pry up, so at that point I just decided to leave the old fabric in place, figuring it would hold the stuffing in place anyway.

You won this round, pink fabric.

Finally, I was ready to staple the new fabric in place.

The corners were tricky, but I took the corner of the fabric and stapled that down first, then folded and stapled in the leftover edges.

It looks just passable.  I'm glad people won't be inspecting the bottom of this thing.

Now to trim off the excess fabric.

Except, just when I had the seat at an angle where I could cut, my parent's cat decided she wanted to be sitting on it.  Thanks, Charm.

Finally free of excess staples, fabric, and cat, here is the more modern little ottoman/vanity seat.

Sexy grandma indeed.