Reupholster Trial ONE

So I bought 2 chairs from D.I. a few weeks ago and thought to myself  "I'll have some free time this summer...I should try to learn how to do something new". I wanted some chairs for the Study room I'm going to make for Jake when we move into our apartment because he will be studying like crazy when he's taking the Paramedic classes and I don't want him to have to go to the library every night. Now I admit- I do not know anything about reupholstering furniture, but I watched a youtube video and it looked pretty simple.   As you can tell, these chairs needed a little TLC. They have been reupholster once before, and they were dirty as could be! 

 

So I went to work..... 
 

I unscrewed everything, wiped off all the dirt, sprayed the cushions with Lysol and added a cushion to the butt part of the seat. I didn't remove the old fabric for the bottom part because I wanted as much cushion as I could get.
 

Then I started to staple....
 

This is where things started to get a little tricky. I didn't want anyone to be able to feel that I had put in a square cushion, so I added Poly-fil to the end of the seat to smooth everything out. This really was hard to keep everything together and where I wanted it while I stapled it down because I only have 2 hands and I didn't have any help. 

 

Oh snap-What's up?! I have successfully reupholstered the bottomhalf of a chair. It's kinda comfy too! The back looks a little lumpy because I didn't add poly-fil to that part, but when the top is put back on it will be fine. I was really proud at my first attempt, and it looks a lot better now then it did when I started! Jake was getting back from work, so I ended with removing the first layer of fabric from the top half of the chair. The staples wouldn't have gone through all the layers if I didn't, so check out this old fabric that was underneath...
 

You can't tell from the picture, but that is lime green and purple squiggly lines. Ew. I'm really glad I took off that top layer because when I did a ton of dirt and dust was flying out of that thing. So I soaked the top again in Lysol and left it to air out overnight. I'm hoping to finish the rest of the chair tonight! 

I'm so proud of myself :)