DIY inspo [reupholster bergere chairs]

I've been waiting to post this for awhile, but couldn't, because the chairs in question were a yet-to-be-delivered wedding present for my brother and his wife. Since I finally handed them over last month, I can share with you now!

This project took ages and is more expensive than most of my DIY's, but still absurdly affordable compared to buying two custom made chairs. We got to be very selective with the bones and shape of the piece, plus the fabric and finishing touches, which is worth quite a bit.

I'm going to start with the two blog posts that taught me how to reupholster. No joke. You don't need to take a class, you don't need to be an expert, you need to have access to the internet or a book and be a bit brave. Trial and error, folks. If my chairs don't hold up well, R and J can always come back (they have a life-long warranty called sibling love).

This post is so, so well done, by my girl crush Emily Henderson. It has great information, though not really a step-by-step (when she gets to the ACTUAL reupholstering part, she tells you to go to a professional). Still, it's worth checking out if you're looking for pieces to work with and want to get your head around the general concept.

Now my other (and probs deeper) girl crush, Jenny Komenda, really did share a tutorial. Her five posts on how-to reupholster (see part 1, then follow on for parts 2-5). She's right, it's super labor intensive and takes some time, but obviously I think it's worth it. What worked out well for me was that the chair she re-did, above, is almost identical to the chairs I did for J and R, below.

should have taken better "before" pictures...

Found this pair on glorious Craigslist, I think for $150. Stay tuned to see what we did to them, using this chartreuse green chevron fabric they chose:

fabric.com

The plan is to post the project next week, but I wanted to get a start on sharing the journey. Today is my first day as a full-time employee at my new job (although I spent two days in the office earlier this month), so it's a light week here at for a song.