A Tale of Two Wingback Chairs

*Edited to add tool list below

I had some wing back chairs that were in real need of an upholstery job.  Having never done this before, I went to the internet to see how it was done.  After looking at a site or two I was convinced that I could do it (although, in all my searching I did not find "how to" info on wing back chairs with pleated backs, the kind of chairs I was about to tackle). 

I started by estimating the amount of fabric I would need.  I found https://www.fabric.com/sitepages/reupholstery.aspx to be helpful, however, I could not find an exact match for my type of chair.  I ended up estimating 5 yards per chair just to be safe.  I could always use extra fabric for pillows.  Of course, the fabric I fell in love with was on the pricey side...so much for an affordable fix.

Fabric, meet chair.  You are going to be great together!

When the fabric arrived, I was eager to get started.  I knew I would need a staple gun and staples, but I could tear apart carefully remove the old fabric with tools I already had on hand, so I got right to it.  Because I had two chairs, I decided to tear apart only one at a time so I could use the other as an example when putting it back together.  Best. Decision. Ever.  If you don't have an identical piece of furniture, just take lots of pictures prior to tearing it apart.  I also took pictures of places that I thought might be difficult to reassemble.  Another decision that helped tremendously was to number each piece as I took it off (it's not like you are going to keep the fabric, so go ahead...use a Sharpie :)).  When reassembling, you just put them back in the opposite order (Piece#1 is going to be the last piece you put on when you are done).

Be prepared to remove lots and lots and lots and LOTS of staples.  Working at it a couple of hours a day, it took me about 3 days...I thought my hand would never be the same.  Also, the sites I had looked at for tips said to save the tack strips and furniture tacks, but I soon realized that none of my tacks would be reusable, and the tack strips were in no shape to be reused.  Thank goodness for Amazon...I ordered those right up.  I also ordered new trim, some new batting, and new dust cover fabric for the bottom.

Once I had everything removed, I placed each piece on the new fabric (making sure both the old fabric and the new fabric are facing the same direction, either both facing up or both facing down) and cut each piece out leaving 1/2 to 1 inch extra fabric around each piece. I just wanted to make sure that I had plenty of room for error...you know, this being my first time and all!

I started with what I thought would be the trickiest part...the pleated back.  I was very careful to leave the old back as much together as possible, removing only one piece at a time when cutting out the new fabric.  The pleats were made by sewing strips of fabric together.  They were just straight lines, so I figured I could handle it with my very basic sewing skills.  To make sure I sewed it like the original pleats, with it bulging more in front, I measured the distance from seam to seam on the bottom piece of fabric, marking it with pins, and then did the same with the top piece.  Then I matched each set of pins up and pinned them together removing pins that would end up under the fabric so I wouldn't run them over with my sewing machine.  It was tedious work, however, it worked! I ended up with a pleated back that looked identical to the original.

Re-stuffing the pleated back turned out to be the tricky part.  The old batting was in perfect shape, but trying to push it in proved to be difficult.  In the end, I wrapped paper around the batting, pushed the paper and batting in together, and then pulled the paper out.  It was still a little tricky, but it worked.

And then all that was left was to put it all back together! This part was definitely more fun than removing staples, so it went quickly.  This is the point where I recommend using and electric or pneumatic staple gun.  I can't image what it would have been like to staple it manually. To make sure I didn't get bunching or pulling of the fabric, I would tack the fabric with a staple or two, and then pull the opposite side tight and tack it.  And then another corner/side and its opposite.  This way if it bunched or pulled awkwardly, I could take just one or two staples out to fix it.  I added in some new batting where needed, like in the seat and on some of the edges where the old stuffing just wouldn't go back nicely. 

The last thing to do was the tacks and the trim.  The tacks and the trim covered staples that were exposed, so when you are putting your staples in, keep in mind that spacing will matter if you don't want your staples to show.  And also, tacks are so finicky! I don't know how many times I almost had a tack in and suddenly it would bend and shift way out of place.  Some of them I could redeem, however, many bent and in the end I had to purchase more tacks just to finish the job.

In the end, I was completely thrilled with the way they turned out! I am not sure that I saved myself anything by doing it myself (it took a significant amount of time and money), but it sure was satisfying to be able to say "I did it!"

*I forgot to mention the tools I used to remove the staples.  On the first chair I used only a flat head screwdriver and a pair of pliers.  After my hubby saw me struggling with those tools, he raided his tool shed and brought me a pair of wire cutters to help grab and pull the staples, and found a very small flat head screwdriver bit in his Leatherman that worked wonders at getting under the well embedded staples.

Slime

A couple of weeks ago, we were at the library picking out books.  Somehow, Corey ended up with a book titled "How to Make Slime" and he was very insistent that this was a book he really wanted to check out.  Not wanting to stifle his enthusiasm about the library and learning in general, I said ok and off we went to the checkout counter.

Later at home it was one of first books he pulled out.  "Mommy, can we make slime?" We read through the book, looked at the ingredients list and instructions, and even though it seemed like it would be terribly messy, we gave it a shot.

Let me be the first to say...it was actually really cool!  The little boys loved playing with it, however, they weren't very keen about getting it on their hands (crazy I know).  And in the end, it really wasn't all that hard to clean up. Maybe, just maybe, we will do it again someday.  Someday when they are old enough to get how cool it is that something can be slimy and solid at the same time!!

Sliding (pictures only)

 

1..2..3

Let me start by saying that we have very cute little boys who are both brilliant. That being said, they occasionally have moments when I wonder "how can they possibly NOT get this."  One of those moments occurred yesterday.

Our oldest loves to count.  He tries to count everything...snacks, books, you name it. He doesn't always get it right, but he is close...he has the right idea.  However, somewhere in his number learning, the number 16 disappeared. Ask him to count to 20 and no fail 16 would be missing.  Coach him over and over saying 15, 16, 17 to help him hear where it belongs and still 16 would somehow be left out.  It was getting to the point where he had said it wrong so many times that I was beginning to think/worry that his brain had made a permanent connection and he would never be able to count 1-20.

Yesterday evening Daddy decided that maybe he needed a visual.  We wrote out 1-20 and asked him to count pointing at each number...still no 16.  We tried some more.  No 16.  We finally bribed him with m&ms.  He was determined to get it right (yes, the bribe of even just one m&m is THAT strong).  He tried and tried and he finally got it!! Well, giving an m&m to one child makes the other child think he deserves one too.  So to be fair (I am a middle child after all), Daddy offers an m&m to our youngest if he will say 1, 2, 3.

Easy, right.  He is two. He repeats EVERYTHING. Here is how it went:

Daddy: Kyle say 1, 2, 3 and I will give you an m&m
Kyle: 8, 9, 10 (mouth pops open for said m&m)
Daddy: say 1...2...3
Kyle: 8, 9, 10 (repeat maybe 3 more times with Daddy saying 1,2,3 and Kyle saying 8,9,10)
Daddy: say 1
Kyle: 1
Daddy: say 2
Kyle: 2
Daddy: say 3
Kyle: 4
Daddy: say 3 (heavy emphasis on 3)
Kyle: 3
Daddy: Finally!! Here is your m&m!

Oh boy...I think I have my work cut out for me. ;0)

O, P, Q, R, S, T, U and V

I can't believe that we have covered all of these letters since I typed last about homeschool.  Sadly, I am not even sure if I can recall what we did with some of those letters.  So here goes nothing:

O. I do know that we played with some "O" sight words for this week.  We played a game of "on" and "off" using some sight word cards. I would love to think we did an owl craft, but I am pretty sure that did not happen ;0).
P. I was prepared for "P" week.  We went to the post office, mailed a package to ourselves, made peanut butter cookies and got out a couple of new puzzles.

 

 

Q. The only thing I remember about "Q" week was that we had some Q themed library books. Oh yes, we crafted some with Q tips :0).
R and S week were pretty well neglected.  We were sick for a majority of both those weeks, so mommy was just trying to make it through.  As we live in the NW, "R"ain was probably mentioned, and "S" was definitely for Sick.
T. This week I think we were trying to make a comeback. We played with the train tracks, talked about tigers and I am sure there was a tickle or two throughout the week. We even did some tongue twisters :0)
U. Again, being from the NW, we did Umbrella crafts and sang rainy day songs.  And, now don't come all Undone, we baked pumpkin pie...just because.

 

V. The week isn't done yet, but it seems like it was full of errands...or we could call them Visits! And I am happy to say that the boys really loved playing with the Vacuum!

Looking at this list makes it look like our weeks aren't very full.  But this doesn't include many of our weekly routines (grocery shopping trips, MOPs days, Library story time,  and going to daddy's work for lunch) and it also doesn't include all the time we have for free play (which often has plenty of teaching/learning opportunities).  And since the weather has been getting nice (here and there) we have had lots of outdoor play time lately!!

 

Hats and other accessories

Recently, Kyle has taken to trying on hats.  Not just putting it on and wearing it around, but almost as if he were practicing the art of wearing and placing a hat on one's head.  I must say that this new little habit of his has made for some really cute pictures. Enjoy!

 

 

 

I guess his practicing extends to accessories in general. It was quite hysterical to watch him trying to wear this pair of glasses.  His cute little nose is just not quite the right size to hold them up!

 

 

And since I am here posting gobs of cute Kyle photos, I figure I might as well add these treasures too.  Sometimes he is just too darn photogenic...and he hasn't started hiding from the camera like his big brother ;0)

 

 

Project Guitar

Just before Christmas, Corey saw a toy guitar at Target.  It wasn't just an ordinary toy guitar, no, it was one of those "I know it is going to be obnoxious" toy guitars with so many bells and whistles that you just could tell it would eat through batteries in a few hours and drive you nuts in much less. Unfortunately, he kept talking about this guitar.  Thus the idea of project guitar was born.  Daddy was going to be off work for several days for the holidays, and that would be plenty of time to do a daddy and me project with Corey.

It was great.  Corey and Daddy went out to the shop and together they cut out, routed and sanded a little wooden guitar (Daddy made a second one too so Kyle could have one too). 

And yes, we know he is holding it backwards in this photo.

 

 

Inside, we painted the guitars, and Corey picked out the stencil we used for a design on the front.
They were pretty much done with the exception of stings.  We weren't really sure what we were going to use, so it took us a while (okay weeks) to finish that last step.

Funny thing is, he referred to the Target toy guitar as the "purple guitar"
so I figured he would choose purple paint...nope, he went with RED :0)

 In the end we found some really large rubber bands, and instead of cutting them and trying to figure out how to attach them, we decided to leave them whole and have them wrap around the entire guitar...this would also make it much easier to replace broken "strings" ;0).  With a few well placed notches and a simple bridge, we had them well secured and ready to play! 

 

And Corey hasn't mentioned that silly toy guitar since :0).