the chairs! {part 1}

This is a project i've been working on for way too long.  Not because it takes so much time to complete but because I keep putting it of to the side.  There's my rant about keeping motivated again.

The morning man found these two chairs in the warehouse of his old shop back in. . . March? (Yeah, it's been a while).  They had been abandon, but weren't in that bad of shape.  So, ok, the arms were falling off and the cusions looked like, well, considering I've had to handle them so much I don't really want to think about what could have been on them.  But it was a start.  I'd just completed my ottoman and it was time for a new project.  Four months later here I am, and once again there hasn't been any sewing.  There has been staple pulling, sanding, bondo-ing, sanding, painting, sanding, wood filling, sanding, oh and did I mention sanding? 

I'm back into it so I thought it's finally time to show y'all what I've done:

This is how I started.  

These are the chairs (sans arms - the man ripped off the ones that were left before he brought the chairs home).  So we unscrewed the seats and went to taking off the backs.

I pried them off and found that the backs were an upholstered piece of wood that had been nailed in with brads, straight through the fabric.  Once I saw that I looked at the fabric and spotted all the little holes the brads made.  I think I'll be upholstering the backs much differently.

Here are the chairs without the seat and back, all thats left is a piece of fabric stapled to the back of the chair.  All I had to do was rip it off and I could get started, or so I thought.  After taking off that piece of fabric I spent weeks taking out staples.  I broke many nails and ruined a screwdriver.  Half of them were lodged into the wood.  I realize now that I didn't have take them all out since I'm painting them, and I had to fill in all the holes with bondo.  But Hey! It's a learning experience.

I sanded the chairs so that all of the clear finish was off, the man let me know that I didn't have to sand all the way through the stain.  I just had to make sure that the paint could adhere to the surface.

After sanding everything down we gave the chairs a coat of primer (Kills to be exact).  Painting the chairs white makes any imperfections stand out, so we could see what had to be filled in.

Next we got out the bondo!!

We filled up the holes from where the arms had been, and decided to make the front of the chairs flush.  You can see in the photos above that the backrest piece was sunken in from the sides of the chairs.  

Then more sanding!!!!!!

...then more bondo-ing

...then more Sanding!!!!

After the multiple go-arounds with bondo and my beautiful Valentine's day present Festool sander.

*side note.  The morning man actually got me a sander for Valentine's day. All of his friends said he must be a horrible boyfriend and that I must have been very upset.  Well, they're all wrong. I Love my Festool DTS400 Sander. It was the perfect present for an aspiring upholsterer.

Ok back to the chairs.  After all the bondo we painted another layer of Kills primer so we could see all the small imperfections.  Once they were all glistening in the afternoon sun I took out the wood filler and filled in any ding, dent, scratch, or nick.  And then guess what was next . . .

SANDING!!!!

And that is where I had gotten to about a month ago.  For the last four weeks they've been sitting in the shop where the morning man works.  I think it's been a bit of out of (my) sight out of mind.  The next step was more paint so the man sprayed them at work with another layer of primer.  I went to visit them a few days ago and I couldn't be happier.  

They are finally ready for some decision making, like colors and fabric choice.  And some actual upholstery.  I'm so excited!!!! 

I am so excited in fact, that I am going to go to bed.

I'll talk to you about fabric and such later!!