reupholstering a vintage lounge chair

If you read Apartment Therapy, you’ve probably seen their scavenger posts. You know, the section where they showcase cool stuff from craigslist? Except that the stuff for sale in Boston is usually terrible. Really awful. Maybe an old dinged filing cabinet or lacquered 80s furniture. It's not Apartment Therapy's fault. Boston craigslist is just really depressing, as if most of the furniture came from an Allston frat house. Sometimes, however, you find a gem.


Right after we moved, we were checking craiglist obsessively with a fervor that nearly matched our apartment search mania. And then we saw it. Well, Chris saw it first, but Richy claims to have seen it earlier without remarking upon it. We may never know exactly how it slipped into our consciousness, but we’re glad that it did. We had been thinking about splurging for a Selig Z-chair, but we had very little hope that we would ever find an affordable one.


We feel like the chair we found has a similar, but more organic aesthetic. We haven’t been able to find any information on it; there is no identifying information anywhere to be found. We think it’s made of teak, and the seller thinks it was Danish, though no one can say for certain. We’ve come to love the gently curved armrest and low profile of the chair. It’s also extremely comfortable but can be difficult to climb out of as it’s so low to the ground. The only problem was the original fabric, which was cheap, synthetic, and rapidly decaying.


Thankfully, Richy has several yards of high-end upholstery fabric tucked into his little craft closet from the days he worked in the textile industry. Richy wanted to add a bit of warmth, and so we chose a beautiful fabric from Place Textiles which combines a finely spun linen yarn with a soft cotton chenille.


The fabric gets its name from the Sonoma Valley landscape that it resembles. Richy re-covered the whole chair, piping and all. (And sewing piping for the first time was quite a challenge!). Previously when reupholstering furniture, Richy tended to rip open the old upholstery to use it as a pattern for the new one. But he was hesitant to destroy a decent, though not entirely stylish, original cover. Since the pattern contained only five separate pieces (all of which were simple squares or rectangles), he decided to try his hand at creating the cover from scratch.


Richy carefully measured each piece from the old cover, added seam allowance, and cut those pieces in the new fabric. Construction was going swimmingly until he realized he would need to get all the stripes to line up together at the seams.


Finally, Richy settled on hand basting the entire thing, and he is so glad he did. Richy loves sewing on his vintage Singer 201-2; he especially appreciates the quiet hum of the machine as it gracefully sews through yards and yards of fabric. But he was surprised at out how peaceful he felt hand sewing. It brought him back to when he was too young to use a machine and his grandpa taught him by hand. And the end result was definitely worth the effort.


We really love the inviting feel that the new cushions add to the piece. The fabric itself is quite soft, and the raised stripes that were difficult to sew were actually perfect for adding subtle visual interest. But what we love most about our chair is the story behind it. In an age when most of us head to Ikea for furniture, it's nice to have something more personal. And while we both love Ikea, the furniture always feels temporary; it's the furniture you buy while you're waiting until you can afford what you really want. We're really proud of ourselves for putting this look together for less than the cost of an Ikea KARLSTAD. We hope this successful tale of thrift and craft inspires you and demonstrates that you don't have to be wealthy to have your real furniture, the kind you will own for the rest of your life and tell stories about for years.