The Ugly Chair Makeover

If you’ve ever had a piece of furniture you found so ugly you could not bear looking at any longer but felt you couldn’t throw it away either, a family heirloom perhaps, then this post might interest you.  When we first moved to our current apartment, we had a plan. We thought we’ll be staying in Amherst short-term, a year or two at most so things were purchased with a tight budget in mind. We were also saving up to buy a house somewhere where my husband’s job would take us next so we made quite a few shortcuts when it came to decorating. I designed a cozy furniture plan that would fit our lifestyle and filled the missing pieces with (very, very low) budget finds. A brand new IKEA Ektorp sofa was comfortable and pretty enough, and oh, so affordable. A few discards from friends, a couple of lucky antiques shops and local Craigslist finds and we were done. Never mind the overall flea-market feel and the fact that nothing was perfect or what we really wanted. We were willing to live with it if it was short term. And because we love to entertain weekly, one of the first things we bought for our apartment was a pair of armchairs from Wayfair. The chairs are VERY comfortable and light, easy to move around when we have people over. The brown upholstery hides all sins and is soft to touch but is also, very, very ugly! A brownish-reddish-synthetic-velvet lookalike that has been a challenge to decorate with. I initially chose the chairs mainly because of their pleasing shape, it has some appeal and I knew that with a few tweaks and a nice slipcover they could look decent, even pretty. They were also a STEAL and had good reviews so I pounced.

Over the months that followed, they started bothering me more and more, and no matter how much I decorated around them, they still stuck out like eyesores. This spring I decided it was time for a makeover. 

The easiest part was fixing the cushion, which had a serious overhang. I removed the seat cover and using a bread knife, I carefully sliced a good inch and a half off of the foam. But of course, that was far from enough to make them pretty.

Next, I wanted to replace the midcentury legs. They were OK but I felt they didn’t really go with the more traditional look of the chair itself. To keep the costs low, I only replaced the front legs with wooden ones I found at Lowes. For a cohesive look, I spray-painted them all high-gloss black.

The turned wooden legs from Lowes were slightly shorter than the original legs on the chair, but that was fine because I wanted to add casters to the front legs anyway and figured that they’ll even out in height. And they did.

I searched A LOT for some nice, heavy, antique brass casters and found a pack of four online that I loved and my (amazing) husband helped me install them. It took a bit of work, about half hour for four front legs but I’m so pleased with the result!

The hardest part of this makeover was of course the slipcover. I could not find anyone local at a reasonable price so I decided to teach myself how to make them. It was not easy and the first slipcover took me about two-three weeks to finish, after numerous mistakes, a million pricks and a couple of yards of wasted, ruined fabric I emerged on the other side with a newfound appreciation for skilled seamstresses who do this for a living. To keep the project manageable, at first I opted for a simple slipcover with no skirt, but once my sewing machine and I became friends, I decided to try and make one. And I love it! I made it shorter on purpose to show off the pretty front legs! My initial “let’s wing it!” approach did not work so eventually I borrowed some old books on the topic from our local library, watched dozens of Youtube tutorials for slipcover-making and learned quite a few “tricks” along the way. Like cutting cording fabric on the bias to make the welting more elastic, or making a pattern first before cutting into “good” fabric. Making a pattern first might take longer but it is much safer and it will save you time if later you decide to make another slipcover in a different fabric.

Are the slipcovers perfect? Of course not. For one of the chairs, I forgot to prewash the fabric so now the slipcover can only be dry-cleaned. I also have quite a few wrinkles on the sides from using cording that wasn’t cut on the bias but considering I had almost zero sewing experience, how can I complain? And for those of you who’d like a budget breakdown, overall I spent an additional hundred dollars for this makeover (four new legs from Lowes, four casters, 8 yards of canvas and two packs of 5/32 inch cording from JoAnn with coupons ) but I can now look at my chairs without the urge to pitch them!

For more slipcover ideas, please click here.