The Settee is Finished!!

Finally!

Almost 7 months after finding this floral settee on craigslist it's done!  And not a minute too soon.  Really, I would have loved to have refinished it right away, but I get easily distracted.  I'll walk you through what I did now.


Pull off the trim that covers the staples and can you guess what's next?  You got it, remove 1,000,000 staples.
 

Now that the frame is all stripped, I primed and painted it.  Pretty simple, I just used spray paint.  I wanted to highlight the details of the frame so I glazed it using a graphite latex paint and a glazing medium.  It turned out, pretty cool.




Now to get it all back together.  The foam was in great shape when I removed the pastel camouflage (to be undetectable on the set of Golden Girls?) so all I needed was new fabric.  I used a small 18 gauge stapler to attach my fabric.  I started on the back of the seat and stapled mostly across the whole back.  Then moved to the front and just pulled the fabric taught and stapled along the grove where the old fabric was attached.



I appliquéd a fleur de lis onto the fabric that would cover the back rest. You can check that out here.  The back is completely open, it's kind of like a foam sandwich stapled into a frame.  Fabric, foam, fabric.  I laid the settee on it's back and stapled the entire back layer first, then put the foam and my front fabric on top.  Do the same for the arm pads and you're almost done.




To finish the ugly staples off I made double welt cording.  Having never made double welt cording before I turned to my friend Google.  This one and this one are really great, but this one and this one helped because I didn't want to buy the special foot for my sewing machine ($30) and Joann's didn't have double cording so I had to use single cording.  I think it seams more confusing than it needs to be, I found it pretty simple once I was actually doing it.



Finally I used a hot glue gun to apply the cording to cover the staples.  I worked in short lengths of about 4-5 inches at a time and used pins to hold the cord in place while the glue cooled.  (That last part is probably a little over kill.)


Can you believe this is my first real re-upholstery project??  I couldn't be happier with how it turned out.  Even Barbara loves it, just look at her face.


What have you upholstered lately or ever?  I hope I can inspire even one person to give this a try, because there's nothing like having a piece of furniture that you made just what you wanted it to be.

Now onto a new project!!!

I've linked up to Miss Mustard Seed's Furniture Feature Friday Party, Tatertots and Jello's Weekend Wrap-up Party, The CSI Project, and Under the Table and Dreaming's Sunday Showcase Party.

My settee has also been featured on West Furniture Revival's Revival Monday Features #19

UPDATE:  I found a listing at Anthropologie's site for the settee that was my inspiration here.  I guess I saved myself at least $2,300!