French-Canadian Chair Makeover

by Heathered Nest

2 Materials

My husband's family hails from the U.P....that's upper peninsula of Michigan. And much of his family roots are French-Canadian. I, myself, am a mutt. I'm kinda from nowhere, and everywhere, but since I married into a family with a very French-sounding name, I claim I am French...because everyone knows French is fancy. And I like fancy. For instance...

upholstery french canadian chair makeover, repurposing upcycling, reupholster

Take this chair. I bought two of them at auction for $16 each.

If your first thought is, "she overpaid," you're not alone. My husband said the same thing. It was fancy. And French. I have a soft spot, what can I say?

Enter the Canadian portion of this story. After all we are French-CANADIAN. I have a couple designer crushes. One of whom is Sarah Richardson.

She's Canadian.

And I feel we are destined to be friends, her and I (and of course, Tommy. If you know Sarah, you know you cannot forget Tommy). One day, I was watching re-runs of her show, because that is all that is was available to us in the US, and I noticed that she has an office chair covered in THIS FABRIC:

I love it. And it just so happens that I had purchased a TON of this already when I found out that Sarah had used it, so of course, I feel that we have a certain connection. Yes, I do understand the definition of "delusional". Moving on...

Since the fabric that was on the chairs was stained and beyond salvage-ability, I decided to use my Canadian-approved fabric on the French chairs. It did not seem to me initially that this would be a huge endeavor. I was tres wrong. I've never seen as many upholstery staples on a piece of furniture as these suckers had. It took h.o.u.r.s. just to remove the staples.

In the end, I *think* it was worth the effort, eh? Introducing our French-Canadian chairs...

I decided to use a drop cloth for the seat and box pleat skirt. I had little budget for this project, so a $10 drop cloth seemed right up my alley.

I piped the flowery fabric and used that to trim the skirt to add another hint of color into the mix.

Flirty, feminine & far from perfect...just what I was hoping for. This job was hard, and time consuming for a novice like me. But now it's done...

To celebrate, I'm going to go invite my friend Sarah over to lounge on these chairs while we enjoy perhaps a nice French croissant with a side of, I don't know...Canadian bacon?

COME OVER TO MY PLACE to see more of how these chairs turned out, and where they live in our nest!

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3 of 118 comments

Betsy Lacallade on Sep 24, 2015
In east Texas and Lousiana and probably other parts of the hard south, there is a style of furniture called " East Lake". I had at one time a few pieces. A rocker and so on. They looked much like this. The carving was rather deep and straight lined as opposed to round gracious curves. Please check this out. It may be more valuable than you thought. Even more worth you blood, sweat and tears. Beautiful job. Love this stuff.

1 Reply
Robin Tucker on Oct 11, 2015
I have the EXACT same two chairs--they belonged to my mother and are upholstered in velvet. I am planning to redo them in leopard.

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- Heathered Nest on Oct 12, 2015
  @Robin Tucker Wow!! That sounds so saucy and fun! Love it!!
  
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