Late night reupholstery

So last night, in the throes of grading madness, I broke out the staple gun and reupholstered one of the office chairs.  I had been writing or grading in this chair all day, and the scratchy old polyester faux wool was driving. me. crazy.  (See the original here).  It was stained up when we got it, plus the rough texture itched through thin skirts and attracted way too much cat hair (this is the cat's second favorite chair in the house).  Had to go.  

J, who's a little sick, very indulgently let me break out the drill and staple gun at nine last night to celebrate getting half way through my stack of exams.   

The most time consuming part was getting the old cover off and prying all the staples off.  After that, I just clipped the pieces apart in order to trace them (I was able to get pretty close, and just added the seam allowance back when I traced the piece).  

 

My pieces were pretty simple.  One long strip, plus the center which had to get centered on the patterned faux-ikat print I used.

Sewing was a little tricky, since the short edges of the long strip were sewn to the small curves of the seat, but a little easing and slow sewing got it on.

Corners clipped and everything turned (I used a contrast fabric for the strip because I wanted to have enough fabric left for our other office chair).

The physically hardest part was getting the new seat cover over the old foam.  Since it's sewn into a nice tight bag shape, it took a while to get it eased on to the seat.  A few staples later, and I thought I was going to have a happy new chair post, until I got to . . . 

THE TEETH

The backrest of the chair is metal, with scary metal teeth holding the pleather on.  I can't easily get it off, and it looks as though the pleather was stabbed onto the spikes while they were up and then they were smashed down.  And since it's not wood, there's nothing to staple to.  All of my life skills are useless here!  

The ikat doesn't look bad (just a little odd) with the pleather back rest, so I screwed it back together to think about.  But all told, sewing, staples, and everything, the seat only took two hours, including the time it took me to rip apart my sewing and redo it once.  Hopefully the second office chair will follow soon.  Anybody else done any late night crazy projects lately?