My Reupholstered Armchair

This is a mini progress report... brought to you by me overanalyzing everything about my living room. That tends to be my style of home decorating: overanalyzing. :)

So I've been working on the living room in our new house. It's technically a second living room, as we have a kind of sitting area with a fireplace that functions as a living room as well (check my empty home tour video to see both). I call this the "TV living room" for short. :) And you might remember this awesome oversized blue armchair from our last living room:

I love this chair (it's from Thrive). It's big! Sometimes Trey and I sit in it together. But it's also the perfect size to sit in and snuggle with one of our dogs during a favorite show.

So the pros of this chair are great size, love the shape, and it's really a very nice piece of furniture. The cons: I wasn't in love with the blue anymore, and it had gotten quite dirty/worn from our last house. As you can see in the photo above, it was right by our backdoor (to our backyard) that also had a dog door. So the dogs would come in from outside and often immediately jump on this chair. It's a wonder it held up as well as it has these past 3 years.

I thought about just getting it professionally deep cleaned, but that didn't solve my not loving the blue fabric in this space.

I also thought about just donating it or selling it and getting a new chair. But I truly do love the size and shape, and it seemed a shame to get rid of a perfectly good chair when I might end up buying a cheaper (less well made) chair.

The solution should have been obvious, but until my friend, Janae (you guys know Janae, she's smart about photography as well as home decor) suggested I get it reupholstered, I didn't even think about it. She pointed out that since the bones of the chair were so nice, spending the money to reupholster could mean I'd be spending the same or more on a new, but not as nice chair. This way I'd get to keep all the things I loved about this chair already. I also liked the idea of reusing something I already had instead of just buying something new. I'm not always the best at this, but I think it's a good practice for personal budget reasons as well as for the environment in general.

So, I found someone who could reupholster it for a very reasonable price. I went shopping for fabric and came home with three options I had taken pictures of with my phone and showed them to Trey. I also did some price comparing. In the end I picked this yellow because I loved the color, the fabric was a great price for the quality, and I thought it might hide blonde dog hair well (which is a BIG issue at our house). I did (and do) worry that the lighter color might end up looking more dirty over time, but with this chair not being as close to our dog door as it was at our last house, the dogs don't sit on it as often. So I'm cautiously hopeful.

The result: I LOVE the new color and our chair looks like new. We'll see how well it holds up over time, but at least I love the color now so I can always just get it professionally cleaned if needed in the coming years.

Have you all ever had anything reupholstered (either DIY or professionally done)? If so, how did it go? Were you happy with the results? xx. Emma

Credits // Author and Photography: Emma Chapman. Photos edited with ABM actions.