Have you ever opened Pandora's box?

I just did...

This chair is over 100 years old, a real antique! It was Great Grandma Edith's, and we actually have 2 of them. Grad Girl has the other one at her condo. It's in much better shape than this one, having been brought out of storage and recovered already years ago. The plan is to recover them both to match her new decor.

So dirty from being in the attic when they re-roofed the house 2 years ago.

It has such pretty carved detail doesn't it?!

So today I started the demolition...
who knew this chair had previously been recovered 3 times. I guess that's not bad for 100 years. Funny though, the upper fabric was dirty but not water stained like the bottom two fabrics.

The tacks were all rusty which had me thinking... hmm, when was my last tetanus shot?

That's just the beginning, but there were definitely enough rusty tacks for 3 layers of fabric.

Underneath the 3 layers was a layer of cotton batting , a layer of horse hair and a layer of rotted burlap that turned to dust when you touched it. Yuck! Oh, and of course the comfy springs tied with rotted rope.

I had gone this far so I figured I would just go all the way and strip it down completely to the wooden frame.

So... now I have a chair frame. I guess I'll have to build a seat before I can recover it, right?! Where's the Jig saw?

We plan to repaint the chairs a shade of coral, Martha Stewart's " Persimmon red", and then reupholster them in this fun fabric:

Then both chairs will match. Hopefully, as far as I can remember, Grad Girls chair is not in as bad of shape as this one and we can actually just paint it and recover it. I hope. Fingers crossed.

They should look great in her dining room and add an additional pop of color!

I'll be sure to post the "after" when we're done... which may not be as soon as I originally had planned!