Ribbed-Back Antique Side Chair - White

Here's another "Ugly Duckling" transformation. The owner himself referred to this one as "the ugly chair" while we were discussing several of his projects. This is the same owner with all the other white chairs and striped blue chairs (and a few others) shown previously.

The chair has been reupholstered at least once or twice previously (this current beige floral and remnants of a dark forest green were found), and the last person who worked on it did a truly poor job. Some of the work is not too bad, but the back of the chair really looks terrible. It has ribbed piping, which is just loose (and crooked).

We were given some artistic freedom with the chair, so hopefully he'll love it, and so will you.

Before:



Lumpy and awful.



Here you can see how the back panel is bowed outwards. This is not to do with the upholstery job, but rather due to the worn back webbing that holds the springs in place.





An attempt to strengthen and stiffen the bottom with metal straps (not the best idea, since the webbing is supposed to flex).



The metal straps were removed, and the webbing was replaced.



The webbing for the back springs was also replaced.



The rest of the upholstery (spring ties, stuffing, etc) was in good shape, and we just changed the burlap.

Here's what we came up with. The chair originally had this sort of ribbed/pillow back. It may or may not have had buttons, but we decided to add just 3 for a bit of detail. The front arm facings were replaced (they were a touch too big).





The legs were in wonderful shape, and they did not need refinishing, or even waxing. We did just one or two tiny spot touch-ups.