Nauvoo Chairs

When I was 17, I went with my aunt who was the costume director of the Nauvoo Pageant (then called City of Joseph pageant) in Nauvoo, Illinois. My mother and her sisters are fans of antiques and hit the shops quite often. One evening while in Nauvoo I came home to the room I was staying in and found these two adorable antique chairs near the door. They were smaller than every day chairs -- just my size. My feet actually comfortably touched the floor as I sat all the way to the back of the seat! I kept thinking, "Oh my aunt Karen is so lucky to have found these beautiful chairs in such good shape!"

My aunt came in as I was declaring aloud to myself how much I loved these chairs, and she said, "Well that's pretty good. They're your mom's." I was ecstatic. So my aunt bought these chairs somewhere near Nauvoo, Illinois on my mom's behalf hauled them all the way back to Utah in her little pickup truck. (I might mention here that another adult aunt and I rode the entire way there and the entire way back -- yes, that's a 24-hour, straight-through car ride-- squished in the sideways drop-down seats of small extended cab of the 2-ton pick-up truck and the back was filled with fabric and costumes on the way there and these chairs and other treasures on the way back.)

So these "Nauvoo Chairs" (although they technically were never from Nauvoo), donned with their lovely early-90s dark pink upholstery, sat in my mother's living room for several years. It was after I returned from a mission that my mom decided that  the chairs looked better in a newly renovated bedroom for me. And then the chairs became mine officially.

The chairs don't really match any of my other furniture in style (nor those yucky pink covers), but kept them with me when I got married and then they followed us to Los Angeles, of course. Reupholstering them has been on my list of "to do's" for at least 5 years, but I never dared to do it... till now.

As I hit my second trimester, a wave of energy zipped through me and lasted for weeks. I was motivated... to do anything. But I was mostly interested in getting things done around our little apartment. I had reupholstered our dining room chairs last year so I learned a bit and gained some confidence for this project. Also, as I was searching for fabric for the other chairs more than a year ago, I came across this remnant piece at a high-end re-upholstery shop in West LA (where all the professional interior designers go) and fell in love with it. At the time, I had no idea what I was going to do with it, but it was only $6 for the whole piece, and the stuff goes for about $25/yard normally. So I bought it.

A year later I pulled it out just to see if it would work for this project. It turns out that the piece was a perfect size for both of the Nauvoo Chairs. Lucky, no?

My mother has been reupholstering furniture ever since I can remember, so I asked for her guidance throughout the process. As I bought the new padding, measured and cut the pieces, and fitted them to the chairs, I couldn't help but sing the little nursery tune of "Bringin' Home my Baby Bumble Bee..." but replacing the words with, "I'm doin' all this re-up-hol-ster-y! Won't my mommy be so proud of me..."

Here's what the chairs looked like with the pink fabric taken off. The under layers were kinda weird so I had to take some photos and send them to my mom for further direction. (Sorry, I didn't get photos of what they looked like with the pink stuff.)

BEFORE 

The naked chair

The nasty padding underneath. 

AFTER

I had fun spacing all those rivets 1" apart, pretty much exactly with the pattern.

In fact, when I bought the rivets, I had no idea on a quantity so I just bought an even 100 or 150. It came down to the very end, and I was just two rivets short. Actually, I had accidentally bent exactly two rivets in the process of nailing them all in. When Steve came home he was determined to straighten them so I didn't need to go back for two 4-cent rivets. It worked! They're in the back so no one will notice the extra 2-3 dings, right?

The finished products! Pretty Nauvoo Chairs!