Ideas

Do you ever have a really good project idea that you think is not going to be that big of a deal and the lo and behold it turns out to be much more of a "project"? A few months ago my mom and I ran into that when we decided to recover my dining chairs. Sadly, I don't have pictures, but here's the short story. I purchased my chairs from a hotel that was was renovating it's breakfast room. I bought them for $6 each. They had dark red leather seats and a somewhat gawdy floral print on the backs. After using them as-is for 5 years, I decided last spring to recover the backs. No big deal. My mom, who is very Martha Stuart-esque and LOVES HGTV, was going to help me so I had no fear. I purchased the fabric at Hobby Lobby. We were off to a good start - we had our plan of action ready. Then we set to work and holy cow... Much more difficult than Mom or I thought it was going to be. Just taking the old fabric off was difficult with all the glue and staples, staples, glue and more staples. When we finally got it all off, we cut out the fabric and tried to come up with the best way to replace it in a similar fashion. We never did come up with a good plan. By that time, it was more about just trying to get the fabric to stay on. In the end we realized that we didn't have the right tools (or commercial machines) and were just trying to finish. I've come to the conclusion now, that even though we tried hard, I will have to redo them again, or maybe try to purchase a new set of chairs. They've been a good set for $36 and 6 years. If anyone has any super ideas for a project of this type, please share. I'll try to get pictures up so you can see what I see...