Reviving upholstery: from cat throne to actually nice chair

 

I recently sold this accent chair and ottoman for $160, after picking it up for free from someone who was moving, and spending a couple hours spiffing it up. This exact set currently sells at Ikea for $320, so my selling price is a bargain, and still gave me a great profit. 

But there were a lot of reasons why these two were free when I first got them. No, they don't have bed bugs. But they were very "well loved". 

First of all, it looked like this thing was basically a cat throne. The chair was COVERED in cat fur, and the canvas-like material was all scratched up on both the armrests and the wings near the top of the chair.

There were also some light, but definitely noticeable, stains on the chair seat and ottoman. 

I had never worked with upholstery before, but the set looked like it had so much potential, I had to save it. (I'm also a sucker for anything bright yellow.) I worked on the stains first, because if I couldn't get rid of those, it might not have been worth it to continue. That night, I tried all the DIY upholstery cleaning suggestions I could find on Google -- vinegar, baking soda, dish soap, alcohol -- but sadly to no avail. I had no idea how old the stains were or how set in they were. 

Guess what came to the rescue? OxiClean! This stuff really works. I originally bought a tub of it a few years ago when I washed my taekwondo uniform with a new red shirt and stained the whole thing pink. I luckily caught my mistake before I put it in the dryer, and after an overnight soak in hot water and oxiclean, it was good as new. (I later made the same mistake again, but it got put in the dryer before I realized. Sadly, even oxiclean couldn't fix that one.)

I mixed up some oxiclean with near-boiling water according to the directions on the bin. The hotter you can get it, the better it will work. I applied it liberally with a dripping wet hand towel and waited about half an hour. Nothing happened. I went to bed defeated. The next morning, Isaac got up and called from the other room: "Wait, did you clean this?" I jumped out of bed to look, and the stains were completely gone. Hallelujah!

It did fade the yellow ever so slightly, but overall the chair was looking much better and cleaner. There were some stubborn stains on the seat cushion, so I zipped that cover off to let it soak in a bucket of hot oxiclean solution for another half day. It worked :)

Here's the problem... the upholstery, though it looks like linen/canvas, is 100% polyester. I guess I made the water a little too hot, because everywhere the cushion cover had folded when I crammed it into the bucket, there was a strong, stubborn wrinkle. It was like I had ironed creases into it.

I don't have an iron (one of those adult purchases I have yet to make, like a lawnmower), so I had to borrow one from a friend. I started on the lowest heat, afraid to melt the polyester, but when the wrinkles stayed stubborn I slowly upped the heat and used more steam until they were pressed out. All good :)

For the cat scratches, first I used a pair of sharp scissors (my hair-cutting scissors) to trim off all the loose threads like in the previous picture. What was left was a bunch of "pills" -- those little round bumps of thread you get after putting your sweater in the wash, or from sharp cat paws walking all over the place. You can buy a fabric shaver for like $15, and it shaves those pills right off, leaving behind fabric that looks like new. But I was being stingy and didn't want to spend the money for one. 

(Fun fact -- I bought one over a year ago to use on my sweaters, but then the pandemic hit and I decided I didn't care what my sweaters looked like. I never even took it out of the box. When we moved, I gave it away. 🤦‍♀️)

So instead, I used my regular razor, like the ones used for shaving your legs. My dull shower razor didn't really work, so I used my sharp replacement heads. I went through two heads to finish the whole chair and ottoman. Honestly, I should have just bought the fabric shaver again.

But look how well it turned out! I actually got it even better after these pictures. It was tough dealing with the fabric in between the creases though, and you can see on one arm I accidentally shaved the crease itself and removed the yellow. 

Anyway, by the time I was done, the chair looked brand new, minus that one shaved crease and a slightly lighter yellow color. I got inquiries right away and sold it that weekend :) If I had known what I was doing from the beginning, this probably would have taken me less than an hour, with a $160 upside. (Of course, searching for good finds like this and actually retrieving them are also added labor and cost. And there's a limited amount of good finds like this out there as well.)

That being said, I probably won't do a project like this again. As soon as I brought it into the house I saw the way my cat looked at it and knew she wanted to destroy it. Not wanting to put it in the dank basement, I had to hide it in the exercise room upstairs the whole time until I sold it. I'll stick with hard furniture from now on :p

Bonus story: The lengths I went to to pick up this dumb chair

I was sitting on the couch scrolling through Facebook marketplace (a thing that I regularly do now since getting into furniture refinishing), when I saw a post from someone: a loading dock full of free furniture in Boston, take what you want, no holds. The person wasn't around to provide updates on what was still left, and said that the loading dock would be open from 9 am - 12 pm. From the picture, I immediately spotted the awesome yellow chair, and a bunch of other nice things as well. I looked at the time. It was 11:30 😱

Going for it would be a gamble. I'd have to pay for the zipcar (around $30, I estimated) and spend time driving to Boston (about 20 minutes each way), and when I got there I didn't even know if anything would be left. However, it was a weekday morning with very short notice (the listing was posted at 9 am), so I was fairly confident the loading dock wouldn't be completely cleaned out. 

I didn't have much time to think about it if I was going to get there before noon, so I started looking for the nearest available SUV on Zipcar. The closest one was booked, so I grabbed my bike and rushed out to a different location. I snagged an ugly, bright orange SUV. 

I'm already a pretty anxious driver, but driving into Boston on a time limit is a whole 'nother level of stress. I had a couple stressful moments including a confusing intersection where I had to back out of a one-way street, and a lane merge where the cars in the other lane kept speeding past me. 

Once I got to Boston, I was stuck in a series of one-way roads and difficult left turns onto busy roads while I looked for the loading dock entrance. Time was running out, and I only had a few minutes left until noon. Finally I decided the park the car in a random parking lot and look for the loading dock on foot, so I wouldn't have to deal with all the one-way streets. I figured if I could there before before noon, I could ask them to keep the loading dock open for a few more minutes while I went to bring the car over. I was running around in the heat into random parking garages when I finally found it. It was after noon now, but no one was there and the dock was wide open, so I ran back to the car and finagled my way down the one way streets to the loading dock entrance.

By now it was well past noon, and there was no signs of the loading dock closing. I was relieved but also a little annoyed that I had stressed about the time for no reason. Most of the items I had noticed in the original posting were gone now, but to my surprise, the yellow chair was still there. All I needed was at least one good piece to make the trip and zipcar cost worthwhile. 

I went to grab the chair and realized why it was still there -- it was COVERED in cat fur, scratched up, and stained. I'd never worked with upholstered furniture before, but I knew my trip wouldn't be worthwhile if I didn't take it, so I blindly grabbed it and awkwardly stuffed it into the car. I didn't have time to think about if I could fix it -- I had spent a lot of extra time finding the loading dock, and my zipcar reservation would be over soon. I couldn't extend the trip because someone had booked the car right after me, and I didn't want to face the hefty $50 late fee plus the guilt of inconveniencing the next person.

I did a quick once-over of the rest of the items in the loading dock and found an ottoman that was actually in perfect condition. Not a high-ticket item, but it would probably pay off at least the zipcar cost. I had to screw the legs off to get it to fit (since the chair was awkwardly taking up all the space), but I got everything in and was on my way.

Time for another stressful time-limited drive back! I anxiously watched the clock the whole way back and realized with a sinking feeling that I wouldn't have time to drive home, drop off the stuff, and drive back to the zipcar lot. I'd have to go straight to the zipcar lot to have any chance of being on time.

The zipcar lot was in the middle of a college campus. I rolled in and quickly hauled my furniture out into the parking lot, slammed the trunk shut, and ended my trip. I was one minute late by my phone's clock, but luckily I wasn't counted as late. Stressed and tired, I dragged the furniture to the side of the parking lot and flopped into my furry yellow throne. There was a crowd of college students hanging out on the other side of the parking lot and I tried not to be self conscious about how weird I probably looked. 

After I had a moment to calm down and get some rest, I looked up the closest SUVs for the second leg of my trip. Luckily, there was one available on campus, about a 5 minute walk away. I'd have to leave the furniture in the parking lot while I went to pick up that car and bring it back. But leaving furniture in a random location on a college campus is just asking for someone to assume it's free and take it to their dorm. 

Time to run again! I ran to the car, drove it back, and thankfully no one took the furniture. Probably because it was too awkward to carry -- I could barely maneuver it into the trunk by myself. (Again, still incredibly awkwardly in front of a crowd of college students.) I drove everything home, awkwardly managed to get it in through the front door, drove back to the campus, and biked home. What a morning. 

In the end, I paid $35 for both zipcars and spent about two hours total on that adventure. The bonus ottoman I grabbed didn't need any work done on it, and I sold it for $40, effectively covering the zipcar cost. Then I spent about two hours on the yellow chair set and sold that for $160. So that's $200 total, minus $35 expense, divided by four hours labor -> about $40/hr! And okay, maybe I spent up to one more hour taking pictures of stuff, listing it for sale, and arranging pick ups. That's still $33/hr :) And now I can add "fixing upholstery" to my book of adult skills.