My Esme's Find

Being that it is the first weekend of the month, I had to spend time at Esme's. Esme's is a local junk shop that is closing down. They have been closing down since June by only opening one weekend a month until all the junk is gone. Thankfully, for me, there is a lot of junk to explore so I may eek out a few more months of fun! Normally I look for the small stuff. We don't need big stuff and we don't have the space for it. I have been trying to slowly de-collegify our space by replacing our college dorm decor with nicer more-permanent pieces. However, I am cheap. I look for ideas from places like Crate and Barrel, Pottery Barn, Ballard Designs and Anthropology, and remake them for our space on our budget.

Enough rambling, I'll get to the good stuff!

Today, I found the motherload. I spotted a neat mid-century glider rocker near the front door of Esme's. It has a nice dark walnut finish and burgandy worn-suede looking upholstry on the cushions. And it already has a little shabby touch of burlap ribbon on the back cushion. It was cute, but then I sat in it. I fell in love. Seriously.
This chair is amazingly comfortable. It almost made me wish I still had homework so I could curl up in the chair to work on it. Almost...

The chair was in amazing condition, it just needed a little TLC. So I asked the fatal question of all junkers... "How much for this, Esme?"

30 bucks.

30. Seriously!

So I thought, I wonder if there is a bunch of sawdust in this upholstery, after all, it is old. I asked her about it. She said she just had it recovered in the antique looking suede. It is new down in the back pillow and nice new foam in the seat cushion. Can't beat that!

So, I called Marc right away. I was at the store with my dear friend, Lacey and she sat in the chair and gave her definite and enthusiastic approval. Marc said that it sounded like a good deal. You see, our current "guest" chair in our living room is a big old black swivel glide rocker with a glide footstool. While the pleather chair is comfy, it was starting to look a little worse for the wear. I got it as a senior in high school, so we knew we would eventually need to find a replacement chair. In my opinion this was the perfect option. I mean, if someone wanted to buy us a brand new reclining chair for two I wouldn't object, but that probably won't be happening anytime soon. :)

Here are the pictures of the cleaning and refreshing.

Great construction on this chair, but it was a bit yucky. See the coil cover here? Yuck!

I simply had to clean the chair up. A little elbow grease, a vacuum and many dust rags later we had this.

I gave it a rub down with some Old English after this shot was taken.

Here is the replacement coil cover that I made with some burlap and fabric I had sitting around.

Here it is tacked in place with some furniture tacks.

The finished cleaned up project!

Here it is in our living room. I like the chair because it is big and comfy, low to the ground (nice for short people like me) and it just feels a little more adult than our old chair. A little less college and a little more thrifty shabby chic. The chair also gets Marc and Dave approval for comfort, so it must be good!