Thursday

Winged Wonder.

Decorating. What a mine field that is. You spend hours, days and weeks deciding on the perfect curtains/art work/rug only to walk into someone else's house and see they have the same thing. It's crushing. Well, for people like me who think too much about their home, it's crushing. I like things in my house to reflect OH and me and our taste and not be part of the latest 'must-have' trend.

So far we've been quite lucky in that we've inherited, haggled, and created a great selection of (almost) one off things for our home. Hank - the circus light - for example. The beautiful green leather Chesterfield is another example - while it's not ours (or a one off) it is on a very generous loan from OH's parents and I've never seen one in that green or beautiful quality of leather before or since we acquired it. So we have been lucky. And I'd like it to stay that way.

When we were mapping out the new house we discovered that the front room is a nice amount larger than its equivalent in our old rental home so we've had the pleasure of working out what we can do with the extra space and OH spoke first and loudest so he won. For as long as I can remember he's wanted a wingback armchair for himself and I thought this was the perfect opportunity to bring that to life for him.

So for his birthday/Christmas I got him his chair. Or sort of...

In November I came across this absolute gem on Freegle: the website where people advertise things they no longer need for free to anyone who can come and collect them. I get several emails from the site a day and mostly they aren't that useful to me but that day I was in luck.

*Excuse the photo - it was the only one taken by the 'Freegler' and I forgot to take another before it went to be transformed.*


It was a mid-blue velour fabric which, while not ideal, worked well for the time we needed it not to be precious. When I picked it up we were still deep in renovation hell so OH was happy to be able to slob out on it in whatever state he was in at the end of a long day and not worry about making it dirty or damaging the fabric at all.

Then came the light at the end of the tunnel - we were finally able to think about bringing furniture back into the house. So I got researching and that's when I came across the lovely Heather at Eclectic Chair Upholstery. What drew me to her was her brilliant website, her location and the fact she offered to collect and then deliver the chair. When I contacted her she explained the chair would need around 5 meters of fabric to recover it so i set about finding the perfect fabric for OH.

We considered the following...








They were all fabulous but for one reason or another we ruled them out: too much pink, too light (we have a part-time dog), too feminine, too jazzy etc.

So after a short debate we plumped for:


Colourful: tick
Not too light: tick
Not too jazzy: tick

Just jazzy enough: tick
Not too girly: tick

Great Ikat print: tick

I was sold.

The only thing was it was located in Washington, U.S.A. However, as it turns out, it was actually cheaper for me to buy the amount I needed and pay shipping and import tax than it would have been to stroll into, say John Lewis, and pick a beautiful fabric from there. And the added bonus? There is a SLIM chance I will see this fabric anywhere else, and if I do there is an even slimmer chance that it's covering a winged back armchair acquired from Freegle.

So off it went for its face lift. And just over a week later we got her back. World, meet OH's new prized possession.





Of course, the problem now is that he isn't actually allowed to sit in it for fear of, heaven forbid, somehow damaging it. I'll relax soon but for the moment I'm just enjoying its crisp new look too much.

I highly recommend Heather - she's friendly, professional and competitively priced. She even mirrored the removable cushion cover top and bottom so that if anything irreversible ever happened we can just flip the cushion and start again.

Just one more thing: only clear drinks allowed in the living room now, darlings!