Safari Chairs

A couple months ago I purchased some Safari Chairs. They are not the Kaare Klint Safari Chairs but made by Gold Medal Folding Furniture Company. I got them for a good deal but need to fix them up big time. As you can see one is a light blue and one is red Vinyl thats dirty and falling apart. The blue chair has a big rip down the middle of the seat and the vinyl is filthy.

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I originally had plans on having someone in Vermont reupholstering the chairs for me, but I got this job in Chicago and was never able to get the chairs to her in time. Now I'm here in Chicago and just spent a bundle load on moving expenses but really want to get these chairs fixed up at the same time. I had a hard time deciding on if I wanted to buy a hide of leather and upholster the chairs in leather or if I was fine with buying a good vinyl in the meantime and maybe in 5 years reupholster them again in leather. I've landed on buying vinyl. I've decided on an Architex- Authentec Vinyl called Dakota- Colour Trail Blazer.

So now that I've decided on the vinyl finish and colour it came down to finding someone to reupholster the chairs, but before I even sent photos to places I thought hmm your hands on maybe you could do this work. Save yourself a bunch of money and then you can say you did the work yourself. So thats where I'm at, I've bought myself a sewing machine and I plan on today practicing my seams since I have not sewn since high school over ten years ago. 

The photo above is a photo of the same type of Safari chair I have on FirstDibs, which were already sold so I couldn't find out how much they went for. I plan on stripping the wood legs myself and staining them to a similar finish, and I plan on making a few tweaks to make them a bit more to my liking. I'm really excited for this project and hopefully I don't screw it up where I eventually need to go to get it done professionally. I am feeling pretty confident the only part i'm worried about is the metal brackets that hold the chair together, they are a bit rusted but I'll look into how to fix that. 

Heres to having some awesome chairs in a month or so hopefully!!!!

Also here is a bonus picture of Andi trying to be a star while I was photographing the chairs.

-Jess