Last summer, I scored these two free Queen Anne chairs off Craigslist. They had seen better days, but screamed “potential!” and “makeover!” at me.  Yes, I hear the voices of furniture in my head.

They have sat in our office ever since, patiently waiting for their ugly-duckling-to-swan makeover.  During that time, the dogs have claimed these chairs as their own.  They spend a significant amount of time sitting on these chairs whenever Rick or I are working in the office.  And that’s a lot.

It’s a dogs life, isn’t it? Both of our chihuahuas and our wiener dog use Beegee the basset hound as their own personal pillow.  Check out Beegee’s buzz cut on her belly – a left over from the emergency surgery she had on Thanksgiving last year.

We love our dogs and have no issues with them getting up on the furniture.  However, as you can see above, the fabric is looking decidedly more dingy than when we originally got the chair – a side effect of the clay soil and puppy paws on the material. So, we’ve come to the decision that we need to reupholster the chair in a wipe-able, non-porous fabric, such as vinyl or faux-leather. That way, when the dogs dirty up the chair, we won’t have to worry about them getting the pristine material dirty.  One swipe of a damp cloth and the clay stains will be no more.

There are a number of cool choices for faux-leather out there.  We’ve found that some of the local fabric shops have limited selections in store, so I turned to the Internet for some inspiration.  How about these faux-leather animal prints? (from left to right: ostrich, snake, alligator, gecko).

Or these interesting textural choices?

Or maybe just something a little different?

As lovely as some of these choices are, most are out of my price range. Online fabric yardage guestimators suggest that I might need up to 7 yards of fabric per chair. At up to 30 bucks a yard, that can get expensive really quickly.  I’m going to be keeping my eye out for a budget-based yet unique  fabric to use on these chairs.  Color is not really a deciding factor – just as long as it has some wow factor (I am trying to be less conservative in our decor choices!). No matter what we end up choosing, for us, faux is definitely the way to go.

All fabric swatches from here.

Tags: chairs, reupholster