An Upholstery Project

I have a new distraction, er, I mean project. I have so many things stacked up on my to do list, but for some reason this has been especially compelling.

I got this baby slipper chair last weekend at an estate sale in my neighborhood (5$). It is in really nasty shape -the thing reeks and is torn and worn. The reason I bought it was its size. It's a lovely little mini -the seat is 11" high, back 24" and 20" wide at the seat. It will be a perfect little living room stool which can be moved around the coffee table or fireplace.

Yuck, yuck, yuck. This thing was gross. I took photos while dismantling to try to remember how to reupholster. I am in way over my head here, I don't know shit about upholstering a chair like this.

I don't think this frame is that particularly old but this poor lady has been around the block a few times by the sight of the rails. 

The person who upholstered it last was also super effing tack happy.

I removed most of the tacks with a slim profile slotted screw driver and the lever of a small claw hammer. This took several hours spaced over a few days and I have a little patch of irritated skin on my palm from doing this even with wearing leather gloves.

I plan to strip the legs. If the wood looks decent bare, I'll leave as is. If it's ugly (like greenish in tone), I'll spray the legs black.

I haven't fully decided on how/what to cover in. First, I'll get the preliminary padding and muslin back on and then see. I'm leaning toward either hand blocking on linen (this as the ultimate inspiration) or a striped ticking in linen. I'm not going to replace all those Liberace pleats on the backrest and I'm going without the ruffled skirt. 

*One other note, I left the spring seat in place. I don't know how to tie spring coils and those still seem in good shape. I'm leaving the chair out in the sun for a few days to disinfect that old chair smell. I'll probably also cover it in Borox for a few days to kill anything that could possibly live in that webbing (bedbugs anyone?). ok, gross.

Thoughts? Do tell.