Set of Chairs- Plan A, B, C and D!

I took these two CL chairs to an upholster the other day.  The encounter went something like this...

REALLY?  You charge WHAT for labor only?  Dude, I'm providing you with my own fabric!  What the flippity-flip!?!  You justify this price because you're the only upholsterer in this area?!?  Ok, well then, lets talk slipcovers. Same price?  Well, you know what Mr. Upholsterer...

OK, it didn't go quite like that, but I TOTALLY wished it had.  I said some of it though and gave enough weird facial expressions for him to know I totally thought he was crazy and I WAS NOT going to have him upholster my chairs.  What's the point of a great Craiglist score if the upholstery job sends you to the poor house?  

His labor fee   +   cost of the CL chairs   +   my fabric   =   more than a basic IKEA chair.

Uhh, yeah, that's so not gonna work!

Next, Plan B.

The fact that this upholsterer may very well indeed be the only one in town says a WHOLE lot about where I live.  I call it "out in the country". My mother-in-law calls it Timbuktu.  That is why anything worth getting to is clearly going to be a road trip for me.  Plan B was going to be a trip to Ikea, which is very very far from home.  

The plan was to buy the white IKEA Karlstad slipcovers for $29.99 to cover these CL chairs.  They have very similar dimensions but upon further inspection, the chairs are not constructed the same.  The IKEA chairs are 3 assembled parts (2 arm pieces and a back piece) and so are the slipcovers.  My  CL chairs are made of 1 solid wood frame.  I would have to deconstruct the IKEA slipcovers and sew the 3 pieces together to make a solid slipcover.  More work than I was wanting to do and I wasn't sure it would work and look decent once I finished.

Uggg, on to Plan C.

After a good cleaning with a water/upholstery solution mix, my CL chair stunk something awful!  I was completely baffled because the chairs did not have any particular odor before I cleaned them.  I can only assume that the vintage polyester fabric/water mix released that awful smell that only wet, vintage polyester can.  I tried to counter the smell with Febreeze and 2 days out in the sun.  It help but I would get whiffs of the smell mixed with Febreeze whenever I walked past the chairs.  Knowing I couldn't live with this smell in my house long-term, off to

Plan D.  

Recover the chairs myself!
Here's a glimpse of what I've gotten myself into thus far.

 More to come soon.

Enjoy Being Prissy!
-Prissyville