Cat Chat Feline Forum

My latest upholstery project finally got finished yesterday - an Edwardian tubchair and footstool made especially low to be easy for Pippin to get up and down. He has hardly left it since!

Ooh, that's lovely

That's a lovely looking chair and looks very much appreciated.

That is beautiful, I love it. Lucky Pippin !!

That's quite fabulous and looks so professional ... I do find gingers gravitate to a good pink to sit on and contrast with; I have a strawberry pink bathroom mat that Emily favours.

Lucky cat; I hope he appreciates it and takes care of it; Emily also likes a very old Lloyd Loom style basket chair that's overdue for a makeover - nothing fancy, just a new coat of paint, but a new cushion cover is going to have to be devised, with a flounce to cover the tops of the legs where she's had a right good scrat, naughty girl.

Hey Fjm you could start a business making miniature cat furniture

I am a complete amateur when it comes to upholstery, but I am fortunate enough to have an extremely good teacher who encourages high standards, so projects take ages but look good and last.

Pip spent the whole day outside, moving round with the sun, and even asking to have his tea on the doorstep. Having finished a large bowlful he is now back on his chair, with the comfortable look of a cat that is full of good food and vitamin D. It was lovely to see him rolling carefully, and sprawling in the warmest spot in the courtyard, after so many weeks stuck indoors.

As one upholsterer to another - that's a damn fine job! Pippin looks very cosy.

Hi Fjm love the chair & obviously Pippin does too!! I envy anyone who can do anything like this... I don’t even know how to paint & I need to do a wall in my walk-in-rob & just keep looking at it something I’ve been doing for over 12mths. I’ve watched diy you tubes but... guess I just need to get in & do it. Vivian

Go for it Vivian! But, be warned, when I was about 11 or 12 I asked Dad if I could paint my bedroom. He said I could, but I couldn't do it on the existing wallpaper, it had to be plain (let's hear it for the much maligned woodchip! ) He taught me how to hang paper and how to 'cut in', then left me to it. When I had finished he surveyed my work and said 'yup, you got the job'. I've been doing it ever since!!!!

The upholstery started in a similar way. fjm - it's not easy to get material to fit as a smooth curve is it? I hope Pippin is appreciates the trouble you have been to.

Yep - curves, corners and Y-cuts are tricky, along with keeping everything smooth and level and avoiding dimples! Everyone starts by thinking that their chair just needs a new top cover, and then being somewhat horrified at the yuck revealed by removing layers of ancient fabric, foam, straw, or, in the case of the footstool, hay. I bought the tub chair on eBay, and the owner was convinced it could be renovated with just a few tacks - when I got down to the frame it needed a new bar across the front, with steel plates to hold it against the twist the frame had developed. You go from a more or less functional chair to what looks like a few bits of wood nailed together (or in the case of most modern furniture, rather less wood and a lot of cardboard!), and rebuild it bottom up - literally! This chair now has 8 springs instead of the original 3, a layer of horse hair and a layer of 1" foam - won't last as long as just horse hair but makes it very comfortable. I know now why proper re-upholstering is so expensive...

PS Tilly-cat has now nicked the cat chair. Pip has been relegated to the sofa!

Oh boy, tell me about it!

I inherited an amazing art deco armchair from my late in-laws, a marvellous piece, but I'm sorry to say it's been brutalised by generations of cats; that chair is a disgrace to the feline race! It began life with me covered in a crumbling brocade, which was already leaking wadding; the cats soon excavated the wadding and horsehair and in many places it's down to the springs. I've re-covered it twice, first in a tough but richly coloured fabric that I hoped would be impervious to claws (it wasn't) and then in a chintz type of stuff ... I have no training in this; I just pinned the fabric on as if the chair was a dressmaker's dummy, and sewed by hand. I'm wondering now if I owe it to that chair to get a professional in and let them renovate it. Trouble is, at present it holds Mouse's heated bed with an igloo on top of it - I don't think she'd approve of the disruption.

Naughty Tilly, nicking Pippin's bed - I can see what your next project is to be - a companion cat chair ... and then they'll curl up together in the first one ... cats!

One of those "conversational" love seats would be ideal for my cats - close enough to monitor and for mutual support, but not actually touching and with a barrier just in case of arguments. They used to curl up together all the time, but as they got older they prefer close but not too close. I hadn't appreciated how much Tilly would miss Pip when he wasn't around - she was glued to me and the dogs for those weeks. Now he is back to pootling around she spends most of her time apparently ignoring him, but rarely more than a few yards away from him.