My Old Slipper Chairs

by Liz Dowling

This week, The Wry Home blog is four years old.  I never thought it would last beyond a year – what would I write about?  I am re-posting my very first post from the week of January 13th, 2014, kicking off the ‘Reasonable Redesign’ theme.  My photography leaves  a lot to be desired, but you have to start somewhere!  Enjoy.

Many years ago we bought two oversized slipper chairs from the Door Store in New York. I’m not sure if the Door Store is even around anymore, but my slipper chairs sure are. I have tried to remove them from my house many times, but it took our living room ceiling collapsing to make a change. A slow trickle of water from my daughters upstairs 1948 shower stall finally exploded last January. My friend Julie, visiting from California, pointed up to a sea of buckled plaster I had never noticed as we walked through the living room. That afternoon, water started leaking through the plaster and over half of the ceiling landed on the floor.

One of the slipper chairs got the brunt of the ceiling disaster, but the other one was fine. Unfortunately.  A lot of furniture, pillows and lamps got wet, so I leveraged this event to re-decorate our tired living room and started with the slipper chairs.  They were still very comfortable to sit on and could be easily updated.  There was a fabric skirt around the bottom of both chairs that was always filthy, so I decided to lose the skirt and change the feet on both chairs.

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Not that I had anything to do with the shower leak, but I did have an idea of what colors I would use if we EVER redecorated the living room.  Pink and charcoal gray.  I set off to find a new fabric for these two chairs.  Kravet in the D&D building in New York had an amazing selection and I ended up with a reasonably priced raspberry paisley fabric.

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My upholstery guy had a great selection of furniture feet and could stain them any color I wanted.  I chose ebony ball feet to go with the pink/gray theme.

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Six yards of fabric and eight new feet later, my two Door Store originals are nicely updated!

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3 comments

Amy Harden January 17, 2018 - 7:09 am

So great! How are the chairs holding up! Happy 4th Anniversary! Here’s to many more!

Eleanor January 18, 2018 - 6:11 pm

Congrats on your 4 years Liz! I LOVE reading your blog although it always reminds me how (very) much my 25 yr old home needs your keen eye. Let me know when you’re back in ATL, would you please? xo

Elizabeth Dowling January 19, 2018 - 4:41 pm

I will my friend, would love to see you!

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