Mid-Century Brody round back swivel Dining chairs re-vamped

I found these chairs on Freecycle (actually it was a complete dinette set, the table is now the kids' art table) and as you can see, they were pretty gross.  They had some interesting 80's style grandma cushions. I trashed those right away.

Every chair had ripped upholstery and rusted bases but the structure and functionality was sound.

I risked lead poisoning and sanded off the rust.

Then painted them.  My husband was not excited about the yellow, but they were yellow to start with and I think yellow is fun so he was overruled.

Then, weeks and weeks went by before I got around to picking the fabric.  Then I stripped off the old yucky vinyl to find that the insides were in good enough shape to not have to replace.  score.

This was by far the most complex upholstery project I've taken on because of the curves in the seat backs.  I used some upholstery fabrics that someone gave me years ago that I'll probably never use to make a test-run pattern before cutting into the good fabric that I bought.  Surprisingly, it only took one adjustment from my original draft and I was able to get the curves done pretty quickly.  The next challenge was putting them back together because it had been so long since taking them apart that I had forgotten which screw went where.  So basically after about 9 weeks, $35 in fabrics, a quart of paint & about 20 or so hours of work... I turned my free chairs into kitchen chairs to go with my Brady-bunch-orange bar.