Stapled and Dangerous

"Honey? Toile or damask?"

Nothing strikes fear in a man quite so quickly as the idea that his wife is going to torture him over fabric choices for the next several weeks. Add that to the knowledge that even if closes his eyes and points at a fabric sample in hopes that she will simply leave him alone she will then ask him why he chose that one and not the other, with the fact that no matter what he chooses, she's going to pick whatever the hell she damn well pleases and you will understand why my husband visibly shrunk when I told him I wanted to re-upholster the dining room chairs.
The things is, I won't ask him what he thinks of what fabric because I've seen his choices and people? It's not pretty. It's scary.
We have 8 dining room chairs, 4 that came with me and 4 that he had picked out while I swear he must have been under the influence. Of his mullet and the Best of Journey. When he bought his table, he bought the chairs, end table, coffee table, couch and love seat to match.
Take that in for a moment.
The fabric on the chairs is this really dark green with tiny orange diamonds all over it. And it matched the couch. And love seat. My only explanation is that he had a mullet and he called it 'bad-ass'. Which means? He just had really bad taste.
Don't get me wrong, I love the man. He can fix anything, he indulges me when I get the crazy idea to repaint the house or tear our kitchen chairs apart. I just wouldn't want him to pick out the fabric.
The other 4 chairs are equally awful. They look like something Don Johnson threw up on in Miami Vice. They're black with large purple flowers all over them. I inherited them from my stepfather. I don't know what was going on there because he never had a mullet and had pretty nice style.
Anyway, it was time for the 80's to meet the trash can.
Except that I've never done this before. Most of it will be pretty simple. Just a matter of stapling the new fabric to the seat bottoms. The Miami Vice chairs will require a little bit of sewing.
The hard part, the thing I didn't expect, was what a pain in the ass it is to remove the old fabric. It took me 3 hours to take off the fabric from 2 chairs. Whoever made them must have known how absolutely hideous they were and that someday, somewhere, someone with no idea what they were getting into would try to remove them because there are about 50 cajillion freakin' staples on it! And they are a pain to remove. First I have to try to pry them up because they are all but glued to the base and then I can yank them out with the pliers. Half of them break off before they get the whole way out so I get this little nub sticking out that I then must dig out or cut my hand all to hell while I try to remove the rest of them. Trust me, I tried to leave them because I'm all about the lazy. Which is why my hand is now all cut to hell.
After I removed the first one, Mr X suggested just leaving the rest on and covering it up with the new fabric.
Yeah! Except they stink. Years of Cat and spilled milk and ew. So no.
It's 10 pm and everyone else is in bed. Great. I can get the 2 chairs I have ready set up with the new fabric (light blue on cream toile pattern- LOVE!) right?
And then it hit me.
Mr X handed me a staple gun, something I've never used before, and went to bed.
Is he nuts? Has he not met me? Does he not remember that I cannot even be trusted with a simple flat head screwdriver because, oh that was just too ugly an incident I don't want to go into it. I still have a scar. And so does he.
But he did! Me and a staple gun.
I am armed with something that shoots sharp pieces of metal at high rates of speed.
I put the staple gun down and stepped back.
I must be crazy. I don't see anyway I'm going to get to do this where I don't end up stapling my hand to the floor. And a toe. These things always involve a toe. And then there's that whole thing I have about feet. And since I was the only one awake, it probably would be my foot.
Hmmmm.
Eh. What the hell.
I managed to do 3 staples (FROGS! That thing is loud!) but they wouldn't go the whole way through. They got into the chair back but stuck out too much so I had to get the hammer.
A staple gun and a hammer all in one night?? I must be a glutton for punishment.
I managed to hammer all 3 staples in without incident before I realized that my little project had woken Boy.
Project is now on hold until morning. You know, when I'm half asleep and bleary-eyed.
Because that would be the best time for me to be armed with a staple gun and hammer.