The Doloff Upholstery Shoppe

I am recovering my dining room chairs. This adds up to new opportunities to staple my feet to the floor or simply and directly—to maim myself. The dining room chairs—all eight of them—are handsome, heavy pieces, with wide hips and 25 year old upholstered seats begging to be put out of their misery. I am more than happy to oblige.

First I spent some time getting a 21st century education in the 18th century craft of upholstery: I watched YouTube videos. I’ve watched enough YouTube videos in the last few years to learn that shame and discretion are lost graces and that Charlie Sheen is in need of more assistance than conventional rehab can likely supply him. I’ve even watched the boil-popping video (enough to gag a maggot, but riveting none the less) and Alan Dershowitz doing a stand up routine on oldjewstellingjokes.com. But, there is actually useful stuff out there. After about 45 minutes of culling through videos of expert and not-so-expert upholsterers, I came to diyuphosltertysupply.com. These guys really know what they’re doing, and—best of all—they demonstrate and explain the craft succinctly and clearly.

With my new education under my belt, I headed to my new Bloomingdale’s—Home Depot—for $200 worth of new tools for my new trade. This included a work table, an elegant and functional staple remover, a heavy duty electric stapler and staples, pliers and work gloves. And by the way, that doesn’t include the cost of the upholstery fabric, the polyester batting to put the cush back in the cushions or the cambric liner for putting the finishing touch on the underside of each chair. I was ready and set to make history.

I successfully removed the seat of one chair, pulled the staples from the old cambric liner and the old seat cover and was ready to start stapling the fresh poly batting to the seat. Everything was going nicely until the first shot of the stapler. Have you ever listened to an electric stapler? It sounds like a gunshot. If you shoot several staples in rapid succession, it sounds like a volley of gunfire. And that’s when Teddy suddenly recalled his earlier life as a World War I veteran who fought in the trenches. At the sound of the first shot he hit the ground like a seasoned combat soldier and lost control of every sphincter in his little body. Teddy spent the rest of the day trying to crawl into the arms of whoever would hold him and scanning the ceiling overhead for incoming fire. There was no comforting him. And at 3 in the morning, I had to take him out for a walk. His little bowels were still spasming.

The factory had to close for a day while I figured out what to do with the little dog with post traumatic stress syndrome. The solution seemed to be simple: I gave him a mild sedative, tucked him into his crate/bed upstairs in our bedroom, turned on NPR to supply him with a sound track of civilized conversation and shut the bedroom doors to muffle the sound of gunfire going on downstairs in the living room. I spent an afternoon working on the chairs and when I went upstairs to free the little prisoner, he was shivering with terror, but (Praise be!) didn’t have diarrhea. Okay, so this worked fair to middling well. But how often could I dope the little dog? And besides, even slightly foggy with a sedative, he was still not a happy camper. He continued shiver and scan the horizon of the living room ceiling for the next barrage of shells.

On to the next solution: on Saturday afternoon, Peter took his Kindle and Teddy for a trip to the Watchung Reservation. He would give Teddy a good long walk on the green and then enjoy reading in the car with the dog asleep in his lap. This worked out pretty well, if you don’t mind a lapful of snow-melted mud. But it did work. He brought the dog home, in time for the little veteran to suffer the misfortune of hearing stray stapler fire. Done went the tail, and Teddy resumed his place in Peter’s lap, scanning the skies for incoming and seeking safety from the hell of a vaguely remembered past life. At 5:15 in the morning, Teddy and I once again answered the call of his unhappy bowels…

The chairs are finally finished, and they look pretty good if I say so myself. My hands have been put through hell. I managed not to staple or slice myself, but this is hard work on manicured hands unused to manual labor. No matter! Peter foresees a new career for me. I think he has his eye on some flea market sofa that he thinks I will reupholster from the bones up. But although he’s getting ready to hang out a shingle for The Doloff Upholstery Shoppe, I am not.