Sooo tacky

Tacks. Many, many tacks. Today was full speed ahead for finishing all those long-ignored furniture projects. I'm pleased to report it went well - but I have to say that I really did not expect putting the seat cover on the rocker to take so incredibly long. Holy crappity, it takes forever to get those damned upholstery tacks in properly - and all perfectly spaced, etc.

First, I re-tied the springs - which was quicker and easier than I thought, thanks to some online instructions showing how to do a clove hitch (rusty knot-tying skills, don't tell my former camp counselors). I forgot to take a picture before I covered it with a layer of canvas, so here's the underside:

And the canvas:

Next, I had to deal with seat padding. I waited till today to go to the craft store for some cotton batting. We had a heck of a snowstorm yesterday so I was patient till the roads were cleared off. The instructions I had were saying to use cotton batting, though there were a number of opposing views online, so I went with a hybrid approach. I had a bunch of loose polyester fill already, so I plopped that down then covered it with sheets of batting and stapled the top one down to keep everything in place. I thought that might help keep it from getting really lumpy:


Then began the ancient Chinese tack torture. I thought this was going to be really quick (like all the other, staple-on seat covers), but noooo. Even with this extremely helpful tack spacing doo-whacky from Van Dykes, it seriously took about 3 hours to tack down the whole seat cover. And I had to take a lot of breaks. But it's done now:

And I finished it with a piece of thin black fabric underneath, like some folks suggested:

Phew!

I also finished the small bench in the living room (it just needed tung oil, since I sanded it and filled and reglued its problem areas yesterday):

And finished stripping and glued up the end table, which is mahogany, and will just need to oil that baby tomorrow.

Did I already say, phew?