I Get By With A Little Help From My Friends

Dear friends, I need your help. This Hickory Chair Co. chair is on Craigslist for $45 (free delivery included). It has a small stain on the seat of the chair, which is fine with me because I would simply recover it. I'm signing up for classes to learn to recover dining room chairs, so I think I could easily recover the seat. The only issue: the back of the chair. It's sewn in. What does this mean? Can I have it recovered too??? Maybe it's something I'll learn in the class. It's a beautiful chair with a lot of potential for $45, but if I'm not able to recover the back it really doesn't matter. By the looks of it, what do you think???

Oh, and check out this big guy I found for $200. I'd like to bring him home with me. He's not exactly what I was looking for in terms of the base of the secretary, but the hutch is JUST what I had in mind. Thoughts??!