DIY Chair Reupholstery

Well I think I have now caught the DIY bug.  Ever since I recovered our sofa, I want more projects to do!  My sister-in-law gave me this one; an old upholstered dining room chair that she uses at her desk now.  I don't know about you, but that dusty rose fabric just wasn't quite her cup of tea...or mine either for that matter!

Part I:  The Deconstruction

This one was pretty easy to start off, just ripping all that nasty pink fabric off with my trusty screwdriver and pliers.  I saved all the fabric from the back to use as pattern pieces, and the batting was also saved for re-use.

When I started ripping the fabric off the seat cushion, I discovered that this was apparently not the first time this chair has been reupholstered!  It had another layer of red-orange velvet underneath, even uglier than the pink!  Shocking, I know.

So that was promptly stripped off as well (don't worry, no more layers of fabric under that!), down to the seat cushion.

Part II:  The Reconstruction

I used those pieces of gross old fabric as my pattern pieces, leaving about an extra 1/2" all the way around so I'd be able to fold the fabric under and get clean edges on the chair.

I started with the back of the chair.  I stapled down the first back piece since that was going be covered up by another layer anyway, and you can't see the staples from the back.  Then I attached the batting and top layer of fabric, folding the edges under as I went and gluing them down with Tacky Glue.  Anyone who knows me knows that I use Tacky Glue for pretty much everything!  If you've never used it, try it now!!   It is so worth your investment!

Anyway, as I went along pulling the fabric tight and gluing it down, I started adding these decorative upholstery tacks that we got at Home Depot (for the entire chair I used about 1 1/2 boxes of the tacks).  You could do the tacks as a solid border all the way around instead of spacing them out, but you'd need 3 or 4 times as many.


The tacks were easy enough to hammer in, but I did have some that bent and ended up in the trash.  This was another reason why I glued the fabric instead of stapling it; I didn't want any exposed staples under the tacks.  The hardest part of this was probably going around the corners and still getting my folded edges to be clean.  But thank goodness for that glue!

When I did the seat, I started by pulling my fabric tight over the seat and stapling it in a couple places so it would stay tight.  The I just removed the staples as I went along gluing and adding the tacks.

And there it is!  All done!  Pretty simple and straightforward.  Comment below if you have any questions or comments and thanks for reading, everyone!!