I’m Kaitlin from
Life’s LittleMischiefs. I’m so very excited to be doing a guest post at Clippie
Dips! A big thank you to Amy for having me today.
Have you ever reupholstered furniture? I discovered that, at
least for small pieces, it’s nowhere near as difficult as I thought. The
project started on a whim, but I couldn’t be happier with how it turned out.
A few months ago, I finally admitted to myself that I needed
to get a new desk chair. The chair I had was falling apart.
And pretty ugly, as you can see. But I’ve had the chair
since college, and I’ve grown attached over the hundreds of hours I’ve spent in
it.
So I deliberated how to save the chair and thought to
myself, “You’re pretty crafty. I think you can handle this reupholstery thing.”
Necessary Materials
drop cloth
upholstery fabric (I used less than 2 yards)
2” upholstery foam (I used less than 1.5 yards)
staple gun
strong glue
screw driver
heavy pliers
box cutter or serrated knife (I’ll explain)
Word of warning: The
thicker your fabric, the harder it will be to work with and get smooth around
your seat.
I chose a very, very thick faux fur fabric because I wanted
soft fuzzy material against my knees since I spend so much time in this chair.
But in retrospect, I might have chosen something else if I’d known how annoying
it would be to work with.
To begin, I set up a plastic drop cloth in the backyard and
hauled the chair out there. The foam was really old, so I expected it to shed a
lot. Old foam has a tendency to fall apart at the slightest provocation, and I
really didn’t want to spend the next six months finding foam in the rug that
the vacuum missed.
First, let’s separate the seats from the frame. Remove the
screws, keeping an eye out for washers.
Some of you will find bolts instead of screws. You can
remove them with heavy pliers.
Remove anything that’s left on the bottom of the seat
covering the upholstery staples. The manufacturer used cardboard on mine (big
spender), so I can just rip it off.
If they used fabric as a covering on yours, unless the
staples are visible, you’ll have to cut it off and replace it later.
Now all you should see is the wooden base, folded over
fabric and staples.
On the edges, make note of how the fabric was folded over
and how many staples are needed to hold it in place.
It’s going to take a lot of staples and some patience to get
your fabric in place, but it will turn out beautifully.
These staples are too heavy for a regular staple remover,
but it’s easy to loosen them up by slipping your screwdriver under the staple
and wiggling.
Most of them pop right out. If you wind up with a stubborn
one, use your pliers to yank it out.
Once you’ve removed all the staples, pull your fabric off
the wooden base to reveal the foam.
You can sort of see here how crumbly and dry the foam was.
Most of it became a fine powder as soon as I touched it. This was actually
worse than I expected it to be, and my poor mug of tea was a nearby casualty.
Tip: This foam kicks
up like crazy, almost as easily as packing peanuts. Seriously, you sigh, and it
goes everywhere. You don’t want to breathe this stuff in, so I really recommend
doing this outside if you can.
My foam had been glued to the wooden base, but it pulled
right off. Clean off as much of the foam remnants you can.
Now it’s time to measure your base so we can cut the new
foam to size. My base is a rounded trapezoid, which is really annoying to
measure, let me tell you.
I started out measuring very exactly, but quickly realized
that this wasn’t going to be helpful. Cutting foam is not an exact science. It
was going to be far easier to just set the board on the foam and cut out around
it.
So that’s what I did.
Keep in mind that you want your foam to overlap the wooden
base for comfort. Otherwise, when the foam squishes down under your weight, you
could feel board against your legs instead of comfortable foam. Not the goal.
I cut about .25” away from the edge of the board to ensure
my foam would be slightly larger than my base.
It takes some time to cut foam. The first cut only creates a
divet in the foam. I drew my box cutter along that same line over and over to
cut all the way through my foam. Try not to depress the foam when you’re
cutting. You’ll wind up with a jagged edge.
When I purchased my foam, the sales clerk used a bread knife
to slice mine off the main roll. I’m not kidding. It was pretty funny. So if
you don’t have a box cutter, a bread knife will work for this part.
I wanted my seat to be very comfortable, so I cut out a
second piece of foam the same size and glued them together.
For my rounded corners, I centered the board on the foam
pile and just cut the corners off at a diagonal.
Now glue your foam pile to the board, and set it aside the
dry.
Time to measure and
cut our fabric!
Measure the pile of board and foam that makes up the innards
of your seat for width, length and depth. You can do this while it’s still
drying, just don’t move it around too much.
Here’s my terrible sketch of the seat. To all of these
measurements, add 2” so you’ll have fabric to secure to the bottom of the
board. (Sort of like adding a hem.)
Measure and cut your fabric according to these numbers.
Remember: measure twice, cut once. Always solid advice with fabric.
Once the glue on your foam and board is dry, set it in the
middle of your cut fabric, and fold over one corner of the fabric.
Bring that folded corner up over the corner of the board to
make sure you’ll have plenty of fabric to staple into place.
Then cut off the corner of fabric.
Pull it tight up and over the corner of the board. Don’t
pull so tightly that you cause the foam to compress, but enough that it won’t
shift while you work. Staple the corner into place.
Start directly to one side of the material you just fixed
into place, pulling up pieces of fabric and stapling them to the board.
Fabric is very forgiving material. If you have to remove a
staple, don’t worry about it.
As you work, smooth out any ridges that appear against the side of the seat. The bottom of the seat
(where the board is visible) won’t be seen by anyone else, so don’t worry so
much about how that part looks.
At first, the whole thing is going to look like a mess.
But work through the pain. I promise it will turn out all
right.
Folds will appear around your corners. Even with my
super-thick faux fur material, these don’t look bad on the finished chair. So
just keep them as tight and flush against the seat as you can.
For all you master
sewers out there: To remove these ridges, tailor the fabric beforehand using
darts at the corners. This requires some super exact measuring of the foam.
Make sure you leave the holes for your screws uncovered.
Once you’ve secured all the fabric around the base, it will
still look a bit of a mess.
Ew. But turn it over, and if you’ve been smoothing as you
went, it should look like this.
Beautiful.
Line the holes on the base up with the frame and prepare to
reattach it.
With one hand, push the frame against the seat and start
screwing it into place. Be sure to press
down as you secure the screws.
Once the seat is back in place, you’re done.
I have to say, I really love this chair now that it’s been
snazzed up a bit. This might be one of my favorite projects ever.
If you try this out for yourself, I’d love to see the
finished product!
Thanks again to Amy for letting me guest post! I had a blast
over here at Clippie Dips. I hope you come check out some of my other tutorials
at
Life’s LittleMischiefs!
