The Chair Makeover - Part 3

Okay, I've been busy with my first ever upholstery project.  Here's the newly transformed chair!

But do you remember how it looked before the transformation?  Ugh!

I did it!  I feel like I have can do anything now! :)  It's been a really fun learning experience!  Click here to see how I took the chair apart.  Then, if you want to see about painting the fabric, you can click here.  Here is how I put the chair back together!

Remember, this is how the chair looked when it was all taken apart.

Next, I plugged the holes in the back of my chair where the buttons had gone through.  I also cut out batting to fill in where it the chair needed additional padding.

I then turned the chair around and stapled the batting to the upper back of the chair.

I forgot to take a picture but I placed the fabric pieces that cover the seat and the bottom of the chair and stapled the fabric to the bottom of the chair.

Turning the chair so that the front is facing forward, I placed the back piece of fabric on the back and attempted to slide the bottom portion between the lower back and the seat to the chair (there is a slit here).  

See the slit?  I stapled the fabric to the chair.

UGH...how messy is this???   So I unstapled the fabric.  I then decided to  baste some pleats in the bottom portion of this piece of fabric to make things look a bit more uniform.

Much better.  Then I turned the chair around and stapled the top edge of this fabric piece to the chair.  I then took one arm fabric piece and slid one side in the area between the seat and the bottom of arm.  The other side I pulled over and stapled onto the outside of the chair arm.

Next I put the buttons onto the back of the chair.  When the chair was pink, there were 13 covered buttons. I decided to use just 5 brown shank-style buttons.  I first used an upholstery needle and poked it through the old hole from the back of the chair.

I then thread the button onto the needle in the front of the chair.

I then pushed the needle back through the chair to the back.  I also pushed the needle through a wad of batting.

I tied the two ends of the thread together tightly and then pulled both tightly and stapled them to the chair frame.

I then put the fabric on the lower outside arm/side of the chair. 

You are looking at the arm of the chair from the outside.  The side piece of fabric is draped over the arm right side down and stapled directly under the arm (the brown strip creates a straight crease).  Then the fabric is folded down and secured on the underside of the chair.

The upper side is next.

I had some leftover pieces from the other chair that were used to secure the fabric in this location.

The only area still exposed is the back.  You need to cut a piece of muslin to stretch over the exposed back of the chair.  Then cut a piece of batting the size to cover this area and staple it to the back of the chair.

Then, like the lower sides of the chair, drape your back fabric, right side down, and staple the top of this fabric to the back of the chair (use the brown paper tape).

Then pull the fabric down and staple to the bottom of the chair.  The last step is to staple a piece of fabric over the exposed bottom of the chair.

I also recovered the chair cushion.

Hopefully I took enough pictures throughout this process so you feel you can do this as well!  I attempted to take a lot of pictures throughout each stage, but remember that each piece of furniture will have its own "set of rules".

The supplies I needed to complete the re-assembly of the chair include:

1.  Staple Gun.  Look for one for women. I used the "EasyShot" that I purchased from Home Depot. It is very light weight and rather than squeezing the handle to staple, you push down like you would a regular stapler.  I felt this would be better so that my hand would not become so fatigued.

2.  Upholstery needle. They are very long and you will need one if you are attaching buttons so that you get through all the layers of batting and fabric.

3.  Once again, if you are attaching buttons, you will need some very heavy duty thread.  I purchased some waxed upholstery thread.

4.  Some upholstery paper tape.  This is attached to ensure a nice straight fold when stapling an area where your fabric folds on itself.

5.  Batting to fill in areas where the old batting has fallen apart

6.  Muslin or some other light weight cheap fabric if you need to replace any area where your chair had thin fabric that you could not salvage, like the bottom of your chair.

7.  Some good sharp scissors.

I believe that is all the supplies I used.

I learned a lot.  I think I just may do this again!  Are you up to trying to update an upholstered piece of furniture?

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