Hey yall! I’ve you’ve been around a while you might remember this project. I’m doing a little bit of recycling over the summer and focusing on giving you posts through my email list. : ) If you haven’t signed up, I’d love for you to click here and do that now. I plan to send you weekly updates on projects and give you some design tips along the way! Back to recovering chairs. It is one of the easiest ways to update a secondhand chair and even a great way to update a whole space. You don’t even need a staple gun. I’ve done it with hot glue. You don’t even need to buy fabric. I’ve used tablecloths or thrifted blankets too. Here’s my post from a while back. Enjoy!
I hope you know just how easy it is to recover a chair seat to completely update and change the look of your furniture. Like, so easy.
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The only supplies you’ll need are:
a screwdriver,
a staple gun (this kind is the easiest if you don’t staple your finger like I did. It was 7ish years ago and let me just say, that if you’re holding it backwards, you can’t see the ‘exit here’ warning…) This is the one I have now, much safer for me to stick to the old school version.
staples
and fabric. I bought this fabric for my craigslisted chair cushions. If there are kids involved, I always suggest buying outdoor fabric if you can, even for inside projects. It’s so much sturdier and easier to clean. You can find a fabric round up I did, here.
Before ordering the fabric, you have to figure out how much you need. I just measured a chair base, added a couple inches to each side and multiplied by the number of chairs I had. Decorator fabric is usually 54″ wide so you can fit 2 side by side.
Cats and new surfaces…..
First, you unscrew the cushions from the chair base. There are usually 4 screws. I just lay the seat on top of the fabric, fold it to where its going to be stapled and pay attention to where I need to cut. You can measure and all of that but this is faster and I’m all about speedy projects.
Once the fabric is cut, I made sure that my stripes were straight. A crooked pattern is usually super obvious.
I start by stapling in the center of one side, then pull tight and staple directly across from the first staple.
The tighter you pull the fabric, the better it will look. Just make sure you don’t pull too much and make the print get stretched and distorted.
Then I do the same thing with the other sides.
Since these cushions are right angles at the front and rounder in the back, I did two different kinds of corners.
For the back of the cushions, I folded the extra fabric under creating one flat fold on the corner, and gave that a few staples.
For the right edges on the front of the chairs, I brought the fabric out from the front, folded the side under and folded it back to create this right triangle shape on the side of my cushion. Never put the fold on the front of the chair. Fold the extra fabric down on the sides. That way, when you look at the chair from straight on, it has a nice clean front.
Hold tight and staple down. The main thing with corners, is to make sure the sides are symmetrical. If you get one side laying flat and looking nice, do the exact same thing on the other side. I sure the fold I told you to make are “wrong” but is it good enough and better than it was? Heck yes.
It took me maybe 2 yards and maybe 30ish minutes for a huge impact.
Screw the cushions back into the chairs and that’s it! See? So easy.
Have you ever tried it? You’d be amazed at the amount of ugly-seated chairs at a thrift store. All they need is some new fabric. Help them, help you.
Have a good week! Thanks for reading, friends!
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