Upholstery 101- The Chair

Whew!  I've been a little overwhelmed as of late doing projects.  I don't know about you but sometimes it just happens without my permission and suddenly I blink and I have ten projects going at once.  Since I know how much you all love tutorials I am bringing a post on my very first upholstery project with entirely too many photo's I'm sure!  And don't expect them all to be perfectly staged and clear either because shooting with one hand and working with the other is just not my forte.  This was my $8 chair from goodwill that I had left in my dining room in shambles for months because I was too intimidated to reupholster it.  So shall we get on with it then?

What you'll need:

A good guesstimate of how much fabric your project will require.  I guessed about 3 yards for this chair.
A good great staple gun (I'll get into the nitty gritty on these in another post)
Hot glue gun
Trim, either braided or corded.  This project took 6.5 yards.
A staple remover or flat blade screw driver (the staple remover is a forked tongue looking thing with a screwdriver handle on it. I'll tell you more in a bit)
A pair of pliers
Exacto knife or scissors

Okay step one:  Find a chair!

Now lay the new fabric over the chair so you can see where your pattern will go.  If you have an abstract pattern that is fairly busy this will be easier to place as it wont really matter which end goes where.  But stripes are the worst to work with and everything else is kind of in the middle.

Next you want to rip it apart =)  Now listen carefully because this will save you much stress, cursing and flying objects later on.  Save all the cording you take off.  You will want to measure this later so you know how much new cording to buy.  You also want to keep each piece of fabric to use as a template to cut out your new pieces.  Take lots of pictures of the process along the way so you can refer to them later if necessary and mark your pieces with a fabric pencil to remind you which piece is from where and which ends are up and down.

Okay so yes the foam underneath might be a nasty urine yellow color.  This does not mean the old family dog peed all over it!  It also doesn't mean it came from a smokers home.  This is just what foam does after time.  Foam can be expensive so as long as it's not smelly or crumbling apart I say keep it!  As your taking the gazillion staples you may want to solicit the help of your hubby because your poor little fingers will be screaming after a while.

And while he's giving your fingers a break you can start tracing and cutting out the new pieces of fabric.  Don't forget to label!

Now we paint the frame once all the staples are out.  I painted mine a semi gloss black because it's easier to wipe down later on.  Guess what?  Time to put it back together all ready!  I wish it were that simple... the putting back together part was actually day two for me.

Okay so here is the part I tell you to get a great stapler.  I will do another post on all the nitty gritty but a manual stapler will take you a week and you'll be buffer than Hulk Hogan by the time it's over.  I started out with an electric stapler which would have worked fine on frames and woods in the garage but on the hard woods of furniture it didn't have enough guts and this is what I got...

So back to Home Depot we went and ended up leaving with a pneumatic stapler/nailer.  Pneumatic = Air.  So this hooks up to the compressor and boy does it have some gumpf!  Here is the best part.  It was only $10 more than the electric one!

So start stapling at a center point on top or bottom.  Then work to the opposite side back and forth across your canvas all the while stretching and keeping the fabric taught.  So if you think of your canvas as a clock you will start with about 4-5 staples at noon.  Then pull tight and do 4-5 more at 6.  The do 3 and 9 etc...  It will start to look like this.

Once your finished stapling you can use your knife or scissors and trim around the edges.

Okay this gets tricky... I learned you cannot use staples that are too long or this can happen.  I recommend nothing over 1/2 in.  I also learned to keep lifting the fabric and check that your staples are as close to the finished edge as you can get them because I have few showing where my trim didn't cover them.

So now finish up the rest of your chair, arms and seat.  It's coming along, see!

Now get out the glue gun.  It's time to put the finishing trim on.  I used braided trim because I knew some of my staples were too high and I had hoped it would cover them all.  I also bought fabric glue that said "fast drying".  Yeah, if your a turtle.  So I opted for the hot glue gun on low and it worked beautifully.

And 6.5 yards of trim later... Viola.

I just adore this fabric...I got it at a garage sale for $3.  It's a curtain panel =)

Hope you enjoyed the journey in my garden of upholstery today.  Check back soon for my review on the staple guns, my new dining room slip covers and a bunch of new treasures!