How to Re-Cover Chairs

An easy way to fix up old or used furniture. Why didn't we do this earlier?

Step 1 Before

Here's an old chair with a ratty seat cover.

We got it from Craig's List about three years ago. The seats had been re-covered in a neat red silk that looked good but didn't wear well. After months of ignoring the shredded red silk, we finally yanked it off to discover the original black fabric, which also looks pretty bad.

Since we were planning to have 40 people over for Thanksgiving the next day, it was the perfect time to start a new project. Right.

Comments

[remiska]

OK!!! )

[piperrenee]

here is my chair :)

[canida]

Oh wow, you're right - it's identical fabric!  Your chair has some additional curlicues, though.  Nice job!

[piperrenee]

this is beautiful and pretty eerie, i recovered a chair about a year ago and stained an almost identical chair that stain color, and the fabric is the same! can i take the chair off your hands so mine has a twin? nice work :)

[killersquirel11]

I just wanna say: Yeah... reupholstering a couch is a LOT harder (just trace the outline on the bottom, the back, and about 3 or four times on each side and imagine that under your finger there are anywhere from 1 to four layers of staples, not to mention the upholstering process)

[Valancy]

Those are lovely. I really like that fabric.Nothing like the night before to create something pretty !

[jgagelvr]

Lovely job! Thanks for posting this.

[Leon Close]

Hey those are nice chairs.

[qdogg]

I use a hot glue gun which IMHO works better than staples. It actually fuses the fabric together w/o stress points and I can reach places inaccessable to a stapler. There is also the advantage of no sharp things to get poked w/ either now or later. Just don't get burned on the gun!

[zachninme]

Wow! I bet those match the purple turkey!

[canida]

Well, they match the blue turkey, but ours were unfortunately pre-brined, so I didn't get the chance to color them.

[zachninme]

Waitwaitwait... ours -- as in more than one!? You really are crazy! I knew it all along!
Then again... 40+ people... gahh! still shocking!

By the way, nice robot swag!

Why do you have to coat them with the scotch guard? Is it just to make it more stain-resistant?

[canida]

Last year we had 2x22lbs turkey; this year we had 2x15lbs, and probably should have done more. The scotch guard is to make them stain resistant at all. ;)

[incorrigible packrat]

Dig that funky blue fabric. Curiously enough, I re-covered three chairs with some green upholstery fabric, that I'm sure is the same pattern as yours. The curious part being that I found my fabric under a layer of worn-out fabric, on a ratty old couch, that I was preparing for retirement. The couch had to be about 30 years old at the time. Good to know that the pattern is still available. By the way, you should get some plywood and foam, and upholster your milk crates as well...

[carvedstars]

THANK YOU!! I've been too lazy to attempt this before.

[canida]

We waited months due entirely to laziness. It's far easier than I had thought.

What changed? Basically, my mom came to visit, called us wimps, and removed the damaged silk covers- then we had to finish them.

[carvedstars]

hahaha. Sometimes an..erm..gentle push is needed!

[texabyte]

sctoh gaurd fumse r col

[texabyte]

just kidding

[GorillazMiko]

smart! cool :-)