How to reupholster a chair?

I have been so busy with the kids lately, that I barely have had time to keep up with my wonderful blog, but now I am back and ready to share.  As most of you know I love  furniture. If I see a nice piece of antique furniture that I can work with, then I am totally up for a new project.

Now, here is a  little tip that you have to consider.  If you do see a nice antique piece get it immediately, but don’t do anything with it yet. Do some research on the piece, because you never know it might be worth something.  Some antique furniture is way to nice to even paint, so you might consider just giving it a nice good clean and it would look as good as new.  No one says you have to paint anything and everything!

I have been in the process of changing my house and I have been looking for some chairs for my living room.  I have been looking in stores, and yes I found some great ones, but some were either way off my budget or they did not have the right  fabric. So I decided to look for chairs that I like and select my own fabric and reupholster it myself.  A great project and hey, I will be happy with the results because I did it all by myself.

I did find some great chairs (take a look at the picture), but the fabric was worn out and wasn’t my style at all. As always, I went to Hancock Fabrics where they had a few reupholstery fabrics for sale. I bought approximately 8 yards (for 2 chairs) not bad a all

I basically took the entire fabric off the chair making sure I didn’t rip off any pieces, because I will use that as a pattern for the new chair cover.  Every piece has to be taken off in layers, so I literally took pictures of every layer I was taking off, so I would know how to place them back in order when I start with reupholstering with the new fabric.

It is a pretty easy process, however you just need a very good electric staple gun. It makes the project go so much faster.  I do recommend taking a few breaks so your not too overwhelmed with the project.  In my case it was easy to take a break because my kids needed me, so I had to stop quite frequently.  As for the buttons, you can take them to a reupholster place that covers buttons and take your fabric along (they usually charge a dollar for each) .  There is definitely a lot of pulling and holding the fabric tightly so you can staple it securely onto the chair.  It took me approximately 2 weeks to to do both chairs.  Not bad all.

Now, here are the final results of my chairs and hopefully I gave you all some inspiration so you can do your own chair.  Happy reupholstering!

Sincerely,