Chair Upgrade

I know I've mentioned it somewhere on this blog but to recap, a long time ago, like February 2013, I bought three chairs for the purpose of re-upholstering and repainting them in order to customize them so they'd look really nice in my house. Well, I finally finished one. Yes, it took about two and half years but I'm done. . . with one. I actually finished it several weeks ago but I've been busy so I haven't posted yet. Busy with what? Well, I'm selling the house, so I've been busy getting it in order. That was also my final motivation for finally finishing the chair.

My original plan was to do a detailed blog about how to do something like this, but two and a half years later I've decided I'm not going to go into detail. There are already lots of blogs out there with all the details so I'll keep mine pretty top level.

Overall, it was a fun, not too hard, not too expensive project.

The "before" chair just before getting started. The first steps, obviously, were taking it apart. The base of the chair was pretty easy - a couple of screws. Getting the fabric off was another story. There were lots and lots and lots of staples. Lots of staples and each had to be taken out one at a time. To do so I used a flat head screw driver, some needle nose pliers, and lots of elbow grease. I got blisters from this but it was kind of fun. Once the staples were off I set aside the fabric and piping and took the batting and cushions off. The finished chair has the same seat base with the original springs.

I decided to leave the black stuff in the middle. I think it might have some cushion in the middle but it all seemed to be in pretty good condition so I figured I would save myself a few steps and leave it. After getting everything apart I made an attempt to use some kind of liquid sand paper stuff to take off the original finish. I don't think I'll do this with the other two chairs. It was a ton of work and I'm not sure I did a great job. Plus, the step afterward is priming with an oil based primer (the same primer I used with those gross shelves) that sticks to everything. I don't see the point in doing both steps in the future. By the way, I think I did two coats of primer.

After priming I painted. This chair is yellow; it is the same paint I used on my dining room walls. I had a really hard time getting the lid off the can of paint so what was left is all dried up now so my other chairs may end up being a different color. This should be fine since they will also have a different fabric (the white backed floral in the top photo). I did two coats of paint.

For the new fabric, I kept all the original fabric (I labeled it as I took it off so I would know how to put it back together) and laid it out on the new fabric then cut the new fabric using the old fabric as a pattern. This worked out really nicely. I also used the front and back original fabrics as well as the seat's original fabric to create a pattern for the cushions. I don't have any pictures of that but it was easy enough. After the fabric was cut, I sewed the the seat fabric together and sewed the piping. For the seat's piping I used the original piping, which worked out beautifully, but my sewing machine didn't like the original piping that was on the front and back of the chair so I bought new piping for that . . . and hated it. It was a lot flimsier than the original piping so I didn't know how I was going to end up stapling it to the chair without the staples showing. Once I had everything sewed, I avoided putting it back together because I didn't like the piping. Then I had an epiphany - don't staple the piping, hot glue it. Duh, right? So I staples everything (which is so much fun - I love my staple gun!) then glued the piping, screwed the cushion back on, and now it is all done and I'm really happy with it.