Furniture Friday: The Easiest Furniture to Upholster

I've taken a number of upholstery classes and have finished countless pieces of furniture by re-upholstering them.  So, I thought I'd share the one that you should start with if you're thinking of refinishing a furniture piece.

Dining room chairs, my friends, dining room chairs!

Have you ever vacuumed flour off of the carpet; or mowed the lawn when it was pretty tall?

The visual reward is immediate!

To me, that's how upholstering dining/kitchen chairs are.  You can take a nasty looking chair or one that is beat up after years of wear and transform it in under 20 minutes!  Bam! A new chair!

Some reasons why you might want to upholster dining chairs: 

1. The upholstery is uneven
2. And it doesn't match the chair's era
3. The owners do not like the fabric that is currently on the chair
4. You just need a change. 
5. It's very rewarding in just a small amount of time!

Tools you may need: 

• Your new fabric 
• Scissors
• Staple gun
• Tack puller (only if you take off the original piece of fabric before putting on your new one)
• Hammer - sometimes the staples need some help going into the wood

How to re-upholster:

Gather your desired material, this project is just canvas drop cloth:

 

Lay the seat deck onto the fabric and make your cut (I have four chair of this size so I doubled my fabric and cut two at a time).

 

This is illustrating the two pieces of cut fabric turned upside down opposite so that fabric isn't wasted even with the slight angle of the seat.

 

 Iron your fabric.  I've skipped this step before thinking that it was unnecessary.  I'd be stretching the fabric so I thought I could stretch those wrinkles out.  It turns out that stretching out the wrinkles is next to impossible!  You might not see them as much, but the finished project can't ever be as crisp as it is when ironed. 

 

Start by stapling the center of two sides first (I usually do the front and the back of the chair first but it doesn't really matter too much).   

 

Then put a few more staples into one side while stretching your fabric.  And then into the opposite side - again, while stretching your fabric. 

 

 Then you can start stretching your remaining two sides, starting from the middle.  It's important to try to stretch evenly from directly opposite of an in-place staple. 

After you've got some preliminary staples in to hold it in place, start stapleing like crazy.  Begin from the center staple and move to just 2 inches from the corner, and stop.

I don't know if you can see the tension on my hand, but I'm pulling the  fabric pretty hard and putting in as many staples as can sit by each other.  This makes the top of the seat look nice and uniform.

 How to do the corners:

There are common ways to upholster corners.  Here are two of them:  

With the reverse angled-ear approach you fold in the corner and then fold the two side flaps over it.  It's not as clean as I like it to look, but if you're able to get them even enough it can add a detail to your work that the other two ways don't show. 

 

My favorite are gift-wrap corners.  It is folded in much the same way that wrapping a box with wrapping paper would be folded.  Often I have to do some tucking and finagling, but I love how the top view looks (what everyone will see) when I'm through!  

For the third kind, the angled ear approach, check out this tutorial here.  She does a great job explaining how to make your finished project look amazing!

Some reasons why you might want to upholster dining chairs: 

1. The upholstery is uneven
2. And it doesn't match the chair's era
3. The owners do not like the fabric that is currently on the chair
4. You just need a change.

 Sit back and enjoy your work!