Chair Makeover – Chapter 4

Yesterday we resumed work on my $6 chair. The Chef (he insists since he is a proper noun on this blog that his “name” should be capitalized) and I loaded it up to drive over to his parent’s house to make some progress on the upholstery.

Here is where we left things. No fabric yet stapled on the frame, just a stripped down chair minus a lot of batting. Katie the cat took to my chair like her own personal fort. She even brought her mouse with her.

Here is the progress we made after about 90 minutes, the bottom piece is finally on. Sue, The Chef’s sister-in-law was over and so she stayed to work too. It’s nice to have 3 minds try and figure our the puzzle that is upholstery. This piece below will be under the cushion, so you will not see a lot of it, but it was a bit complicated because of the way the fabric had to cover different angles on the chair. Sometimes it’s like wrapping a present. Other times you have to cut parts – be brave, just do it! As long as you have enough fabric and staples you can cut another piece if it doesn’t work.

After the bottom piece we did the arms. All of the pieces have to be measured, cut and before the fabric goes on, you have to add batting on the frame if your particular piece needs it, like we did here. The batting is the easy part, you simply lay it over the frame or old batting. We stapled it on in a few places, just to give it a bit of hold. The Chef’s mom did the front of the arms. There is a piece that will be covered with fabric that goes on the front.

The last piece we put on was the back because after this I can do the rest of the upholstery myself, now that I’ve learned from the best. It does get easier as you do more pieces. There is a bit of muscle required and a variety of staple sizes. We used 2 staple guns one with 1/2 inch staples and one with 7/16 inch staples. The longer ones help when there is a lot of batting to go through. Here is mom chef putting on her batting leftovers. No rhyme or reason to it, you just lay it on there because the fabric will cover it. One tip though, make sure it is padded enough for when you sit in it. She matches the chair!

Eight hours (and some pizza, wings and Daytona 500 later – disclaimer – The Chef’s dad is the Daytona watcher, we were just stuck with it. I like that view from the drivers seat though.) we were back at my apartment with the chair in its permanent home. It finally looks like a real piece of furniture. The last few parts I have to do are to cover the sides, the back, refinish the legs and cover the bottom. More to come, it will be done soon!