Reviving A Chair To Fit My Style
Do you have a piece of furniture that is either in DESPERATE need of repair or just doesn’t fit your style, but is still functional? Maybe you’ve seen something at a yard sale or thrift store that catches your eye, but needs a little MAKEOVER.
I have a chair that I had already RESURRECTED with a lovely black and white polka dot fabric that ….well, let’s just say that it looks like a rabid dog got ahold of it, but it was just children who didn’t RESPECT what belonged to someone else. As you can see from the first picture above, it was either to put it out of its misery at the landfill or REVIVE it yet once again. I chose the later because I still saw POTENTIAL in it.
The first step was to DISASSEMBLE it. This is going to be different for every piece of furniture, depending on how it’s made. The top (back support) of my chair lifted right off, which made the process easy. After I had the two parts separated, I needed to take off the old material. The top had a plastic cover that popped off and exposed the material and STAPLES holding the fabric on. I used a flat head screwdriver to PRY out the old staples. Tedious, but it had to be done. Then I took the old piece of fabric (as you can see, it didn’t have to be cut perfectly since the edges were covered up) and I used it as a TEMPLATE to cut the new material.
Let’s back up for just a minute. The fabric I chose for the chair was some that I have had for over 20 years. My husand had gone to AFRICA on an Air Force assignment and brought it back for me. I never had a reason to use it on anything and it was at the bottom of a container I have for material. As soon as I saw it I KNEW that was the PERFECT fabric for this chair. Now if the chair was going to be used a lot, I would have needed to go with a more STURDY fabric that would hold up better, but this would be just fine for my project.
Back to the chair……Since the foam cushion on the back of the chair was fine, I just needed to staple the new material on. There was a DESIGN I wanted to make sure to CENTER, and once I had it where I wanted it, I put a couple of staples in the top, stretched the fabric to the bottom of the chair and put a couple in the bottom. Then I moved to the side, stretching the fabric as I went, and then to the other side. With those ANCHOR staples in, I just went around and stapled the material all around the top of the chair, STRETCHING it out as I went. I popped the plastic cover back on and was ready to work on the seat of the chair.
This time I had to do a little MORE work since the foam cushion on the seat had been RIPPED up by those rabid….I mean, repositioned….accidentally…..oh no, I’m so sorry…….NO, it was just destructive children, no need to sugar coat it. Ok, ok, so I PULLED the foam off of the bottom board, used the old piece of foam cushion as a template, and CUT a new cushion out of some foam I had. The new foam I used was THICKER than the original foam, so that definitely impacted the way the chair looks. After I cut out the foam cushion, I hotglued it to the wooden board. I didn’t have enough of the FABRIC left from the bottom to use as a template, so I just found the PATTERN I wanted to be in the middle, placed the cushion upside down on the material with that part in the center, and cut a big enough piece to more than cover the bottom. Can you tell I’m NOT a professional upholsterer???? I used the same process to attach the fabric to the bottom as I did the top, but I had to use the SCREWS that was in it before because the staples would not penetrate the board. But I had to do the top, bottom, side, side, and then all around METHOD just like I did for the top piece of the chair. I used a piece of black material I had and HOTGLUED it to the bottom and then REATTACHED the bottom frame/legs. Good as new…..NO, better! I love it!
I’d love to see BEFORE and AFTER pictures of something you’ve given a makeover to. We draw inspiration from others!
Let your STYLE show through everything around you, It tells a STORY about who you are.
As always, have a great week my friends!
