I Recovered my Chairs- Anyone can do it!

I purchased fabric in Canton at First Monday for the purpose of recovering my kitchen chairs. I decided on Monday night to start the project after I put the twins to bed. The first chair took an hour. Ugg. Too long. I decided for the next chair I would leave the current fabric and recover the existing fabric with the new fabric. Removing the fabric is what took so long. That second chair only took a half hour. I stuck with that method and each chair was done in a half hour or less. The entire project took 3.5 hours. Not so bad to get nice looking chairs. I was tired of cleaning the white fabric on the old version of the chairs. I had it scotch guarded so stains came up easily, but wiping them down every day of my life had become a task I no longer wanted to do. The new fabric is a darker patterned material that I scotch guarded as well. I will have to clean from time to time of course, but every speck of dirt won’t show up.

As I was typing this Brielle turned her plate of food upside down on a chair. She had lots of ketchup on that plate. Thanks to Scotch Guard the ketchup wiped right off. No stain! No residue!

I have recovered chairs a number of times. It is a simple project that can revamp a set of furniture or a single piece very economically (of course depending on the fabric you choose). You don’t have to be that handy either! It was the perfect solution for this set, as the chairs are nice carved wood and the set itself is beautiful. However, the chair cushions needed changing.

How did I do it?

First I turned the chair on its back laying it on the floor and removed the four screws that were holding the chair to the base. Notice I have nicely done finger nails and this project did not change that!

Next my little helper helped me note on each chair the holes where the screws went in so that we wouldn’t staple over those holes.

Then I covered the chairs seat in the new fabric and stapled in place using a staple gun. The key is to make sure the fabric is tight all the way around when stapling. In corners sometimes you need to create small folds, pull tight, and staple into place to make them as tightly recovered as possible. Be sure not to over-tighten either, just tight enough so the fabric is taunt and there are no pulls from over-tightening.

After the fabric is stapled I then trimmed away excess fabric on the underside of the chair. Once that is done you should be able to see where the screw need to go back into the chair seat.

Final step in screwing the chair seat back onto the base of the chair. Done!