How to reupholster a dining room chair?

Sources

How to Reupholster Dining Chairs (seats and backs)

heytherehome

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1

Reupholstering Your Dining Chairs | Upholstery Training Experts

kimsupholstery

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2

How to Reupholster Dining Chairs and Get Perfectly Smooth Corners

lovelyetc

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3

Answer

Here is a concise guide on how to reupholster a dining room chair:

Supplies Needed

• Fabric (upholstery weight or home decor fabric)
• Batting or foam
• Staple gun
• Scissors
• Screwdriver
• Pliers
• Staple remover (optional)

Steps

1. Remove the chair seat by unscrewing it from the frame.
2. Remove the old fabric and batting by pulling out the staples with pliers or a staple remover13.
3. Cut new batting or foam to fit the seat, if needed. Lay it out and place the fabric on top, right side down4.
4. Fold the fabric over the edges of the seat and staple it in place, starting in the center of each side and working outwards. Pull the fabric tight but avoid stretching it12.
5. Fold the corners neatly before stapling to create a clean look1.
6. Trim any excess fabric.
7. Reattach the seat to the chair frame using the screws34.

Some additional tips:

• Choose a stain-resistant fabric3
• You can reupholster over existing fabric if it's in good condition and your new fabric is thick enough4
• Replace the plywood seat if it's cracked or damaged3

Reupholstering dining chairs is a great way to update your decor on a budget. With some basic supplies and a little time, you can give new life to old chairs123.

Video Full Text

• 00:00 Hi friends welcome back to read head homestead. I'm so excited to have you guys here today. I'm going to be working on reupholstering my dining room chairs. This is something. I have wanted to do for years years and years and years and I don't know why it's just one of those things. I kept putting off and putting off and putting off and finally was just like you know what. I want my dining room to feel so special for fall this year and so updating the dining room. Chairs was gonna be an absolute must something that I was like okay. I'm gonna do it. I'm gonna get it done not. Gonna put this off any longer. This is my first time ever reupholstering dining room chairs. So if I do this wrong. I'm sorry to those of you who may know how to do it better but you know what diy is about trying new things things that you've never done. I did watch two little videos on it. It was pretty much in my mind how I thought. I was gonna do it. So we're just gonna wing this thing and see how it turns out. But I'm excited to get a little inexpensive update to the space that I think is going to make a really big impact so let's get started so for those of you who haven't seen my dining room. This is my dining room and this is literally right off of the front door here so right when you come in. You see the dining room. So these are what the chairs currently look like and they're just. They're in really good shape um you know. I've had these for probably like six years and my grammy actually is the one that gave them to me and she had them for years before. So one of the reasons. I've been putting it off is because really they just are in great shape but they don't match the decor in here um. They don't go too bad with my table. They're okay but definitely don't really go with my rug. They're in really good shape but they just need a little update to kind of match. The space a little bit better so let me show you guys what I have picked out okay so here's the fabric that I have picked out ah. I've actually had my eye on it for years and I just. I don't know. I don't know.

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• 01:53 I thought this was going to be expensive so in case you're wondering. I got four yards for 86 dollars. I'm at hobby lobby and that was when the fabric was 30 off so the regular price would have been 123. So. I thought that was pretty good 86 bucks um. You can't even buy a chair for that cheap. So so. I thought that was good so here's my fabric. I'm so excited and it looks so much better with my rug in here which I'm most excited about and I got a little staple gun um. This is the this is it's an arrow staple gun tac mate stapler and it's for upholstery and decorating when I saw that I was like there were so many to choose from and when I saw that. I was like oh yeah. That's that's makes that makes sense yeah. That's that's that's what I'm doing so um. This is what I got. I think this was like maybe 25 bucks at lowe's or something like that. Mark says my hand is gonna hurt really bad but I don't know we're gonna see. I don't know. I'll let you know at the end. How bad my hand hurts but I told mark. I said okay well if my hand starts hurting. I'll just take a break and maybe this would be something. I do over a couple days.

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• 03:04 So I didn't know what kind of staples to buy either so. I just bought three different kinds do you ever do that sometimes if I don't know what to buy um. I'll just buy like a couple of something or I'll just buy. What I think is cutest. Mark says that's not always the best idea and I'm like well at least. I look cute using it right. I mean come on. I got quarter inch staples. I got 5 16 inch and I got 3 8 inch so I'm just gonna play with these and figure out what I think holds the fabric the best and we will go from there. I'll let you guys know which ones. I pick out because I couldn't find that online. I have a screwdriver also so that way I can detach the cushion from the chair and I've got some scissors and I've got a flathead screwdriver in case. I need to pull out any of the staples if I mess up so. I think that's all the materials that I'm going to need. Let's go ahead and get started okay so if you've never taken off the cushion before. I just wanted to show you guys what part you're looking for because when you when you turn your chair over and you look at this you're like okay what the heck there's all these different screws and what's going on you should have my chairs and I think most chairs are like this. But you should have these screws here and those ones are the ones that we're going to detach um oh hi gracie crazy. She's making an appearance um but those are the ones that you want to unscrew and that's going to release the cushion from the chair.

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• 04:35 So what I was hoping for is that I was going to be able to get two cushions out of one part of the fabric like width-wise and it looks like. I definitely am going to be able to so. I'm not going to remove the fabric. That's on here. I'm just going to cover it um. And I think that's just personal choice. I think what I'm going to do is just go ahead and cut straight down I'm going to get one figured out and then I'm going to use that as a template for the other one. So that way it makes the cutting process hopefully a little bit easier. All I did was just kind of wrap around the whole cushion and just made sure that it was going to fit and it looks like I definitely will be able to get folded. They're a pretty good size cushion. I would say so definitely if you have smaller cushions um you might even be able to get away with less fabric. But this these are a pretty good size. So while I was cutting this fabric um. It was very easy to do because there's already lines in the fabric because of the plaid so that's definitely working in my favor. If you had a fabric that wasn't patterned with lines. Like this you would definitely have to kind of maybe you know mark and measure and make sure that your your lines are straight. But this is proving to be in my favor and just just to kind of get an idea oh my gosh. I'm seeing it in the viewfinder and it's so cute. I love the fabric. It is so cute. It's like even better than when it's on the chair. It's like even better. So the one thing I need to do is go find some sharper scissors hopefully. I have some around here somewhere that I haven't like used up a whole bunch but these ones are not working. This is the second pair that I tried I'm probably going to spend more time cutting the fabric than I am stapling it at this point so make sure you have yourself a sharp pair of scissors as well. So you're going to start with like one in the center here one in the center. Here. I'm going to fold that and hold that and then staple those two.

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• 06:33 So let's try this out oh that was cool okay that has a good hole okay. I feel good about that okay and then pulling it tight of course. Let's put in another one. Oh that is so fun okay. I'm gonna put right there and I'm pulling it tight right there. Let's take a look. It looks pretty good so far yeah and it feels like it's nice and tight around okay and so then. I'm gonna work my way out at the bottom and just keep it really tight the whole way and leave an inch like maybe an inch or two inches of space on either end. So that way. I can get. My corners folded in nicely pretty easy to keep the fabric tight with having done like one staple on each side that made it like super super easy so let's do a corner. I'm going to start with one of these front corners and I'm going to cut off some of this excess fabric here. I want that front like that looks really good to me looks good. We're just gonna try it out if we have to tear it out. It's okay okay maybe it looks good. It looks good to me. I guess as long as I'm happy with it. That's all that matters so let's just do it. This is how the front looks and I think that's pretty good for my first try. That's not too bad yeah so over in these corners. I'm just gonna try to get this like as smooth and in the corner as I possibly can so now. I'm like doing the pleats kind of on the back there that looks good to me and then in here at that how's that that looks good okay. Here's how the chair looks. I think it looks so cute. It is so much better than before. I think that my corners look totally fine so.

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• 09:24 I think it's a win-win let's keep going so hey friends. It's the next day. I'm gonna get back to work on the dining room chairs here. I haven't quite finished them but now that. I have got a few of them done. I wanted to give a little update on the little things that I have figured out as I've been going because this definitely was something that I was just you know learning as I was doing it and so now that I've kind of done a few of them. I feel like. I can give you a little bit more education on how to do this. I did find that yes it is easiest to cut as much fabric as you can off of the corners of the chairs so that when you're kind of like giving them that little pleat and fold over on each corner there's less product to work with. I also found that the 5 16 staples work the best they were holding the fabric the tightest to the chair when I stapled it. The last tip. I want to mention is that with the corners of the chairs I found that it was easiest to just kind of take a look at the front of the chair. The front profile of the chair and kind of get that pleat to where I wanted it to be and how it looked. I didn't focus so much on how it ended up looking on the bottom of the chair as long as. I liked the way the corner looked on the front of the chair. I kind of messed with it until I got the corner right where I wanted it to lay and then I would just flip that over and staple in the back side and I found that that just ended up working easiest for me okay friends. The dining chairs are done and I'm so excited to show you how they turned out.

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• 11:24 Let me go ahead and give you an up close and you guys can see for yourselves okay. Here they are. I love the way that they look in this space um. This was like just such an easy diy for such a big impact um. I love that they are not like this fabric is doesn't have any blue in it. Like it is just gray and black and it's got this orange in it. But it is pulling like a little bit of the blue from the rug and I just think it really ties that together nicely and just makes it feel like like it all goes now like. It's a complete set. So one of these days. I'll get to refinishing my table but for now these made such a big impact to the room and I feel like. I'm just gonna love them for years and years yay okay and the last piece of advice that I want to share with you guys when you're doing this um the only little snag. I ran into the first four chairs that I cut out had this black line down the middle and they all just happened to work out. That way the last two that I cut they ended up having when I got them straightened out they ended up having the orange line down the center so of course. If you don't have the same fabric you might not run into this issue. But I just wanted you to be aware that if you are working with a pattern it is good to try to find a center and match that for the rest of the chairs so I ended up having extra fabric left over and so I did just like match my piece up and re-cut it so that way. All of the chairs had this black line in the center so even though you would literally probably never know that you know. I'm the only one that would know that the orange line was in the center on two of them. Even mark was like kylie. It's no big deal like no one's. No one would ever know. But I'm gonna know and then I just felt like the side profiles might look a little bit different. So I just thought you know what I have extra fabric.

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• 13:17 I did buy four yards. I really only ended up needing three yards for this and my chairs are pretty big so just to kind of give. You guys an idea if you're. If you're gonna try this at home you probably could get away with maybe three yards if you have six chairs but I did buy four yards. In case. I messed up knowing that in case I cut something wrong or I messed up or whatever. I'll have extra and I did end up needing the extra so if you guys are doing this project too maybe just buy an extra yard unless you're a risk taker. You're super pro go with the three yards but I am glad. I got the four because then I had an easy fix to just cut some new pieces so that way they would all match so I hope you guys enjoyed this little tutorial and you know this is just proof that even if you don't totally know what you're doing if you jump in you can always figure it out and that's how you're going to learn is just by jumping in and figuring it out as you go so. That's exactly what I did here and I'm just so happy that. I trusted my gut. I got this done and now I feel like. I have a whole new dining room because of it. So you guys can do anything that you set your minds to. I always appreciate you hanging out and for all your support so stay tuned stick around and I'll catch you. Guys really soon bye you.

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