Welcome back to Upholstery Basics, where we’ll be rolling up our sleeves and completing our first project together: a wrap-around seat. Of all seating, dining room chairs get the brunt of the abuse — a little vino here, red sauce there. If you’ve been glaring at those chairs and wondering how to give them that much-needed facelift, read on, and you’ll be transforming those eyesores into jaw-droppers in no time. Read the full post on reupholstering dining chairs after the jump! Don’t forget to check out Upholstery Basics: Tool Time to learn more about the tools we’re using today. 1. Remove the seat from your chair frame by unscrewing the screws on the underside. If your seat drops into the frame, like mine, you may be able to pop it out without unscrewing it. Make sure to mark the orientation of the seat before removing. It may seem obvious, but it is imperative that we know which side is the front when we attach the fabric later. 2. Strip all of the old fabric, padding, staples and tacks off of the seat using your pliers and staple remover.
Once you’re finished, you should be left with a wooden board. This is a good point to mark any screw holes, so you can avoid them as you attach new padding and fabric. 3. Flip the board upside down on top of the foam and trace the outside edge with a permanent marker. 4. Use the carving knife to cut out the shape. Don’t worry if the edges get a little ragged looking. Just do your best to keep the blade straight up and down and not angled to one side or the other. 5. To create a slight domed shape to the seat, place a layer of cotton batting about an inch inside the edges of the board. Add extra layers if you’d like the crown of the seat to be more exaggerated. Just remember to make each additional layer of cotton slightly smaller than the one that precedes it. 6. Attach the foam to the board by stapling through the side of the foam and down into the wood. It’s best to work in opposites as you staple, so start with the back side and then move to the front. Then staple from the right to left side.
Be careful not to push the foam back as you staple. We want the hard wooden edge to be padded, so it won’t show through the fabric. 7. Dacron will smooth out all of the imperfections and be the final layer of padding before the fabric. Once the foam is secured all the way around, tightly wrap Dacron around the edge and staple to the bottom of the board. 8. Trim off the excess Dacron gathered at the corners and around the bottom. 9. Now it’s time for the fabric! If you’re working with a pattern, decide where you’d like it placed on the seat. The rule of thumb is to place the top of the pattern at the back of the seat and the bottom of the pattern at the front of the seat. 10. To get started, staple the fabric at the back of the seat, but only put the staples in halfway by lifting one side of the staple gun up at an angle. These are called sub-staples and will allow you to pull them out very easily should you need to make adjustments. Once you’ve stapled the back, move on to the front.
Then sub-staple the right and left sides. 11. Make a pleat in every corner by pulling the fabric from the sides around to the front and back. Fold under enough of the excess fabric to make the edges of the folds flush with the corners. Feel free to cut out bulky excess if you’re having trouble getting it all folded under the pleats, and use your regulator to get the fabric neatly tucked in. 12. Once you’re happy with where your fabric is placed, take out your sub-staples a few inches at a time and replace them with permanent staples that go in all the way. These will need to be closer together to make sure all the fabric is held down tightly. Keep a close eye on the edge as you go. The more consistent you are with the tightness of your pull, the smoother the fabric will look. Another tip: Pull with your palm instead of your fingertips to avoid puckers and dimples. 13. It’s looking like a finished seat now! After you’ve cut off the excess fabric, permanently staple the dustcover to the front side of the seat.
14. Then add a strip of cardboard tack on top for reinforcement. 15. Fold the dustcover over the tack strip toward the back of the seat. This is called a blind tack. Fold under the raw edge and staple to the back of the seat. Once you have the back secured, fold under the sides and staple. 16. If you have a seat that screws onto your chair frame, clear any holes of padding, fabric or dustcover and attach it to the chair. Use your blower attachment to dust off your chair, and you’re finished! If you haven’t seen it already, check out Grace’s inspired wrap-around chair on the Design*Sponge Book Trailer. Even the smallest project can make the biggest difference. See you next month!Want to learn how to upholster the seat of your dining room chairs? I have a fabulous tutorial for you today….. a step by step picture tutorial on how to upholster dining room chairs! upholstering dining room chairs actually a lot easier than i thought it would be. this was my first hack at any sort of upholstering and i think more upholstery is in my future.
i thought it was really fun. and the chairs turned out perfect! oh and i guess using pretty fabric helped too. haha this is davis and i scored a nice dining room table with 6 chairs on craig’s list. very sturdy with great lines. but i really had my heart set on having soft dining room seating and really wanted some color on the seats for a change….. so we decided to upholster the chairs. and yes, davis helped me. we like to work on bigger projects like this together. makes for some fun memories!! {i.e. a paint fight, water war, etc} -1″ high density foam {you can also use cotton batting} -staples {you’ll need a lot} -foam adhesive {must be rated for foam. i used a spray foam adhesive found at the craft store} 1. first remove the seat from your chair using a screw driver. {be sure to put the screws in a place where you can find them later!} 2. using your chair seat, create a cardboard template that is 1/4″ bigger on all sides. if your chairs are squarish, mark which is from and which is back.
with mine, it is pretty obvious so i did not bother marking front and back. 3. using your cardboard template, trace and cut foam for each chair. *TIP: a turkey carver works great to cut foam! i could not find a turkey carver in stores yet {not quite turkey season yet!}, so i used scissors. 4. we applied adhesive to the top of the seat and to one side of the foam. you will want to follow the instructions on your adhesive and apply accordingly. it may be different than the one we used. NOTE: I will admit, I tried to skip the adhesive . {commitment phobia. what if the upholstery didn’t turn out? then I’d be stuck with glue all over my seats….} but I found out the hard way that it is loads easier to adhere the foam to the seat….. it stays in place and makes the next steps so much easier! so learn from my mistake and don’t try to skip the adhesive. 5. as per our adhesive’s instructions, we allowed the adhesive to dry for a couple minutes before placing the foam on it.
this gave us a permanent bond. be sure to follow the instructions on your adhesive. 6. determine what size of fabric you’ll need for each seat: measure the width of your seat across top and sides including the foam. {basically measure from the floor up over and across the width and down to the floor on the other side.} then measure the front to back of the seat including the foam and the seat thickness. add 4″ to each measurement. TIP: make sure you know which measurement is for the seat’s width and which measurement is for the seat’s length. this helps when cutting fabric with a pattern or design. 7. cut your fabric in the size that you determined in Step 5. i cut mine to be 28″x30″. TIP: be sure that you cut your fabric pieces with regards to the fabric print so that your design will be in the correct direction when you’ve applied it to the seat. 8. grab that staple gun and get ready for some fun! lay your fabric on a clean, flat surface and place your seat on top with the foam side down.
start on one side and fold fabric over the seat. pull firmly, but not too tight. then place one staple between your fingers {be sure not to get your fingers!} so that you don’t get “staple pulls”. TIP: do not staple next to your fingers. because when you take your fingers away, there will be lines or “staple pulls” in the fabric. {yes, we had to pull out a few staples…} 9. place one staple on the opposite side. 10. and a staple on the 3rd side. 11. and a staple in the 4th side. then go and fill in each side with staples. each time you place a staple, place one on the opposite side. {sorry for the shoe in there. G-man decided the shot needed a shoe in it! lol and i didn’t see it until i was editing my pics. 12. staple the fabric until you have staples about every 1-2″. it should look something like this. 13. using your scissors, snip off the excess fabric in the corners leaving about 2″ to fold over to finish your corner as shown in the next step.
14. fold over your corner fabric and play with the pleats until you like how they look. then place 2-3 staples to hold in place. TIP: make a mental note of how you did the first corner so that you can do the remaining corners the same. there will be pleats in your corners no matter how you do it, the key is to make all the corners look the same. {ok, so that’s easier said than done. i doubt no one will notice if all your corners are a little different. like mine.:} 15. staple the other 3 corners in place.16. flip over your seat and ta-da! you have a beautifully upholstered seat. and adjust any sections with more staples as needed. {turning over that first one was scary and exciting. what had i done? did it work??} 17. reattach the seat to the chair with your screws and screwdriver and you’re done! way to go on upholstering your dining room chairs! that was easier than you thought it would be, right?? and if you have kids/pets, you may want to do this one last step….