My absence goes to show how crazy life has been - balancing work and school and living my life is a a work in progress and I'm figuring it out day-by-day. I have a feeling I'll get the hang of it next summer, when classes are over... but then there will be a new obstacle to tackle, I'm sure! Craziness aside, my big list of projects is still staring me down, so the time has come to get going with it.
Today I helped reupholster my very first piece of furniture! Helping my mom reupholster
her dining room chairs was on the large to-do list… so that is just what we
did.
The cream color on these chairs was not cutting it anymore. Cream chairs in a dining room = big mess
waiting to happen. So my mom
wanted to bring in more of the blue and gold that is in the connected living
room to help merge the rooms together a bit. She had this fabric on hand so it was $FREE.99 Gotta love leftovers!
This is her process for recovering chairs and it seemed to
work like a charm!
1. Iron the fabric
2. Remove the cushion from the chair frame (these chairs were
screwed in, so we flipped the chair on it’s side and unscrewed the cushion from
the bottom.
3. Lay the fabric out on a flat surface – check to make sure
the pattern is where you want it to be on the chair (be extra careful with
stripes and lines)
4. Pull the fabric over the cushion very tightly on one side,
and begin to staple. My mom puts
one staple in the center, then two on each side to begin.
5. On the opposite side of the chair, pull the fabric so it is
as taut as possible, then staple in three times.
6. Repeat steps 4 and 5 on the other sides of the chair
** If you want a
cleaner look under the chair, you can fold the fabric over itself. This isn’t necessary, because no one
ever sees this – but it’s good for those perfectionists out there!
7. Fill in the staples throughout the sides of the chair so
that the fabric is tight and secured.
We had about 15 per side on these chairs.
8. The cushion should look almost complete if you flip it
over, with the exception of the corners.
Keeping the cushion upside-down, pull the fabric from both sides of the corner
and fold over the ends. Then,
neatly fold them on top of each other, so that there is a nice line in the
center of the corner. If you
prefer, you can do two lines on either side of the corner – it is just a matter
of changing the way you pull the fabric.
Staple it in tightly!
9. Flip your cushion right-side-up and place it on the chair
frame, still tilted on it’s side – screw it back in from the underside.
10. Admire your work and take a seat!
I think I’m ready to do a headboard now – so stay tuned, this
will probably be my next project!
xxx
