Reupholstering dining chairs with new fabric can work wonders on your dining room. Whether you're updating chairs that have seen too much wear or sprucing up a thrift shop discovery, revamping the seat of a chair can increase comfort for your guests, add style, and make an old piece feel like new,
Since dining chair cushions can be removed, reupholstering them is typically a simpler task than redoing the upholstery on an accent chair or a bigger piece like a sofa. We have various types of upholstered dining chairs available including our most popular Lenora ELM, Lesley Rattan Back, and Nola.
If you have an upholstered dining chair that needs a little extra loving, we've simplified the process into easy-to-follow steps so that you can complete the task in no longer than weekend. The following steps will guide you through recovering chairs:
Steps To Reupholster A Dining Chair
Step 1: Dining chair cushions are often secured in place using screws. You'll have to take the cushion out of the chair and recover it separately. To remove the screws, invert the chair and place it upside down on the table.
Step 2: Take out the current upholstery. To hide a relatively light cloth under a considerably darker one, you need only layer the latter on top of the former. A replacement fabric requires the removal of the old one. Using a screwdriver and a pair of pliers, you have to pry out more than fifty staples down the underside of the seat. The seats of your chairs might be made of pressed wood. Getting the staples out of cement could be a metaphor for this. Fabric replacement often
takes less time than removing the old one.
Step 3: Cut out fresh fabric using the removed fabric as a template. First, lay out your new fabric on a level surface, and then place your old seat cover on top of it. This will tell you the precise size of the new cloth to cut. Make sure the pattern is aligned properly and going in the direction you desire on the top side of the cushion if you're using a patterned fabric.
How to Finish Upholstery Edges
The only time an upholstering project becomes challenging is when you reach the chair's edges. You may get a bunch of cloth hanging off in the corners, and if you start stapling it, it can wrinkle up and become messy. This method of upholstering corners is the simplest and most straightforward.
The side fabric will need to be secured nearer the corner first. Imagine a line cutting across the corner of the seat. Don't go past the marked line when you're stapling the sides of your fabric together towards the corner.
Now that your fabric is safely fastened, you may begin trimming the excess. You may form a triangle by holding up a corner of your fabric and cutting off one of the sides.
To make a triangle, start by cutting down about 1/2 inch from the fabrics fold and around the seat the same amount. Its important to use caution while cutting the fabric around the seat, as you don't want to snip through to the other side. It's easy to remove more material if more is required but impossible to restore once removed.
One triangular flap is all that's left. Folding the remaining cloth such that there is only one neat fold rather than a pile of wrinkles in the corner is the goal. To achieve this, draw the fabric flap down toward the base of the chair and tuck any excess
fabric into the fold as you go. If you need a helping hand with tucking in the excess fabric, a flat head screwdriver will do the trick.
Next, tighten it up and secure it with staples. The same procedure must be followed for the remaining three corners.
Step 4: Before you start stapling, tape your dining room chairs. To ensure the straightness of the pattern, you might use this method instead of making permanent adjustments. If your fabric has a pattern, such as stripes, flowers, or something else, check that the stripes are straight or that the pattern repetition is correct before you staple it. You can use any kind of tape as a temporary guide before you start stapling; it just needs to be easy to remove.
Step 5: Fasten your fabric dining room chairs with staples. Two individuals are preferable since one can staple while the other pulls the fabric taut. Because some of the staples holding your chair together weren't going far enough into the wood, you just hammer them in. Start by stapling the edges together with at least two staples on each side, and then go back and add additional staples at regular intervals. It's especially difficult at corners. In order to get the corners to lie flat, you might need to trim away some of the excess material. It's very much like wrapping a present. Simply pull, fold, and staple until you are satisfied with the result.
Step 6: Put the seat cushions back on the chair frames and secure the screws. However, it is essential to begin by identifying and labeling each cushion and base. If each of your seats has its own unique pattern of screw holes, it's important to follow the pattern.