Recover dining room chair seats to bring new life to the room.
Recover upholstered seats on dining room chairs to give them new life instead of purchasing new chairs. Choose a durable decorator fabric that has a functional and attractive design for the area the chairs are used. The process of recovering the requires few supplies and no sewing to make this a low-cost that the average person can complete. Make repairs to the chair frames or apply paint to change the color after removing the pads for recovering.
Instructions
1. Remove the screws that hold the seat pad from the underside of the chair and lift the pad from the chair frame. Retain the screws to secure the recovered pad onto the chair.
2. Lay the new covering fabric on a flat surface and place the chair pad face down onto the fabric. Mark an outline of the seat pad onto the fabric with marking chalk. Remove the pad and set it aside.
3. Increase the marked outline by 3 inches around the entire chair pad and cut out the piece of fabric.
4. Remove the existing pad from the seat by pulling out the staples or nails on the backside of the pad. Inspect the padding underneath the fabric to see if it is still usable.
5. Place the new fabric on a sturdy, flat surface with the right side facing down. Lay the chair padding on top or add a 1/2 to 1-inch thick piece of polyester batting cut to the exact size of the seat if the existing padding is not usable. Set the wood seat piece on top of the padding so the top of the seat is facing down.
6. Grasp the excess fabric from the front edge of the seat and pull it to the bottom of the chair seat. Secure the fabric by placing one staple into the center of the edge. Repeat this process with the back edge of the seat and place one staple in the center of the edge.
7. Turn the seat pad over and adjust the fabric so the tension is even in the middle of the seat and the print is not pulling in one direction. Pull one side while keeping the tension even and carefully flip the seat over to secure the fabric with a staple in the center of the edge. Repeat this process for the other side of the pad.
8. Secure the fabric around the seat pad by starting at the middle of the front edge and pulling the fabric to the backside while smoothing out any puckers and wrinkles that appear. Place staples along the back edge at a spacing of 1/2 inch. Leave a 1-inch gap at each corner if the corner is pointed.
9. Smooth and secure the fabric to the back edge and both sides of the chair, making sure to leave a 1-inch gap at the corners if the corner is pointed. Smooth the fabric on rounded seat corners and staple in place when stapling the edges.
10. Create a sharp corner by pulling the fabric tight on one side of the corner and placing a staple to hold it in place. Fold the excess fabric on the corner over the edge and staple to hold in place. Repeat this step for all chair pad corners.
11. Cut off any excess fabric hanging on the bottom side of the chair pad. Set the pad onto the chair frame and screw into place using the existing screws.
Tags: back edge, center edge, excess fabric, Repeat this, , chair frame, chair seats