Do You Know How Easy It Is To Recover A Dining Room Chair

Do You Know How Easy It Is To Recover A
Dining Room Chair Cushion?
DIY Dining Room
Chair Makeover
By Dianne Corriere
John is a close friend of mine and he
recently purchased a townhouse. After
some persuasion, he agreed to let me
change the cushions on a set of hand-medown chairs for his dining room. The
fabric is dated and completely wrong for
the modern vibe he is trying to create.
He picked out this nice “wine” colored fabric
that has some texture to it. It also has some
blue and gold tones in it. I think it was a great
choice.
These are the tools that I used:
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Pliers and screw driver for taking out staples.
Hammer for hammering staples that did not go in all the way.
Twine for measuring – you’ll see why later.
Scissors for cutting fabric.
Tape measure for measuring – you’ll see why I used this with the twine.
Manual and electric staple gun – I’ll tell you why later.
Staples.
Fray check – to stop the fabric from fraying.
DIY Decorating Addict, Anendi Marketplace, January 2014
My husband helped me with this project. He was a big help.
He also took all the pictures.
The first thing we did was to find out how big the piece of fabric needed to be for each
cushion. Since I didn’t have a measuring tape that is flexible to go around the chair, I
took a piece of twine and wrapped it around the cushion. The cushion wasn’t square
so I wrapped it around the widest part. The twine is wrapped a couple of inches in on
both sides of the back. This will give me a good idea of how big of a piece of fabric is
needed to wrap each cushion. We then measured the piece of twine. It was 29”. We
decided to make each fabric piece a 29” square.
The length of the fabric
was a little more than 3
times 29 so we knew we
had enough fabric for at
least 3 of the 6 cushions.
The fabric is 58” wide so
we could cut the width in
half for the 29” exactly. 3
times 2 = 6. We decided
that the easiest thing to do
was to divide the length up
into 3 equal. Each piece
would be more than the 29”
but we could cut away the
excess later.
We folded the fabric into thirds and cut on the folds. This left us with 3 pieces of
fabric. We then folded each of the 3 pieces in half and cut on the fold line. Voila!
We had the six pieces of fabric we needed.
DIY Decorating Addict, Anendi Marketplace, January 2014
IMPORTANT: You don’t need to remove the old
fabric. You can cover right over it.
Before I began stapling I cut the fabric around where
the screw holes are located for screwing the cushions
onto the chair base. I did this because the fabric is
heavy and the screws may not go in properly and I
didn’t want to put a staple over the holes.
I started stapling in the center of one side. Then I
stapled the opposite side pulling the fabric taut. I
repeated this on the other 2 sides. I then began
stapling from the center towards the corners on all 4
sides. I pulled the fabric taut before stapling. I spaced
the staples fairly close together. I left a couple of
inches unstapled at the corners. I hammered the
staples that did not go into the wood all the way.
Because the fabric is heavy, I cut the
fabric in a wedge, leaving enough to
wrap around the corner.
I began stapling the corner starting in
the middle.
This part gets a little tricky. When I stapled the rest of the corner I had to gather the
fabric a tiny bit to round it out around the corner. This corner is the front of the
cushion where it will be seen so I wanted to make it look nice.
DIY Decorating Addict, Anendi Marketplace, January 2014
This is what the top side of the cushion
corners look like. Pretty smooth!
The back corners of the cushion were
done with a overlap fold. Sharp!
I also cut some of the fabric away on the overlap corners because of the thickness. After I
was done with all the corners, I trimmed the excess fabric to about 1/2 inch or so from
staples all around on the back.
What I learned: Using a manual staple gun on all 6 cushions was hard on the hands. This is where
my “strong” husband came in to help with the stapling. His hands then became tired too, so he
ran out and bought an electric nail gun. It worked much better, but some of the wood on the back
was too hard for the staples to go in all the way. That’s why I had to hammer some of the staples
in. Also, sometimes the staples were crooked and couldn’t be hammered in so I had to remove
them. That is why I had the screwdriver and pliers. My husband pointed out that the best way to
remove the staples is to pull straight up and not wiggle it out like I was doing. He is right! They
came out easier.
Also, this type of fabric frayed a lot so I a used a liquid called “Fray Check” on all the fabric edges
on the back side of the cushions. This stuff is amazing and cost less than $5. It dried clear and all
the fabric edges are set and not fraying anymore.
All 6 cushions are done!
We took the cushions to the waiting
chair bases at John’s townhouse.
DIY Decorating Addict, Anendi Marketplace, January 2014
John screwed the cushions onto
the chair bases. Having a power
screwdriver is a big help.
John loves the chairs.
Project Done!
I wonder if he will
let me make him
a new chandelier!
I would love to hear your comments! **TAP HERE**
DIY Decorating Addict, Anendi Marketplace, January 2014