Tutorial: Recovering Chair Seat Cushions

Remember the dining chairs and table that we bought a couple of weeks ago? Have a look at the whole set in this post. 

Here is the original seat cover - a rusty red that didn't match with our decor. 

I unscrewed the four screws holding the seat to the chair frame. 

Here is the underside of the chair seat. It appears that the previous owner had reinforced the seats with pieces of wood. 

I cut my fabric about 3-4 inches wider than the seat all the way around. Of course I worked with the fabric wrong side up so that the right side would be on the top of the seat. 

I bought an upholstery staple gun for the job plus a box of staples. Both items were less than $18. 

The important thing about reupholstering chair seats is to staple the middles of the side first. For example, I did four staples to begin with: top and bottom middle, then left and right middle. This way I know that my fabric will not have any pleating or bunching. 

After stapling the middles of each side, I stapled 3-4 staples on either side of my initial four staples. The meant that I had put in a total of about 28-30 staples in and hadn't done anything to the corners yet.

I love this picture of the corner - Corners are tricky, but remember that you can put as many staples as you want in - no one is going to be seeing your work! Just take little bits of fabric at a time and fasten them down. You can see each fold and staple that I made here as I rounded the corner. 

The finished product! A HUGE improvement over the original rust colour in my opinion!