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Doin’ it Myself: How to Reupholster a Pair of Side Chairs

A couple of years ago when my room mate and I moved into our current apartment we found ourselves with excessive square footage and minimal furniture.  A kind neighbor who owns a moving company volunteered to drop off a handful of office chairs that a client no longer wanted.  Seeing as how we had entire rooms of space with nothing but wide expanses of hardwood floors (I know, poor me, it’s just terrible all that hardwood floor and extra space…blah blah blah) we agreed sight unseen.

A few hours later we had four off these in our loft.

Functional, yes.  Aesthetically pleasing?  Um, not so much.  I have looked at these chairs for two and a half years and one day I decided that there just wasn’t any other way around it but to sand them down, paint the wood and recover them.  This project is now finished, and they are gorgeous!  Well, gorgeous for what began as dentist-office chairs.  (wink wink)

How to reupholster a pair of side chairs

Materials:

• Two office chairs, you can find these at a thrift store for $5 dollars each
• Fabric to cover chairs, approximately 1 yard per chair
• Staple gun, staples
• Sandpaper, brushes, etc.
• Paint for frame

Step 1:  Unscrew the back and seat of the chair and carefully remove the vinyl or fabric covering.  Be careful to keep the vinyl more-or-less in tact because you will need this as a pattern for your new covering.

Step 2:  Lay out the pieces on your fabric of choice and cut them out.  If you need to make any seams, do this now.

Step 3:  If the seat needs some beefing up, you can add foam and batting to make it more sturdy.  These particular chairs were in good shape, just ugly.

Step 4:  Pull the fabric tight over the seat and staple in place.  This took a lot of staples.  Turn the corners in like you were tucking a flat bedsheet under the mattress and staple those in place as well.

Step 5:  Forgive heidikins for forgetting to take pictures of any of this.  In a fit of “New Project Contact High” I tore the nasty vinyl off, cut out the new suede and recovered everything and forgot to take a single photo.

Step 6:  Take the bare chair frames outside and give them a good sanding.  Wipe off all the dust with a wet cloth or a tack-cloth (a wet rag will work just fine).

Step 7:  Paint the frames with several coats of your color of choice.  Mine was Behr Black Suede.

Step 8:  Wait for the dang things to dry, this took forever.

Step 9:  Screw the backs and seats back to the frame.

Step 10:  Add a couple of throw pillows* and Voila! You have a pair of  handsome office chairs.

I have two more of these chairs to work with, and I have a hankering for something lime green and delicious.  Not that I have any place to put two lime green chairs, but a girl can dream, can’t she?

*It should be noted, those throw pillows were made from a piece of fabric I found for $2.00 and pillows I got from the thrift store for $1.50 each.  The existing covers were pretty bad and were immediately trashed, but a quick washing of everything else involved resulted in two lovely lumbar pillows for $5.00

Adding up the receipts:

• two fugly office chairs: Free
• 2 yards of oatmeal-colored suede: $3.98
• 1 pint black paint: $8.99 and I only used about a quarter of it, so $2.24
• Throw pillows: $5.00

Total Cost for Two Side Chairs with throw pillows:  $11.22

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