I think we all have pieces of furniture or odd items that have seen better days. Often they get donated, tossed, maybe even wind up in a garage sale. Some of these pieces though are simply too useful or they have good bones and can be refinished or upcycled into new and beautiful items. Many years ago, I somehow acquired a set of six dining room chairs that fell into the useful category. They weren’t my favorite pieces, but I didn’t want to spend the time and money to find, buy, and refinish newer ones so I kept them. For years (and years) did I keep these chairs. A few of them were quite literally falling apart and had to be glued back together more than once. Still, I kept them as is until I finally had to get rid of four due to being safety hazards. Fortunately, when Dave and I moved into together, he had a bench seat for his dining room table and I had another chair which looks surprisingly decent at the table so the loss of the broken ones was acceptable and they were donated to become someone else’s problem.
Fast forward a couple more years and you guessed it, there were still two beat up chairs looking ugly at my table.
A few weeks ago, I decided I needed a quick project to make me feel as though I was making headway on my (very long) list of items to be done. I wanted something I could finish in a day from items I already had on hand as opposed to the multiple extended projects already in process. I decided it was time to take care of the chairs. At this point I must thank my husband for stopping me from getting carried away. You see, I examined the chairs and thought “if I’m going to reupholster these things, I should refinish them as well.”
Fortunately, I voiced this opinion to my husband who reminded me if I refinished in addition to reupholstering, it would be another long project and did I really want to make that much effort for chairs I didn’t even like?
Rationality, for once, won out and I stuck with the reupholstering.
For the inquisitive among you, I have never reupholstered furniture before. I’ve seen it done on DIY TV shows in the past, that counts right? After selecting the fabric from my stash, I began to disassemble the chairs. Taking the seats off was much easier than I expected it to be, however, removing leather brittle with age and attached by teeny tiny nails inserted every inch along the edging, not so much.
These chairs were so old and filled with dust. Interestingly, the padding turned out to be horsehair tacked to the seat with string.
By the end of the dismantling, I was surrounded by a film of green dust and broken hairs not to mention having a runny nose accompanied by sneezes. A quick clean up and it was onto the fun part! Reupholstering! There are plenty of instructions for how to reupholster chairs on the internet by people more talented than I. I feel if you’re looking for a how to, you should definitely find directions from one of them, I would just confuse you.
My chairs turned out AMAZING!!! But…corners! OMG corners are so challenging, I need to work on perfecting those as they were such a pain. Then there was using a staple gun to tack the fabric down. If I were to reupholster often, I would definitely buy a hammer and the itty bitty nails designed for upholstery. While the staples worked, I removed so many of them while rearranging and tightening up the fabric that I firmly believe tacks would have been far easier.
Without further adieu…here are the finished products. Softer to sit on, prettier to look at and overall, this afternoon project makes my dining room look better!
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