Run With The Fishes

A few weeks ago, Nathan had a school project that involved making some messy flour based modeling clay and building a topographic representation of geographic shapes. Allison and Zoey insisted on helping Nathan and building their own sculptures. In the course of doing this, the fabric on my kitchen chairs quickly became covered in a floury paste. Heck, not just the chairs, but they are the only part that I couldn’t get clean. Because I knew how to recover the seats, I began deciding how I wanted the chairs to look this time.

I decided to take some pictures and write up some steps on how to do it. If you decide to recover a chair, you’ll need a few things.

Staple gun with staples, or upholstery tacks if you don’t have a staple gun. without them you will never get the job done.
New fabric – picking this out is the best part for me.
Pencil to trace old fabric pattern onto new
large screw driver and pliers to remove old staples
Phillips screw driver to unscrew seat cushion

Pick out some fabric that is both functional and suits your style. Mine will be used on our kitchen chairs. I wanted to use something that would be sturdy and easy to clean. Plus, my kids aren’t exactly the neatest eaters. There is hardly anything easier to clean than vinyl. One click wipe and the mess is gone. When I think of vinyl though, I also think of those old retro diner chairs. Not really a look that matches my kitchen. I was lucky to find some that wasn’t bright blue or red and sparkly. It seemed like a good choice for now. Later, when my children are a little neater, I can always recover the chairs again.

Since they helped make the mess, I gathered up some child laborers to help clean it up. It’s a little like Tom Sawyer, I made it look like so much fun that they insisted on helping me. I usually use a chain assembly method, remove all of the seat cushions, clean all of the frames, take off the old fabric, measure and cut the new clean, shiny fabric, staple the new fabric onto the cushions, reassemble the chair and enjoy how it looks.

Remove the seat cushion from the frame.

Clean the frames

Remove Staples

Easiest way to remove staples, slide screw driver under staple or tack and twist, if the staple doesn’t come all the way out, just use a pair of pliers to pull it out the rest of the way. The first time I tried recovering chairs for some reason, I thought I could only use a screw driver to get the staples out. It took me hours to get the whole set of seats done. Then someone suggested that I use a wrench along with the screw driver and it shortened the time to about 5 minutes a seat.

Pay attention to how the fabric comes off of the seat because this is how it is going to be put it back on. Sometimes the corners can be a little tricky if you don’t know how they should go back.

Use the old fabric as a template for how to cut the new fabric. Trace it onto the back of the new fabric, then cut it out. It doesn’t have to be perfect, but you do have to make sure it is not too small. It has to be able to cover the top, with room enough to staple into the wooden seat bottom. It’s a good idea to measure your seats before you buy the fabric. Especially if you don’t want to end up like me and only have enough fabric for four seats instead of six.

After the fabric is cut, it’s time to staple it back on. I start at one side, then do the other side so that I can make sure the fabric is pretty tight across the top. It sucks to have finished and have loose fabric on the seats. After the four sides are done, I do the corners since this is where adjustments can be hidden.

Really after that, it’s just reassembling the chairs. Pretty easy if you remember how you took them apart. Now I have new looking chairs that are super easy to clean, all for about 20 dollars and 2 hours worth of time.