How to Upholster Dining Room Chairs

Last Updated on May 17, 2013 by Babita

Finally, I was able to find some time to work on my dining room chairs. Last couple of weeks was very busy. I was juggling around 3-4 different projects. So, this week I decided to give myself a little break to focus only on upholstering the dining room chairs. I think the chairs with their final makeover looks great, but that is just my opinion. Let me know what you think of this project.

This is the before image of the chair. I had previously upholstered the chair pad about five years back. Even though I loved the fabric at that time, I am not crazy about it anymore. The fabric looked like faux suede. It was attracting dust, had started to pill and was getting difficult to clean and I had to get rid of it.

 

 

Obviously the first thing to do was to unscrew the chair pad from its wooden bones. So I turned the chair upside down and unscrewed the five screws with the help of a Philips screwdriver.

 

 

 

Once I removed the chair pad, its was time to take out the old staples pins. I found the easiest way to do that was to use a flat head screwdriver. I removed all the pins and threw the old fabric as well as the staple pins in trash.

 

 

Then armed with a handy staple gun I proceeded to cover the chair pad with this gorgeous fabric that I found in Jo-Ann. I have to admit that this fabric was not my original choice. I had originally gone to Calico Corners and picked a fabric from there. I found out that I would have to wait for at least a month to get my fabric. I told the sales person at Calico Corners to cancel my order. There was no way I was going to wait that long. Of I went to Jo-Ann and absolutely fell in love with this fabric. It was expensive at $88 per yard. I was lucky. Jo-Ann had 50% off on all upholstery fabric, so I was able to get two yards for $88. That was just the amount of fabric I need for this project.

 

 

After placing the fabric wrong side up, I positioned the chair pad over it. I gathered the fabric over the chair pad on one side and stapled it. I did this on all sides, so as to secure the fabric in place. Of course, I wish I had three hands to do that.

 

 

Let me tell you stapling the sides are easy. The worst was yet to come. The corners are an absolute pain. I had to make sure I had gathered them properly without a lot creases and had to pin them several times. Well, I am not an expert but I did try my best. Check out the back of the finished chair pad below.

 

 

All done with the upholstering bit, I screwed the chair pad back on.  I did the same for the other three chairs. Although, it looks easy and quick when I am typing over here, it took about 2 days to complete it. I was over the moon with this transformation. The colors on the fabric went along great with the dining table as well as the surrounding walls and curtains.

 

 

As for the nicks and scratches, I will deal with them some other time. For now let me ENJOY my chairs.

 

 

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you check out my other projects:

1.  IdeaPaint Dry Erase Whiteboard
2. Toddler Bike Makeover