Easy Reupholstery Tutorial + Video

The easiest piece of furniture to learn how to reupholster is a chair seat. I’ll show you how easy it is to recover a chair seat in no time!

I’ve put together a video on how to reupholster a chair seat. If you’ve ever wanted to learn to upholster, a chair seat is by far the easiest! Let me show you how including my tips and tricks.

I’ve actually updated an old chair I gave a makeover to years ago, my French distressed chair. Aaron had this chair and even though he loved it I decided it was time for a change.

Before

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Supplies:

• chair with fabric seat (remove the seat by turning the chair upside and unscrewing the seat from the chair)
• new foam and cotton batten
• scissors
• fabric
• staple gun and staples
• packing tape
• toile fabric I used
• striped fabric I used
• gold paint I used, my very own Vintage Gold, Fusion Mineral Paint
• white paint I used – Raw Silk, Fusion Mineral Paint

Directions:

1.Cut the fabric piece a few inches larger than the foam itself. Make sure the foam and cotton batten are the same sizes as the chair seat. Note: you can also leave extra cotton batten along the front of the foam for extra cushioning as in my video, depending on your foam and chair.

2. Place the cotton batten piece down on the fabric first, then the cotton batten and lastly the chair seat. If your fabric is striped, make sure the stripes are lined up straight.

3. Pull one side taut and staple down. Pull the opposite side taut turning over to make sure it’s the right tightness before stapling down. You want the edges of the foam to roll down to the chair. Then alternate pulling and stapling from opposite sides.

4. Make sure to leave lots of room at the corners to do last (see steps 5-8).

5. For the corners, pull the middle piece taut on each corner and staple in place.

6. Pull a side over making sure there’s only one pleat. You will need to play around with the fabric to make sure it lies flat first.

7. Once it’s laying down flat with one pleat, you can staple in place.

8. Now do the same with the opposite side of the corner, making sure there is only one pleat again and staple in place. Note: If you started at the top on this corner first as I did, make sure you do the same on the other corner so the pleats look the same when finished.

9. Trim excess fabric with scissors.

10. Put packing tape along the edges of the fabric to keep it in place. Screw the chair seat back on. Don’t worry that the old screw holes are covered with the new fabric. Once the seat is back on the chair, you can just drill the screws back in the seat.

And now you have a finished upholstered chair! It was pretty easy, right?

before

This is what the chair looked like before I started working on it. It had practically zero padding.

You can see the difference the new foam made in the striped chair.

You can see that the seat has only one pleat showing on each corner.

Using Patterned Fabric

If you have fabric with a pattern, you’ll want to center the part that you’d like in the middle before you cut and staple.

With the toile fabric I used for the gold chair, I made sure that a couple of the main scenes were prominently in the middle.

The front of this chair seat was straight and the back was rounded so I had that in mind when placing the fabric on the chair.

Then I made sure that the pattern I wanted was in the middle before flipping it over to staple in place.

Video:

Be sure to watch my YouTube video!

Make sure to pin it for later!

Jamie