The Reupholstery Process: A Beginner’s How to Guide

Today I am going to share with you the behind the scenes of the Ticking Chair Makeover aka the Oma Chair. I am not an expert, this is is truly the first upholstery project I have completed. In some ways it shows, and in others I am surprisingly pleased with how it turned out. The key for this project I think was using a staple gun with a compressor- no hand tools. I have attempted other chairs using hand tools- eventually I would get frustrated because the staples didn’t end up where they should, my hand would get sore and in the end I didn’t finish. I am thinking about investing in a proper sized staple gun intended for upholstery- but I was able to make do with what we have for this project.  You can see the before and after, now let’s talk about the process! It started with assessing the finish of the wood. It was quite beat up. I also decided to change the way the upholstery finished. You may notice that originally it wrapped all the way around the seat frame on the sides and back- but I really like the rough wood underneath and decided to leave it exposed. Removing the original fabric admittedly was much more tedious then I would have liked. There were SO many staples. To remove them I used needle nosed pliers and my favorite tool for getting under staple heads- the edge of a utility knife.
Once I removed the fabric, I could see that the foam and batting was in pretty good shape. I had to do a bit of surgery to the wobbly leg with screws and wood glue. Once it had dried I brushed the frame in 2 coats of leftover simply white, then lightly distressed it with a sanding sponge. I know why I don’t have any pictures of that part- I was too excited to start upholstering once the paint dried! 

Originally I didn’t think I would be able to duplicate the button tufting, but I kind of lucked out! They weren’t true buttons- they had little metal ends- so I carefully popped them all out and then hot glued my new fabric right over top. They aren’t perfect, but once they were on the chair you couldn’t see that backs, so it worked out wonderfully!I draped my fabric over the chair, and started with the button tufts. My pleats aren’t uniform, but the lines are more or less straight. As much as possible I tried to line up the lines on the buttons with the fabric. Let’s just say I got more then a little giddy at this point.I would poke the fabric into the hole with my finger, then pop the buttons through. I continued in this fashion until I liked the look- being sure to keep my lines as straight as possible! It made sense to me to start in the middle and work my way up, down and out!I would guide the pleats to fold downwards as much as I could. Initially I though I wood do less button tufts, but as I kept going  I quite liked the look! In the end I didn’t do the very bottom row that was originally on the chair.While I didn’t use the old upholstery as a pattern, I did use it as a reference of how to layer my pieces. I would pull and staple- I started at the edge and tried to go opposite side to side- if that makes sense? So that I would pull the fabric tight across a single plane and staple each side. Once I got to the seat bottom I trimmed the fabric then folded the raw edge under before I stapled it in place.

I did made a mistake which I was able to fix. In the photo below you can see that I mixed up the order of the pieces to cover where the arms are. I was able to tuck the 2 small fabric panels under and fix it. phew!Here is the back all trimmed and ready to be closed up. This was scary! I had issues with finding something to staple to for the seat front… so I wasn’t really pleased with the bunching. I tried pulling it out and redoing it… and I just couldn’t seem to get it to lay properly. Oh well! It’s not my ideal, but hopefully I will have better luck next time! Once I closed the back it meant I was committing to my upholstery work!The one piece I did save to use as a pattern was the back panel. I was also able to reuse the cardboard and batting. I tipped the chair on it’s side so that I didn’t have to work against gravity. I would fold the edge under the batting and just went nuts with staples! Working from the top around… pulling the fabric tight and stapling! Yes I did this project in my bedroom {so I could close the door and the baby wouldn’t get into anything!} And Yes I propped the chair against a basket of clean laundry.You might remember this post about Gimp Trim. It is amazing what covering up all the staples will do. It instantly started to pull this chair together giving it the finished look it needed! Plus, the trim was 50% off the day I went to the fabric store #winning

You may notice a green lighter sitting on the chair- I melted all of the ends of the gimp so they wouldn’t fray, folded them under and kept them in place with a dab of glue. I simply hot glued the trim too the chair.For the little arm patches I decided to switch the direction of the fabric. It would be more visually appealing to run the lines that way, because they had to curve slightly around the arm. I cut a rectangle, stapled it in place then trimmed the excess with sharp scissors after it was attached.And that is how I reupholstered my first chair! I have to admit that I thoroughly enjoyed it, and have since been scouring Kijiji for more chairs. The transformation is so rewarding. In this project the only thing I had to buy was staples and gimp trim. Not bad! It was pretty easy to tackle knowing I was working on a free chair using free fabric. {Even though I loved the fabric and didn’t want it to go to waste!} I hope this encourages you to look at furniture pieces for their potential and not just what they are. I’d love to see photos if you decide to tackle a chair. 🙂 I hope this was helpful in showing you what it all entails. Because I worked on this during nap times- it took me around 4-5 days to complete. Nap times usually gave me a maximum of 1.5 hrs to work- so I would think it took about 6-8 hrs to complete from start to finish, including stripping old fabric and painting!

-Miss Ash