Before I dropped off the face of the blog world, I mentioned that I was upholstering a chair as a test-run for reupholstering a couch. I happened to have some chair frames laying around (I know, random), and so I bought the basic tools, this upholstery book, and got to work.
Actually, funny story about the frames. The first year hubby and I were married, he worked for an office furniture store. One day he came home and asked if I wanted a couple of dining room chairs that were going to be thrown out. Free chairs? Ok! When I said yes, he brought home three of these frames.
Totally bare. Just frames. Also, waiting room chairs, not dining room, but who's counting? Not to stereotype here, but there is only one gender that can look at this and think, "usable furniture". Sweet, but hilarious all in one move. The best part is, I, serial purger of all the things, have had these frames for the last 6 years.
So anyway, here's the frame to begin with, just waiting to be a real chair, haha:
The first step was to attach webbing for the seat bottom using a staple gun and a webbing stretcher, which looked something like a medieval torture device. This was the easy part. Here's what it looked like from the bottom of the chair after that step was finished:
Next was the painful part: tying the springs. First you sew the springs to the webbing, then you tie this twine so that they are compressed just right and all tied together. The book I linked to does a great job of explaining this, much better than my amateur self could! It's pretty hard to hold the spring down and tie it at the same time, and the twine is really thick, so it kind of hurts your fingers after a while. This is what mine looked like after all the springs were tied:
If you are lucky, you'll end up with this nice, rounded seat, ready for stuffing and batting and foam. Let's pretend that's what's in the picture above, ok?
I'll call the next part the fast part, because apparently all that stuffing and foam covering went so fast that I neglected to photograph any of it... bad, Amy!
The back section was similar to the seat, just minus springs (yay)! Then comes the fabric, aka the tedious part. There's a lot of stapling, pulling, re-stapling, then all of a sudden it looks like a chair again!
The almost-finished chair looked like this:
And once the trim cord was put in place, here's how it turned out!
So, was it worth it? I think if I found an old chair that was worth keeping and just needed some new upholstery, I would do this again. It's not worth buying all of the tools and such if you only plan to do it once, but it's worth it if you'll use them a few times.
I don't remember how much everything cost, but it was in the ballpark of $50 for the materials for the chair (the frame was free), not including the tools. This of course depends on what you buy for fabric; I went with an upholstery fabric that was on clearance at the fabric store, so that kept things on the cheaper side. The most expensive parts were the springs!
Speaking of springs, one thing I should point out is that this chair was not designed for coil springs. A lot of chairs have different springs or just padding alone, but I put springs in this chair because it was a practice run for the couch and I read that the springs were the toughest part. The springs worked fine on the frame, except it makes the arms a little low since the seat sits so much higher than it would without springs. Just something to keep in mind if you are considering doing something similar.
Next, it was on to the couch!
Hopefully, that post will come soon.
~Amy
