How to Reupholster Dining Room Chairs

 

Dining room chairs are seriously about the easiest thing you can reupholster. {Definitely easier than a sofa, right?}. So believe me when I tell you that this is a project you can do! Today let’s look at how to reupholster dining room chairs, and you’ll be ready to tackle the job.

 

Lauren at The Thinking Closet has a no-mess method to help you recover your dining chairs as easily as possible.

What supplies do you need?

existing chair seats

high-density foam

upholstery fabric {lasts longer than regular fabric}

Sharpie

staple gun & staples

drill or screwdriver

yardstick or measuring tape

 

First, remove the chair seats from the chairs. You can accomplish this by loosening the screws on the bottom of the seat that hold it to the chair. How it looks depends on your particular chair, but keep looking and you’ll find the screws.

Lauren advises using 2″ high density foam. Cut the foam to fit over the existing seat cushion. You can use a bread knife, Xacto razor or rotary cutter to do the job. She positioned the foam on top of a cardboard box to protect surfaces from the knife. Genius!

 

Once you cut the foam, you can cut the fabric. Keep in mind that you’ll want enough fabric to wrap around the sides of the seat to the bottom, where you will staple it to the underside of the seat. HGTV recommends cutting the fabric three inches bigger than the seat cushion, on all sides. This is where the Sharpie comes in handy–mark the fabric and then cut on the lines.

 

Once the fabric is cut, you will essentially wrap the seat, with the new foam laying underneath. Pull tightly, and staple the fabric to the underside of the seat. It doesn’t have to look spectacular down there, but you will want the sides to look neat, so take your time.

 

Pull the fabric snugly around the corners, and check to make sure you don’t have tucks on the top of the seat.

 

Now you can reattach the newly reupholstered seat cushion to the chair frame. Just retighten the screws you loosened in removing it.

 

This is how Lauren’s reupholstered chairs turned out. Fabulous!