I think back in March everyone had this incredible surge of energy that prompted home projects, bread baking missions, and educational endeavors. We definitely got swept up in the tide and snagged a little project to keep ourselves busy.
We found a little side chair with tons of potential, but hidden under an ugly green fabric and we decided to give it a new life.
Reupholstering a chair was not something I ever thought I'd do, but I wanted to share our process and final result in case you have a long-forgotten project sitting in your guest bedroom that you might need a little motivation to finish.
And believe me when I say if I can do it, you can too!
It seems like we have a knack for finding the ugly things and attempting them make them just a little bit better.
We started by taking the chair apart – like down to seat fluff and wooden legs. It needed a good sanding, tightening, fabric design, and stain. Lee tackled the wooden frame and started by removing all the screws, adding new ones, and tightening everything so it didn't wobble anymore.
With a fine sandpaper and an electric sander he smoothed out the wooden legs and all the imperfections, dents, nicks, and scratches. Then he applied two coasts of our favorite Danish wood oil in the Medium shade to the frame and waited a couple days until it fully dried.
In the meantime, I got to work removing the old fabric from the back and seat of the chair. You don't have to do this, but I wanted a template to be able to cut out the new fabric on and also there were hundreds of staples already in the fabric that would have made putting new fabric on challenging.
I used a flat head screw driver and needle noses pliers to remove the staples and fabric from the chair and then used a handheld staple gun for reattaching the new fabric.
The fabric we picked out was actually gifted by Yorkshire Fabric Shop – a UK-based upholstery shop that specializes in home textiles. I chose this beautiful grey basket weave fabric that's so soft and exactly meant for chair projects. Clearly it was meant to be!
Products We Used
- Staple gun
- 3 yards of fabric by Yorkshire Fabric Shop (c/o)
- Danish Wood Oil - Medium
- Electric sander
- Flathead screw driver
- Needlenose pilers