We have this tall table and chair set we received for free from Jonathan’s neighbors before we got married. It ended up being our first ‘dining room table.’ Of course, it did only seat two! Now that we’re in our house and have a real set of table and chairs along with our bar seating on our peninsula, we started using the original set as outdoor furniture. They work great, but the look was very drab.
As you can see in the picture of the chair (the table and other chair carried the same theme), the paint was worn and dull and the cushion was pretty dank. I just couldn’t handle it anymore! The set didn’t invite me outdoors to enjoy the fresh air and nature, it simply looked trashy and didn’t fit our (mostly mine) personality. So, I got online to do a bit of research on how to re-upholster the seats. I found out it was pretty easy, below will be how I did it.
Before I get onto the tutorial, I wanted to say that you can do this very inexpensively. I found my fabric at Hancock Fabrics in their bargain bin. Everything was posted as $5 a yard which is great considering some were originally priced upwards to $40 a yard. So, save money and brows the sales bins/racks! It’s great if you’re not too picky, and you can usually find for what you are looking.
Steps to Re-Upholster Seat Cushions
1. Have all your materials ready.
You will need your chair, new fabric, a scissors, a screwdriver, a pliers, and a staple gun. Yes, I’m missing a few things in the picture. :/
2. Flip the chair upside down to remove the cushion.
3. Unscrew the cushion from the base of the chair using your screw driver. There should generally be four screws that need to be taken out. *Trick: store your screws in a plastic baggy for safe keeping until the end of the project.
4. Remove chair so you only have the cushion to work with now.
5. Have cushion sitting with underside up. You should see some stables.
6. You will need to remove the staples with your pliers at this time. On my cushion I had the black fabric to take off along with the rest of the upholstery. This step probably takes the most time and can be a little tricky since the staples didn’t always want to come out for me.
7. Once all the fabric is off you should just have the cushion and base board left. *If you’d like to add more cushion at this time, go ahead. Be sure you made the decision ahead of time and measured your chair so that it could be cut the correct size for you. You can find extra cushion padding at almost any craft store.
8. Now is the time to measure out your fabric. Before you cut, be sure that there is enough fabric on each side of where you are cutting to fold over the side of the cushion and over lap onto the base board at least an inch and a half. You should have about three inches on each edge of the cushion as a general rule of thumb. *If you have patterned fabric like I did, make sure your pattern is lined up the way you want it before cutting as well!
9. Double check that everything is lined up, and you are ready to begin stapling! You will need to start by stapling one staple in the middle of each side. Make sure you pull the fabric taut each time you staple.
10. Start with one side and staple all the way across on each side of the beginning staple until just before the corner starts rounding. Pull fabric taut every time you make a new staple keeping the sides even and from bulging out between staples.
11. Do this to the rest of the sides, being sure not to do the corners yet!
12. Now you can do the corners. Gather the fabric together so that there aren’t and folds showing on the upper side of the cushion (the part that will be facing up once done).
13. Staple down the extra fabric, neatly.
14. Repeat for the remaining three corners.
15. Cut excess fabric off with your scissors.
16. For this step I stapled the black fabric on the bottom so it looked nice. You don’t have to, but it was aesthetically pleasing to me.
17. You now should be done! All you have left is to screw your cushion back onto your chair.
So, there you go! It really is simple even though I listed a lot of steps. I’ll be doing another post on how to spray paint metal furniture later to go along with this post (since it’s obvious I did that, too). If you have any questions or if I missed/forgot something, please comment!
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{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }
I definitely would have thought that there was much more too it. Unforetunately, my outdoor funiture needs new cushions, but you’ve got me wondering if new cushion covers would be any harder? I’ll have to check out google before I go out buying new funiture.
Hi, Wayne! Slip covers for your cushions would probably be easy as well. The only issue I see with covers is that they usually are loose or will loosen from sitting, thus leaving unwanted wrinkles. Either way, best of luck in whatever you choose.
Since this area is not visible to the eye, chances are that you can rip off the
wooden bottom of the cushion and not worry about how it looks.
Do I have the money to pay for reupholsters, and if so would if be cost effective over buying new.
When the furniture regains its original look, you will be happy with the decision to turn something old into something new again.