Upholstery of an old chair with your own hands. Advantages of self-restoration of a chair, work procedure

Reading time ≈ 5 minutes

Any old piece of furniture deserves a new life. Especially when talking about upholstered furniture, because its upholstery very quickly takes on an unsightly appearance. In an accessible way renovation is to reupholster the chair with your own hands. This provides significant savings and guarantees a fun-filled pastime. Photos and videos will help in your work.

Step 1. Preparatory stage

If you decide to change the upholstery of upholstered furniture, you need to prepare all the tools and materials necessary for such work. The most difficult thing is to choose the fabric for the upholstery of the chair. It must fit into the interior, be durable, and resistant to abrasion. To determine the cut size, you can use measuring tape Approximately determine its quantity by adding up the dimensions of all the parts that need to be tightened. Be sure to leave the fabric at the hem.

A more accurate result can be obtained if measurements are taken when the chair is disassembled individual parts. Then you can tear off fragments of old fabric and measure them accurately. In this case, the chair upholstery material will be purchased in the required quantity.

The following tools will be useful for the job:

roulette;
furniture stapler;
hammer;
screwdriver;
pliers.

Step 2. Disassemble the bottom part

Dismantling work always starts from the bottom. The chair is turned over and the legs or other base are removed. Usually, when assembling furniture, the work ends with the design of the bottom. Therefore, it is advisable to disassemble the chair from here. The brackets must be bent and the screws unscrewed.

If the chair has been used for a long time, and it was soaked unpleasant odors, it’s a good idea to treat the parts with a disinfectant while they are disassembled.

Step 3: Removing External Wooden Parts

Many chairs have external wooden parts, for example, armrests. They must be removed. A screwdriver and a hammer will be useful for this. Nails and staples may be rusty, so care should be taken.

Step 4. Disassemble the bottom

To be able to remove the fabric, you need to disassemble the bottom completely. To do this, remove the fabric from the bottom by bending the staples. If there is a plywood bottom, it is removed. Next, they begin to work with the upholstery, freeing the secured edges. When removing fragments of old upholstery, you need to be careful. After all, old fabric is needed to make patterns for new parts. It is better to do this job with pliers and a regular screwdriver. If you pull the fabric too hard, it will tear.

Step 5. Mark the assembly sequence

To avoid getting confused during assembly, you can put instructions on the old fabric that reflect the sequence of actions. After all, the furniture will have to be assembled according to the same principles that were disassembled.

Step 6: Remove Fasteners

For greater durability upholstery fabric attached to the wooden frame using special staples. It is very difficult to remove them. To straighten them and pull out the fabric, use a knife. If done carefully, these staples can be reused. This will reduce overall costs.

Step 7: Remove the fabric

Once all fasteners are removed, all upholstery fabric can be removed. Sometimes, in order to get to the fasteners that grip the fabric, you have to tear the batting. Once all the upholstery fabric has been removed. It is necessary to evaluate the quality of the filler. If it is worn out, you can add a new layer of batting or foam rubber. If it is completely unusable, it is replaced with a new one.

Step 8. Evaluate the method of attaching the foam rubber

If a well-thought-out fastening system was not used during the production of the chair, then over time the edges of the filler will break off. To prevent this from happening with the new filler, you need to use clamps. Then the edges will not break off, and the quality of the furniture will be higher.

Step 9. Inspect and remove all old parts

In this chair, the upholstery was attached with buttons. All unnecessary fasteners are removed so that the new layer of batting or foam can fit without problems.

Step 10: Cut the fabric

To cut, you need to lay out the old upholstery fragments on new fabric. If there is a graphic design on the fabric, you need to think about how individual elements will be docked, and in general what will happen on this or that part of the chair. If the material has lint, you need to make sure where this lint is directed.

The cutting must be carried out with a reserve. After all, it’s unlikely that all the fragments will fit well the first time. You need to do a few fittings to see how the parts fit. For fitting, the parts are connected using a needle. Basting will not leave rough marks.

When all the parts are ready, you can begin assembly. It will be carried out in the reverse order of the actions that you performed during dismantling.

Step 11. Decorative upholstery details

All decorative upholstery parts are installed in their original place. You can make new ones, if you still have the old ones, you need to think about how to arrange them correctly. To make new parts, you need to use a thick cord, which is inserted into specially stitched strips, the width of which is approximately 2 cm.

Step 12: Refresh the Wood Pieces

Even a skillfully done reupholstery of an old chair will not give the desired effect without updating the wooden parts. Black paint will look trendy on the armrests. Using paint in a can allows you to apply the paint layer evenly.

On top of the paint layer you can apply protective covering, which will make the coloring more durable. The same product gives surfaces shine and special smoothness. If you have doubts about the selection necessary materials For coloring, you need to consult the store. They will definitely help you there.

Step 13: Finally attach the fabric

You need to lay out the cover on the chair and check everything again. The fabric should evenly wrap around the chair, all fasteners should be hidden. If everything is in order, the edges are folded and secured with staples. After completion of work, all edges must be folded.

Step 14. Sew the pillow cover

On sewing machine They also sew down a removable pillow cover. Under the pillowcase, if size allows, you can place another layer of foam for greater comfort.

Step 15. Enjoy the result

It will take about 6 hours to reupholster such a chair. The difficulty is that each chair has its own nuances and, most likely, you will have to figure out how to reupholster a chair in your home. However, compliance with the main condition - stage-by-stage dismantling and subsequent assembly in the same stages - will allow you to change the upholstery of any upholstered furniture.

DIY chair reupholstery video

Throwing away furniture that is completely suitable for further use because of worn upholstery and dented filling is an unjustified waste. An old “grandmother’s” chair, collecting dust in the country for years, may well get new life, especially if the frame of the product is still strong. Any model of this type of upholstered furniture, the reliability and convenience of which has been tested over years of operation, can be updated globally or fragmentarily. Often, restoration of a chair becomes a salvation if a once-loved product, for a number of reasons, no longer fits into the interior. You can carry out upholstery of furniture, replace springs, repair armrests and seats yourself, without involving professional craftsmen in the process. The tools necessary for the work can be found in every home; you just need to first study the procedure for restoration.

Repairing furniture yourself is actually not as difficult as it seems. If you have sufficient skills, and they will be acquired, accumulated and improved with each step, even a beginner in this matter can update a chair at home. According to experts, the main thing here is to act carefully and not deviate from the plan - in this case, the end result will impress the household. In addition, at self-stretching there is furniture undeniable advantage– it will cost much less than turning to professionals or buying a new product. And if you show a little imagination and creativity and think in advance about how to update an old chair with your own hands, changing a design that has lost its trend or improving its shape, you can turn it into a completely new element situation.

Tools

Do-it-yourself restoration of armchairs is impossible without a certain set of tools, usually available in the arsenal of every home craftsman. You will definitely need:

hammer;
screwdrivers with flat and Phillips tips;
tailor's scissors;
adjustable wrench;
pliers;
metal and hair brushes;
furniture or construction stapler with staples no less than 10 mm high;
screwdriver;
clamps;
tape measure or tailor's centimeter - measuring tape 150 cm long;
sandpaper, grit from P40 to P120.

In addition to tools, restoring an old chair will require a suitable covering fabric. Additionally, depending on condition wooden frame and old springs or cushions, materials may be needed to restore or replace them:

foam rubber in slabs or sheets;
batting;
wood glue;
furniture varnish;
paint, primer;
self-tapping screws

Instead of carpenter's or wood glue, you can use thick PVA for paper and cardboard.

Work order

Before you begin restoring a chair with your own hands, you need to carefully inspect it in order to know in advance what actions need to be performed and in what order. During inspection, it is necessary to assess the condition of the upholstery, wooden structure, serving as a frame, as well as lifting mechanisms, if the chair is folding and the seat is equipped with them. The upholstery is usually replaced with new ones, and loose wooden parts are strengthened with glue. And it happens that the mechanisms are worn out and the chair cushion does not rise; what to do about this problem will depend on specific situation. Worn metal parts are unlikely to be repaired, and replacing mechanisms with new ones can be unreasonably expensive. Alternatively, you can abandon them altogether and, sacrificing functionality, fix the pillow motionless. If you determine the scope of work in advance and carefully consider how to repair the chair, you can end up with truly comfortable upholstered furniture.

Disassembly and preparation

Any disassembly of chairs and upholstered furniture should begin with dismantling the upholstery. All actions must be performed extremely carefully, trying not to damage the integrity of the fabric.

It is very convenient to use elements of the antique covering as patterns for future patterns of new covering, which will save a lot of time and labor when repairing a chair with your own hands.

If the restored model is equipped with armrests and decorative parts, they are also dismantled. But in some cases, you will first need to remove the seat and back cushions, if they are provided for in the design.

The base may need to be repaired. Often, metal springs, which were standardly installed inside in Soviet furniture, are unsuitable for further use, having broken completely or sagged over time and lost their former elasticity and rigidity. In this case, the wooden frame can be covered with jute tape. Step by step everything looks like this:

first, the product is stretched in one direction, for example, from left to right, and then in another, perpendicular - from bottom to top;
tapes of opposite directions need to be intertwined with each other, and their ends secured to the frame with a stapler.

As a result, instead of a pillow made from old spring mechanisms you will get a strong fabric base for the new seat.

When inspecting a wooden frame, you need to pay attention to the strength of the parts and their connections to each other. Some units may need to be disassembled to re-glue the joints. If you are restoring a chair with wooden arms and legs, you will need to decide whether the finish needs to be changed.

Disassembling the chair

Wrapping with jute ribbon

Design update

Quite serious repairs will be required if the frame is loose or, even worse, some elements have burst lengthwise - this happens due to long-term storage of furniture in unheated rooms, where temperature and humidity values change several times a year. Having disassembled the components, you need to inspect the parts to assess the possibility of their further use. Typically, connections between wooden structural elements are made tightly tongue-and-groove. If the chair has been unstuck for a long time, the surfaces could wear out when rocking. In this case, the gaps between the parts have increased, and the connections in the assembly have become more mobile than during the original assembly. Simple gluing in this case will give a short-term result - soon the structure will become loose again, so you will need to get rid of the gaps by inserting wooden planks of the appropriate sizes.

All parts of the units, including new inserts, must be thoroughly coated with glue during assembly.

Broken frame elements must be glued together. If the part has split lengthwise into two parts, this is not difficult to do - you need to clean the surfaces from dust and, after spreading it with glue, compress it tightly while the latter dries or polymerizes. To provide high pressure, you can use clamps or wrapping with a rubber band. If the burst element does not come apart, the glue can be pressed into the crack using a medical syringe with a thick needle, after opening the crack with a flat screwdriver.

If a long part breaks across, the adhesive joint at the fracture site will be weak. In this case, you can try to repair it using two overhead strips of suitable length, glued lengthwise. If this is impossible to do due to the design of the chair, you will have to replace the broken element. In most cases, the frame parts are straight slats and bars - it will not be difficult to plan them yourself.

Glue the broken elements together

Increase joint surfaces to restore structural integrity

Soft part update

The seat cushion and backrest are usually covered in the same material. When choosing it, the interior features of the room in which the furniture will be located are taken into account. For a living room or hallway, the seat and backrest are usually restored with artificial or genuine leather or jacquard - such upholstery will give the chair an expressive appearance. For rooms where there is an increased risk of contamination, flock is more often used.

Before re-upholstering, you will need to complete a series preparatory actions. If the old springs on the seat were not removed, it will be enough to replace the soft lining under the covering material; batting folded in several layers is quite suitable. Right on spring block it should not be laid; first you need to make a pad from a durable material, for example, burlap.

If the springs are replaced with a jute strip, as described above, it is also necessary to cover this “weaving” with canvas or burlap, and cut a piece of foam rubber on top to the size of the pillow. If the thickness of the sheets is insufficient, it is worth making the liner multilayer. The foam rubber is covered with sheets of batting and secured to the frame using a furniture stapler.

To find out the amount of material needed to restore the chair, the patterns (old covering) are laid out as compactly as possible, but not closer than 3-5 cm from each other.

When using foam inserts, the volume of the seat may increase, and more material will be required for the upholstery - in this case, when laying out the patterns, you also need to take into account the amount of allowance.

To make patterns for upholstery parts, a piece of new material must be laid out exactly on a flat surface, with all the patterns placed on top of it. Next, all future details are outlined with chalk and then cut out. It is recommended to overcast the edges sewing machine so that they do not bloom.

You need to pull the material onto the pillows carefully, avoiding the formation of folds. To do this, first it is “baited” in the corners of the frame with a stapler. If the pillow is round, you can mentally draw two lines through the center, imagine the intersection point and secure the fabric at it. Next, between the fixed points, the edges of the upholstery are fixed with a slight tension. If necessary, you can remove the staples with which the material was originally “baited” using pliers. And then, tightening the fabric, fasten it again.

Material on the underside of the seat and back side the backrest is hemmed with thread or tacked with furniture nails with decorative heads. You can secure the fabric with a stapler and cover the staples with textile decorative tape.

Cut the seat and back from foam rubber

Cut corners

Sew new filler to the old layer of foam rubber

Upholster the seat with new material

Secure the upholstery using a staple gun

Updating wooden elements

It happens that do-it-yourself restoration of a chair is not limited to replacing the upholstery and pillow filling. Furniture often includes antique carved armrests, back frames, ornate legs - you can preserve and emphasize all this beauty by updating the appearance of the elements:

First you need to delete from all wooden surfaces old paintwork. If the parts are flat, this can be done by using grinder(belt or vibration). If they complex shape, and even with threads, you will have to clean off the coating manually using fine sandpaper. Alternatively, you can use special compositions for removing paint and varnish coatings.
Having gotten rid of the old layer, you need to inspect the surfaces for chips and cracks, and if necessary, putty them with a special compound or rub them with a mixture of wood glue and fine sawdust obtained during grinding.
After puttingtying the chair, another sanding will be needed.
Decorate wooden elements furniture can various colors, having previously primed the surface special compounds and sanded it with fine (P100-P120) sandpaper.
Paint and varnish coatings are applied in several layers. Their quantity, as well as the drying time, are usually recommended by the manufacturer.

A beautiful wood finish is obtained by using at least 3 layers of furniture varnish. There is no need to prime the surface before applying it. After the first layer has dried, the surface is sanded.

if you have old chair or a chair that looks outdated and ugly is probably due to the upholstery. So you shouldn’t throw it away right away, but give the old chair a chance to look beautiful again.

Chair repair sounds like hard work, but it's actually not that difficult. See for yourself by looking at examples of how an old chair can look after renovation.

Repairing chairs, replacing upholstery or reupholstering upholstered furniture can be quite labor-intensive and dirty, so they should not be done at home.

And as an old chair takes on new life, it's worth adding a fresh coat of paint. You can cut a new board for the seat if the old one is too damaged or doesn't look strong enough. When refinishing chairs, first choose the fabric you want to use.

Then cut the fabric and fold it. Secure it.

This old chair has some great lines, but it doesn't look good enough with the old upholstery.

A new coat of paint and a refinished seat made the old chair look like new. The seat was removed and the dusty fabric was removed. After this, the old chair was painted.

An old chair with a rather nice design, but the upholstery was old and dusty, so the chair did not look attractive at all.

But new upholstery, with beautiful shade turquoise, looks very beautiful in combination with dark stained wood. You just need fabric and some free time.
A work chair becomes unusable after a certain time, but if the old chair is comfortable enough to avoid back problems, then it’s worth trying to repair the chair and give it a new look.

You will need fabric, foam, batting, screwdrivers. First you need to disassemble the chair and then pull out the plastic backing. Separate the fabric and foam from the wood pieces, then measure and cut new foam.

If you want to refinish your chairs, you don't necessarily have to think of it as a complicated project. An old chair will look like new even if all you do is apply a new coat of paint.

One of the easiest and most unexpected ways to update an old chair is to repaint its upholstery. This option will help if the upholstery is not damaged, but, for example, you need to hide stains or just want to change its color. You can repaint the upholstery using spray paint or paint from a can. Choose universal paint or acrylic for fabric, and before starting painting, you can apply a layer of special primer. You can find paint and primer at hardware, art and craft stores. The bonus of such an alteration is that the upholstery treated with paint acquires not only a new color, but also water-repellent properties, and stains from it can most often simply be removed with a damp cloth.

You will need:

Fabric paint;

A large brush for covering wide surfaces and a small brush, which is more convenient for painting edges;

- container for mixing paint;

Spray bottle with water;

If desired, use masking tape, which can be used to protect the wooden parts of the chair from paint getting on them, and you can do without a primer).

1. First, remove the cushions from the chair. Clean off all dust, wipe the upholstery with a damp cloth, if there is significant greasy spots, it is better to treat them with a stain remover so that they do not prevent the paint from laying flat.

2. If you wish, coat the surface of the chair with primer. You can do without it. In this case, first saturate the upholstery with water by spraying it with a spray bottle. Don't forget the chair cushion(s). While the upholstery is still wet, dilute some paint with water in a 1:1 ratio and saturate the upholstery with this mixture. This step is especially important if the upholstery of your chair is made of thick fabric. Before painting, you can protect the wooden parts of the chair with masking tape.

3. When the first layer is completely dry, you can begin the second. This time cover the chair with undiluted paint. Carefully brush over all corners, painting everything required areas upholstery.

5. If you wish, you can decorate the finished chair with decor by placing it on glue. Ready!

More ideas for re-upholstered chairs:

2. How to reupholster a chair: master class

This method is, of course, more complicated than repainting. However, by reupholstering, you can almost completely renew an old chair, getting rid of holes and scuffs and getting almost new item for your interior.

You will need:

Fabric for upholstery (choose durable, dense fabric);

Scissors;

Sewing machine and thread;

Furniture stapler and staples for it;

Glue gun;

Braid for decoration;

A screwdriver to remove staples from the upholstery of an old chair.

1. Using a screwdriver, carefully remove the staples securing the upholstery parts to the chair. The removed parts will serve as patterns for new upholstery parts of the same type. You can remove not all of the upholstery or, if you wish, not remove it at all. Then you will have to take measurements from the chair and make patterns for new upholstery parts.