I sold some mirrors I had upcycled to a cute lady and she asked me if I would paint and reupholster some chairs for her. As it happens I LOVE to upcycle chairs. So I said sure I can probably help you with that, and I asked her to send me pictures of the chairs she wanted redone.
Ok so I don’t sew. Like I don’t even own a sewing machine. So I would not be making new cushions for these chairs and I let her know that wasn’t something I could do. I found a picture on line of the kind of seat cushion I could do and she was game. And so my huge reupholstering project began.
I got the chairs and realized they were even bigger than I was expecting but the bones of the chairs were great. These chairs were huge, beautiful and sturdy. I’ve reupholstered chairs before but nothing as involved as this. I read a few blog posts and had some good ideas on how to tackle this project. It was time to tear these chairs apart. This was no small task. In fact this took a few days. I’m not sure how many staples where in these chairs but my guess is: in the thousands. I used several tools to get the material and staples off these chairs.
As I pulled the material away from the wood some of the staples stayed in the material. But about three quarters of them stayed in the wood. There was a lot of digging, pulling, yanking and frustration during this part of the project. Two days later I had a good size pile of staples that nearly filled a paper cup, not including the ones that stayed in the material.
Do you feel bad for me yet! 😉Haha I was happy to be done with that.
Next it was time to paint the chairs. The client picked Annie Sloan Old White and a clear wax finish with no distressing. I’ve used a paint sprayer in the past but I just got a new one and was excited to try it out.
I will do a post later on paint sprayers that work with chalk paint but let me just say this one is AMAZING! Anyhoo, with the paint and clear wax done it was time for the reupholstering.
The foam cushions for the back of the chairs and the arms were in good shape so I could reuse them without any problem. But I needed to find a fix for the bottom cushion. I thought about using the foam cushion in the removable seat cushion but it was a bit too thick. It was also already the shape of the seat, so I decided to try cutting the cushion in half to make it thinner in hopes I could still use it.
I used a box cutter to cut the cover off and then I measured and marked the cushion and started cutting into it. I could feel that there were springs inside the cushion so I wasn’t sure what to expect. Once I cut it in half I found a compartment of springs that came right out. But without the springs the foam was very thin so I needed to add more foam. I bought some 3 inch foam and cut it to fit inside the area that the spring compartment had sat in.
That worked really well and I was able to fit the cushion into the seat of the chair and keep the original shape. No sewing required!
This was a big project so I’m going to break this up into 2 posts. In part 2 I will show you how I replaced the thousands of staples I removed and the finished product!
Hope you’ll stop by to see it! 😃
Cindy
