The adventures of reuphostering

When I get tired of cleaning my house in my free time, I usually find a new project to tackle. This week was a long overdue project, reupholstering an Eli size chair that I bought at a garage sale four months ago. The biggest problem with this chair was it was incredibly dirty. The second problem was that it was incredibly pink. The third problem being that it had "Katie" written in big letters on it. See for yourself:

None of these things made it very suited for my little boy. And yet he still loved to climb on it, jump on it, and rock in it every chance he got. So I decided I'd better turn it into my Eli's chair before he grew up anymore and lost all interest in it.

The prospect quite frankly was terrifying to me... I had NO clue how to reupholster and was afraid I would ruin it in the process of trying. So good news to all of you who are terrified to try it. It's not as complicated as it looks. Bad news? My fingers are still bleeding. But never fear, I'll give you the tips I learned along the way.  (By the way, I did look up a few tutorials online before trying this to get a few tips)

Step 1: Take the existing fabric off piece by piece.

In this case it started with the front pieces and the buttons:

I also took pictures so I could remember how the layout looked before I took it to pieces. It proved very helpful when reassembling!

After the front pieces came off, it was a matter of pulling out staples from top to bottom, front to back. (And who knew a little chair like this could hold so many hundreds of staples?)

 

The bad news was every time I thought I was almost done, I would uncover a new layer... like this black material covering the bottom of the chair...

 

And find about a million more staples to take out!

 Tip #1 (Or what I wish I would have known...): For heavens sake buy a staple remover. Your sore bloody multiply stabbed by a screwdriver hands will thank you!!!

Previous to removing the black material, I unscrewed the wooden rockers and set them aside. I reused them, the screws, and the black material when I put it all back together again.

When all of the visible staples were removed, there was one other step I hadn't counted on: 6 screws held the back of the chair in place, which had to be taken out.

Tip 2: (Or what my hands wish I would have known...): For heavens sake buy (or borrow) an electric screw driver or drill! Pulling out 2 inch screws with a hand screwdriver = SORE hands the next day.

So at the end of this process (and about 8 hours later... again... electric tools and staple removers are a good idea :)) this is what I had:

(Ignore the pattern on the seat of the chair... I forgot to take a picture before I started laying it out!)

The foam was in good condition and nicely secured to the wood, so I didn't bother trying to replace it. (Thank heavens!)

The next step was to take all of the fabric pieces I had saved from the original chair, and trace out patterns on my new material. When I bought the material, I asked the woman at the fabric desk if I was buying the right material for reupholstering (since I had no idea if I was getting the right stuff!) I picked from the heaviest fabric they had, which made it much less likely to tear, and much easier to pull tightly when securing it.

I didn't pin it or worry about exact tracing since I only needed roughly the same size and shape. (All the edges are stapled down so you don't have to worry about them being neat and precise!

Tip #3: If you have a patterned fabric, don't forget to lay all of your patterns out in the same direction so that it looks uniform when you put it all together!

This was the quickest step. With a pen and a pair of scissors, all of my patterns were cut out in no time.

Then I laid the original over my new pattern, and placed it on the chair as closely in the same position as I could get it. (In this case the reason for putting the original fabric on top was because I could place it almost perfectly based on the dirt stains :)) Then I removed the original fabric, leaving only my new fabric, and went to work. I went in this order:

1. Seat, 2. Armrests

On the front and back of the armrests I stapled the bottoms first, and then puckered the sides the best I could (doing my best to copy my pictures of the original) and stapled it all down. All the while making sure to cover enough of the center that all of the staples and uncovered wood would originally be covered by the panels (in front) and the back material (in back). 

#3 was the back of the chair, then, once the fabric was secured, screwed the chair part back into place. (This was the glorious moment that my husband borrowed an electric screwdriver from our wonderful neighbors, and my life became awesome. I am not admitting to the fact that my hands hurt so badly I couldn't even turn a screwdriver at this point, so I made my husband try. After five minutes of trying he looked at me and said, "Wow, my hands are so tired and hurt so bad!" I just stared at him very unsympathetically. Then he went and borrowed the electric screwdriver, so I still consider him a hero!!! :))

Once this was all reassembled (and I was very proud of myself for rocking the power tool) I put the back on. this was one of the hardest parts because it had to be perfectly lined up since all of the staples would show. I took a piece of thin cardboard (leftover from the original) and folded it over the top to create the nice ridge you see across the top back. Then I just lined it up the best I could, folding the ends under on all sides, and stapled it on (and took out several staples and re-stapled too!).

Finally, I secured the black piece back onto the bottom of the chair, screwed the rockers back in (with the awesome power tool... I love my life) and finished with the front panels and buttons. The panels were fairly simple (Tip #4- Make sure with every piece you are pulling it as TIGHT as you can... the same went for the panels). Originally the panels had been stapled to the front with mega staples (like an inch long) but I did not want to buy another staple gun, so I decided to nail them in. I used the skinniest nails we had and prayed it wouldn't split the panels. Hallelujah it worked! (Total luck in this case since it was a total guess whether or not it would work).

The buttons were the hardest part and took a lot of experimenting to get the right size of fabric (too much fabric means they won't snap on, too little means they fray around the sides and come out on the edges.) After about an hour of trying and me close to tears (it was midnight by this point, and my chick flick was over but I wasn't going to quit till it was done!) Otto looked it up online and said there are specific kits you can buy for such things (Tip #5 I guess :)) But we did our best with what we had and FINALLY (after securing the pins to the buttons in place and directly over the nails with a hammer).... the finished product:

(Ignore all the scattered tools and fabric scraps all over the floor!) 
So now I know how to do something new. (And won't do it again for a VERY long time. :)) And Eli....

 Can do all the sitting, playing,

 Climbing

 and jumping he wants

 as king of his new domain.

(WHAT A CUTIE!)