Giving your office chair a makeover is an easy way to bring personality to your work space. FittingChairs will share how to reupholster an office chair right now.
Can I Reupholster A Chair Myself?
Fortunately, as long as the mechanism of the furniture is still looking great, a few stuffs can give an obsolete seat an altogether new look.
Regardless of whether you’re refreshing an old favorite or refreshing a flea market find, reupholstering a seat is one of DIY projects that can have a major effect.
So, how to reupholster an office chair?
Do You Have To Remove Old Fabric When Reupholstering?
In other words, can you reupholster a chair without removing old fabric covering?
Keep in mind that in case there’s just one cover on the pad, you can recuperate the seat without eliminating the old texture.
Source: Wayfair
So long as the old fabric isn’t darker than your new fabric, you can even upholster right over it.
Just lay the new texture over the old.
When managing a cushion that has more than one cover, in any case, remove the top layer by drawing out the staples that hold it in place.
How Much Does It Cost To Have An Office Chair Reupholstered?
When it comes to how to reupholster an office chair, firstly think of spending on how much you spend on this.
Generally, the cost to reupholster a chair ranges from $50 to $2,000, or $800 on average. It depends mostly on the size of the piece.
This includes $50 to $70 per yard in fabric and even labor at $40 to $100 per hour.
You see, reupholstering a chair can be a wonderful way to get a custom piece that still feels like home.
How Much Material Do I Need To Reupholster A Chair?
In fact, there is no single determining amount for it.
When you have to confirm materials for how to reupholster an office chair seat and back, it will not be fixed.
It varies a lot depending on the fabric’s dimensions, the size of the chair, and how much of the chair you want to cover.
If you’re looking for a general idea, you will require about 3 yards to 7 yards of fabric.
Source: TRUiC
Besides fabric materials, you will need additional stuffs below:
- Gloves
- Protective eyewear
- Wire cutters
- Sharp scissors
- Air compressor
- Seam ripper
- Pins
- Iron and ironing board
- Sewing machine
- Staple remover/puller
- Permanent marker
- Pneumatic upholstery staple gun
- Gimp trim
- Hot glue gun
- Glue sticks
What Is The Easiest Way To Reupholster A Chair?
Do you find it’s hard to reupholster a chair yourself?
No problem.
Source: A Beautiful Mess
Yep! Sometimes, you just pull a few staples and start over.
However, unless you are doing a simple chair seat re-cover such as unscrewing your seat, stapling fabric onto seat, screwing seat back onto chair, then upholstering projects are going to take time and effort.
So what is the lazy girl’s guide to reupholster a chair?
Hopefully this tutorial will help make this process a little easier for you than it was for you!
If you follow this method, your goal might be recovering them without removing the old fabric or disassembling the chairs in any way.
Here are the steps:
Remove cording
Using pliers and teeny-tiny scissors to remove the cording carefully. Don’t forget to keep it all in one long strand so that you could reuse it.
Remove the tufted buttons
If you want to keep your chair tufted, you can recover the existing buttons with the fabric of your choice by using fabric glue to cover the original button.
Remove fabric on the top part of the chair
After removing the cording, carefully pry each staple out and remove the front outdoor fabric first, then the foam and batting and coming to the back fabric.
Use the old fabric as a pattern to cut your new fabric
Try to keep the old fabric intact, and use it as a template.
Replace fabric and foam on the top half of the chair
Insert your “backing” fabric facing away from you inside the top back part of the chair, and staple it in place.
Batting in front of it, then the front fabric layer and carefully staple that in place too.
Try to line them up as best you can and position them inside the little divit that runs along the wood.
Source: OnlineFabricStore
Now, you have a seat.
How To Reupholster An Office Chair?
Disassemble The Chair
In the first step on how to reupholster an office chair with arms, if you have a complicated chair, it’s a good idea to take pictures beforehand so you know how to put it back together after all.
Don’t forget to look for screws and use common sense to figure out how to take apart your particular chair.
Take apart the chair so that the back and seat cushions are separate.
Source: Things I Made Today
Noted! Many chairs have this black plastic covering on the back cushion and sometimes the bottom cushion. If you don’t see any screws, you can usually pop off the cover.
Spray Paint
In many steps of how to reupholster an office chair, this is just an optional choice. In fact, you can choose to spray paint parts of the chair if you want.
If the back on your chair is scuffed up, so a fresh coat of paint will do it good.
It’s best if you leave the rest as is, but you could also spray paint the base.
To insure a good bond, give it a quick sanding especially if there are scratches. After that, wipe off the dust from sanding.
Source: OnlineFabricStore
In a well ventilated area, spray several coats of paint on the chair parts.
Upholster the cushions while the paint dries.
Upholster The Cushions
For how to reupholster an office chair, you can’t ignore upholster the cushion’s chair.
To do it successfully, lay out the fabric with the right side facing down and place one of the cushions on top.
Just make sure you have plenty of material to wrap around to the back, and cut out the fabric.
Keep in mind that placing one staple in the center of one of the sides, then pull taut and staple the opposite side. Do the same way for the remaining sides.
At the corners of your cushion’s chair, gather the fabric as you staple so it looks as smooth as possible on the front. Repeat for the other corners.
Trim the excess fabric. Make sure the fabric isn’t blocking any screw holes.
Repeat for the other cushion.
Source: Standingdesktopper
Reassemble The Chair
Put the pieces back together and your new office chair is done.
See more:
- Mastering on How to Remove Cylinder from Office Chair with 4 Easy Steps
- Practical Step-by-step Guide for Cleaning Office Chair Fabric
- Apply These 6 Methods to Adjust Office Chair Seat Angle
In this post, FittingChairs have shown you how to reupholster an office chair so that it looks brand new. These steps above will definitely help you.
