How to Reupholster an Office Chair

Hello everyone!

An office chair has got to be one of the most pieces of furniture that a person can own. You spend a ton of time in your chair so it should be comfortable and good looking. I had a chair that was wonderful, it worked great and I had it a long time. But it broke. So I had to search for a new one. After searching high and low I found one at a surplus store. It was in great condition and for only $15, I thought it was a steal. The only problem was the green fabric covering it. The color was ok, a dark green, but it was itchy and that was not ok. So I decided to recover so it didn’t drive me crazy sitting on it for 8 hours a day.

I think it turned out very cute. I found the fabric at Who Gives a Scrap. I talked about this awesome donation center last week. You can revisit that post here. They had this great upholstery fabric for only $2. Can’t beat that price. Here is how I went about recovering the chair.

Materials:

~Chair (this one wouldn’t be too bad if it wasn’t for the itchy fabric. Now I know why they had it for sale at the surplus store.)

~ Fabric (The stripped patter is cute and for only $2 I could pass that up.)

~ Staple gun, screw driver, glue gun, ribbon for edging

Instructions:

~ The first thing I did was take off the arm rests with the screw driver. I could have taken the whole chair apart and this might have made the process easier, but I decided to work around everything except the arm rests.

~ Then I measure the fabric and started stapling it on. The way this chair is constructed is a little weird. It has a plastic back and the original cover was Velcroed on, but I didn’t want to go that trouble so I decided to staple over everything.

~ I got the top part done then I went to town on the seat of the chair. The stripes made it easy to match the top to the bottom. I stapled everywhere then I went back and added more. I wanted to make sure everything held.

~ Once everything was secure and stapled on I hot glued on a tan ribbon that coordinated with the fabric. Then I put the arms back on that that was it. It took me a couple of hours to complete but it was worth it to not have an itchy chair.

Once I finished my son loved it so much he has asked me to do a chair for him. But if my chair is ever missing I know who to took it.