Desk Chair Reupholstery: Before & After

This project is one I began a few months ago (in November!?!) We garbage-picked this desk chair way back when we lived in Ohio. (See my prior post on garbage-picking.) We lived in a neighborhood where people would often put items out on their lawn that they no longer wanted but were in good shape. But I still call it garbage-picking because it seems funny.

There wasn’t really anything wrong with the chair before I recovered it…but I wanted it to be something special and add some interest to our kitchen.

I did use quilting-weight cotton. I ironed some fusible fleece to the back of the fabric to make it [hopefully] more durable.

To get started, I detached the back and seat from the chair using a drill. Then I removed the plastic pieces covering the staples securing the fabric. After that, I removed the staples and the fabric to get to the chair’s foam padding.

This project would’ve been super simple if I hadn’t cracked the plastic seat bottom and seat back when I was taking the original black fabric off of the chair. The plastic was what hid the staples securing the fabric to the chair. To do the top of the seat and front of the back rest, I just stapled the fabric to each wood piece (similar to what I did for the first steps of this rocking chair).

However, as you can see, I had to cover the back of the chair with fabric and blue trim/piping. This required getting out my ply-grip and doing the same process I used for the rocking chair reupholstery. However, I have a better stapler this time (it is just a manual stapler) but I didn’t have to use upholstery tacks this time like I did for prior projects!

I also used the ply-grip for the bottom. I won the fabric from Sew, Mama, Sew about 2 years ago! I am so glad to finally have used [some] of it. My wonderful husband and dad made this desk. Our house has a little alcove in the kitchen and so they just built in this super cute desk. [They would want me to note that it still needs some trim around the edges. But I’m using and enjoying it as is!]

I am so glad the chair is done. It took me forever, but turned out well! Looking back, using a quilting-weight light colored cotton print wasn’t the smartest choice for the kitchen!

I did use two coats of Scotch Guard in an attempt to protect my hard work.