How to Recover Dining Room Chairs

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I had a couple people ask for directions on how to recover dining room chairs so I took pictures when I did mine last weekend.

Supplies needed:

• Batting if needed (available at fabric stores)
• Fabric
• Scissors
• Screwdriver (regular or power)
• Staple Gun
• Hammer

These instructions are for the dining room chairs I have pictured above. It's the type of chair that has a removable seat cushion. There is also a type of chair where the fabric is stapled directly to the side of the chair, and I'll show you that at the bottom of this post.

• First you want to turn the chair over and use your screwdriver to unscrew the seat from the frame. There should be 4 screws, one in each corner.

• Next, get your fabric ready. Iron it if needed.
• You want to cut your fabric so it's large enough to wrap over and under the seat with a couple inches extra. As you can see below, I'm putting my fabric directly over the fabric that was already on the chair. If you are taking everything off down to the foam you may want to use some batting. It looks better if you put the batting on and not just the fabric over the foam. The batting will give it a smoother look. Use the instructions below for applying the batting.
• Lay your fabric face down and place the chair cushion face down on top of it. Make sure if you have a one-way pattern that you have it going it the right direction! You are going to start with stapling the sides. Pull one side up and staple, then directly across from it pull the other side up and staple it. You want to pull it taunt but not too tight or it will disort the fabric. Do the same for the other sides. If your staple doesn't go all the way in you can finish off with a slam of the hammer!

Next you want to work on the corners. If the corner is square you want to pull the corner up and staple it and then pull the sides up and staple...similar to making a bed.

If your corner is more rounded you want to ease the fabric around and pull up and staple (see below). Be careful not to cover the screw holes so you can get it back on the chair!
Then you want to work your way around and staple the fabric down all around. Turn it over every once in awhile to make sure you aren't pulling it too tight.
Then trim away the excess fabric.

Now just screw the top back on the chair and you are finished!

That is the easy type of chair to recover. Now, if you have the type below, which usually has either nail heads or some type of decorative trim around it, it usually means it doesn't have a removable seat. That makes it harder to recover.

I recovered this one by using instructions I found in a book called Singer Upholstery Basics Plus: Complete Step-by-Step Photo Guide . It's not quite as easy as the steps above but not too hard either. Sorry, I didn't take photos when I recovered this one so I can't share my step by step instructions with you.