Re-Upholstering a Chair...Cushion

Ha, bet you thought when you first saw the title I was actually going to re-do an entire wingback chair or something. If only I was that talented/patient. Nope, just a simple chair cushion but I thought I'd share my process :)

I dropped some stuff off at Goodwill today (summer cleaning yay!) and wandered inside. I saw this sad lonely kitchen chair all by itself. Apparently someone bought its brothers and sisters but left it behind :(

I thought it was cute but the fabric was so-so. Just your generic brown stuff. THEN I saw the price:

Guess what color tag was 50% off this weekend?! Green! I figured for $4 I could go to Joanne and get some fabric I liked. So I used my short arms to drag it off the top shelf and WHAM another light bulb. Goodwill also has really cool fabric, so I dragged my prize over to the linen section. I found this vintage curtain and nabbed it up:

It has people with baskets on their head planting wheat...or something? Who knows. I like it. Okay so now on to how I did the chair.

What you need:

Chair (duh)

Fabric (also duh?)

Staple gun and staples 

Scissors

Some sense of spacial skills (I have none, but they are helpful)

First I threw the curtain in the wash, in hot water, with 2x the detergent I would use for a full load. Yeah, I don't like germs.

I then screwed the seat off of the chair. I actually didn't know if it would work but I figured I'd try and see what happened. I won!

Then I took the chair pieces outside and disinfected them (I know, I know). This step may be skipped :)

When the fabric was dry I placed the cushion in the middle and basically began to staple.

Here's where I made my first mistake. Because I have no spacial reasoning, I didn't realize the cushion was not a perfect square. Whoops. So I got some wrinkles when I stapled up the third side, like this:

I have no real advice or magic solution. I know, I suck. Basically just mess around with it until it is smooth baha. It's what my dad calls "MacGoobering" (from MacGiver). I experimented with different ways to fold the corner until I was wrinkle-free. I got all four corners stapled and the chair cushion looked smooth.

Here's my second (and most infuriating) mistake. There were holes in the wood under the cushion for the screws to go into...which were now under like 4 layers of fabric. Whoops. Time to MacGoober again. Dad would be so proud. I basically hacked into the fabric with a razor blade till i found the holes. After I finally found all 4 I stapled a clean piece of fabric to cover up my massacre.

The screw holes are still accessible and the bottom looks (slightly) better than before.

Then I screwed the cushion back onto the chair and I was done! Super easy. I know the pictures don't look different but I promise the fabric is much nicer. The pattern and texture add character to the chair and it will be nice to have an extra place for guests to sit!

So, for the small price of $8 (around $20 if you have to buy a staple gun) you too can have a cute chair covered with fabric of your choice :) Hehe.