Reupholstery 101 Day 2

Welcome back to day 2 of Reupholstery 101!  If you missed day one, you can check it out here.

Yesterday we made all our design decisions - - fabric choice and spray paint color.

Now it’s time to take the chair down to it’s bones.  You are going to need some tools:

a pliers, thin flathead screwdriver,  and a needle nosed pliers

First we are going to start by pulling off the braided cording.  This is just a finishing edge that is usually just glued on, so once you get an edge of it up, you can just pull and rip it off completely.

I usually keep the cording for the time being so that I know how much I will need to make further on in the process.

Now your piece should look something like this.  You will see that the fabric has just been stapled around the entire piece - - the staples have just been covered up by the decorative trim.

Next, it’s time to attack all those staples!  Pull out your small flat head screw driver and start loosening each staple.  You will not be able to get them out entirely with the screwdriver, but you should be able to get one edge out.  I like to go along one entire side loosening, and then come back and pull them.  To pull them out, you can just use your pliers and twist them out.  Sometimes, once you get an edge up, you can just give the fabric a big yank and it will pull off of the frame and if you are lucky, it will bring the staples with it!

 

I like to use one of these magnetic pin holders (found at any fabric store) to hold my staples as I take them out.  You are going to have staples everywhere and the ones that you don’t catch right away will be all over your floor.  When I am doing this on a carpeted floor, I like to lay a large sheet on the floor to work on.  But if you get going on your project and forget to do that, or you are working on a solid surface, the best way to collect all of these stray staples is to take your pin holder, flip it over, and hover it across your floor.  The magnet is powerful enough to pick the staples up - - even if you are doing this on carpet!

fabric from seat cushion

fabric from the arm cushions

You are going to remove the fabric from both the arm cushions and the seat cushion.  Save these pieces of fabric for later.   After you get the fabric off, you are going to be down to the frame and the foam.

 

Next, you need to check the condition of your frame.   Check and see if any of the joints need to be tightened or reinforced.  Are there chunks missing, large scratches or gouges that need to be filled or sanded?  Now is the time to do just that!

Mine was in great condition.  There were a ton of staple marks and holes, but I am just going to be stapling right there again, so there was no need to do anything to my frame.

OK, next step.

Spray paint

Take your lovely naked chair out to your spray painting booth!  What, you don’t have one?  I simply have a very large box laid out on my garage floor - - it has lots of different paint samples left over from my different projects, but it protects the garage floor!  I just open up the large garage door for some ventilation and voila - - spray painting booth!

Do you have one of these?  I’m not really sure what the technical name for it is, but it has saved my trigger finger more than once!!  This little gadget (just $3 at Lowes) clips right on to the top of your spray paint can and then you can simply pull the handle and use it like a spray gun.

I use it on all my spray painting projects, it works fantastically and your pointer finger doesn’t hurt for the next week!!

Carefully spray paint your chair with long even passes.  I didn’t take the foam off the chair seat.  You don’t get much paint on it, and even if you did, no one is going to see it, so no big deal!  It would be much more work to remove the cushion and reattach it, than to just get a little paint along the edges!

I took me two coats of paint letting it dry for 2 hours between coats.  Then I let it dry overnight before beginning the upholstery process.

Well, that’s it for today.  We’ve come a long way already, but tomorrow starts the really fun part  -- fabric!!