Tips for Reupholstering Furniture at Home

Reupholstering can bring renewed life to an old piece of furniture. Replacing furniture is not inexpensive where as reupholstering can save you about half the cost or more. If you can operate a sewing machine chances are you have the qualifications to do the project yourself.

Quite often upholstered furniture is still sound in construction and is very salvageable. If a particular piece of furniture fits into your décor or has sentimental value it would be a shame to hide the furniture or throw it away.

Start with a simple piece of furniture (a dining room chair), before you try to tackle a large project with a lot of tufting or cording. Once you are satisfied with the simpler pieces, then you can graduate to the larger ones.

You will need some basic tools before you get started.
*needle nose pliers
*staple gun and upholstery staples
*hammer
*glue gun

Now you are ready to start your project.
Unscrew the chair base from the chair.
With your needle nose pliers, pull the existing staples or tacks from the on the bottom of the base, being careful as to not rip the fabric.
Pulling the fabric from the chair base, there should also be batting underneath the material.
The batting will be replaced at this time also.
Do not discard the material from the chair base. This will be your pattern to use when chair cutting your new fabric.
This is a good time to clean your wooden chair structure.

Next measure your piece of fabric to see how much fabric is going to be required to reupholster all the chairs. Get your upholstery fabric and rolled batting. Batting comes in a big roll so you will need to figure out the amount you will need to complete the project.

Once you have all your materials, now is the time to cut the fabric to the pattern of the old piece.

Go ahead now and add the new batting to the chair. Using the staple gun, pull the batting firmly across the wooden base of the chair. Staple the batting only an inch or two from the edge of the underside. You will not want this batting sticking out when you add the fabric over the top. Pound the staples with the hammer until they are flush with the base board.

Next place the fabric over the batting. Stapling one side of the fabric, now pull the fabric across as taunt as possible and staple the other side. Repeat the same procedure for the other two sides of the fabric.

After the sides are stapled on, you will need to gradually work the corners to the underside. This is the toughest part of the project. The corners need to be worked in such a fashion as to not show any puckers or pleating on the top side. You will want smooth looking corners on the completed project.

When done with the upholstering, take you glue gun and tack down any rough edges on the edge of the fabric.

Finally you will be putting the base back on the chair structure. Take the screws that were taken out earlier and screw the base back on.

You have now just reupholstered your first piece of furniture.