Reupholster Armchair with Show Wood

One of the skills I picked up several years ago is reupholstery.  I had recently had three bad upholstery jobs done for me --  In one, the floral fabric was run sideways.  In another, the nice spring cushion was replaced by a too-thin cushion and instead of giving me the extra yard of fabric I ordered for pillows they made a skirt I did not want.  And another job was botched with white decking in a dark blue sofa, with the cushions so small you could stand by the couch and see the white decking. The cushions were so hard they didn't make a dent when you sat on them.  I would have added exclamation marks to these, but there would have been too many!

So I took an upholstery class, got the right equipment, and never looked back.  I have done more than a few projects - sofas, chairs, ottomans, and cornices among them.

This project was fairly straightforward, to reupholster an armchair that has exposed wood on the arms and lower edge ("show wood").    The project should have included refinishing the wood and fixing the bottom of the chair (as you will see!), but the client requested only the upholstery itself be done.  Just sayin', in case you look at the pictures and notice!

I don't know the history of this chair, but it must have been quite a while ago it was recovered in this thin-ish chintz fabric.  My client pulled this out of storage to update and use in her new guest room.

The first step is removing the old fabric, starting with the back.  Here is where I found the old fabric not removed by the previous upholsterer.

Next is a dressing of new batting over the existing batting, which still seemed to be in good shape.

Next I strengthened the back by stapling some burlap over the open space.

Roughly using the old pieces - the seat, inside back, outside back, and arms, I cut pieces out of the new fabric, paying special attention to the pattern.  I wanted to center the pattern on all of the pieces, even the arms.










I did the arms first, laying the new piece over the arm, stapling around, and trimming close to the staples.  Since this was thin fabric (meant more for drapes than upholstery), and was bad to unravel, I wet the stapled edges with a coating of Fray Block.  Fray Block is basically a glue that goes on wet and dries clear.

Somehow I don't have pictures in between, but here you can see all the pieces (except the back) have been stapled on.  First the small piece under the front of the arms, then the seat and seat back.  I trimmed and fray-checked all the stapled edges that are next to the show wood.

To finish the back involved several steps.  First, welting around the sides and top, with some extra batting.

Then the top of the back was stapled on close to the top welting, using a cardboard strip to give it a good edge.  This is looking up under the back piece at the top of the chair.







This is the top of the back after stapling it, but before dealing with the rest of it.

Before going any farther, I needed to put on the gimp over the exposed staples next to the show wood.  Gimp is glued on typically with hot glue, which is what I did.








I love the gimp my client picked out!

The tricky part is next - closing the sides of the back using a tack strip.  (Note: I added more batting over the burlap before doing this step.)

To get the tack strip positioned, I pinned the fabric where the outside fold needed to be, then pushed the tack strip through the fabric at the pins.  I folded it in and used a mallet to drive the tacks in.











In this step, I stapled a piece of welting along the bottom edge of the back to protect it and give it a finished look.  The final step should be to staple  the black dust cover to the bottom.  But since the springs and metal pieces stick out, I cannot do this.  I gave the client a piece of dust cover to use when she has the bottom fixed.  I really should have insisted that I needed to do this repair!

The finished chair.

Another shot, since it looked so bright in the sun!  A pretty fabric.