How to reupholster a chair cushion

If you would like to give your kitchen or dining room chairs a fresh, new look without spending a lot of money, you may consider reupholstering them. Here are some simple, easy tips to help you.

Chair cushion reupholstering steps:

1. Turn chair upside down and use screwdriver to remove the cushion you are going to reupholster.
2. If you would like, you can leave the old upholstery attached to give the chair an extra layer of padding.
3. Select new covering for your cushion. You can use something as simple as an old tablecloth to recover the chair.
4. Lay fabric down and place cushion upside-down on top of fabric. Cut fabric out around cushion, leaving enough fabric on each side to fold over onto cushion.
5. Starting with the front, adhere fabric to the cushion using the staple gun, and staple every few inches across. Repeat with the back of the cushion.
6. To complete the sides, fold fabric on the sides as you would if you were putting sheets on a bed, forming “hospital corners” to tuck fabric in tightly and neatly. Adhere to the cushion using the staple gun. Repeat for the other side of the cushion.
7. Neatly trim excess fabric hanging from the stapled edges of the cushion, cutting close to the staples.
8. Reinforce the corners of the cushion with a few extra staples.
9. Use screwdriver to attach the reupholstered cushion to the chair.

Chairs with cushions to be reupholstered

Staple gun

Short staples (5/16 inch)

Screwdriver

Scissors

Fabric for reupholstering

Hey, there. I'm Bruce Littlefield for howdini.com. And today, I'm going to show you how to reupholster a chair quick and easy.

I found this chair at a garage sale, actually a set of these for $10. You can see why I found them for $10. They're in bad shape. The upholstery's in a little bad shape. But guess what? All you have to do with a few things-- a staple gun, short staples, make sure that you use short staples, 5/16", not 1" because you don't want somebody sitting in your chair-- and a screwdriver.

All you do, take the top off. All right, I actually leave the old upholstery on because it gives it an extra little padding. You could take the upholstery off. But you have dinner party guests coming. And you need the chairs quick. So I'll show you how to do it quickly.

This is actually an old table cloth. And I have enough, obviously, to do all four of my chairs. Make sure you have enough to fold over. And then, you want to take your scissors and literally, it doesn't have to be neat. You can just sort of cut around it. But again, make sure that you have enough fabric to do the fold over.

All right, start with your front, front of the chair. Flip that over. Get your staple gun. And use good force to get them down there, OK. Take the fabric and do the back.

And then, your sides. Make a neat fold as if you're doing the sheets in a bedroom. So make it taut. And get that over.

Some people call that a hospital corner. My dad, who went to military college, calls it a military corner. Then before you get to the other side, which is your finishing point, again make sure that your corner's nice and tight. Tuck that in. We're going to finish this off last.

Nice. Now, one of the things that you might do so that it doesn't hang down below the chair is go ahead and finish off by cutting the fabric as close to the staples as you can get and as neatly as possible with good, sharp scissors.

We're going to finish off the corners by making it tight. And as you can see, it forms a tight bond to the shape of the chair. And then really hit that with your staple gun as tightly as possible. So there, we have nice, neat corners. And we put that back onto our chair. I left the screws in place. Again, make sure that you don't lose your screws.

And so as it screws in, it'll tighten down on the fabric. It'll actually go right through the fabric. But it'll just pierce it, and it won't rip it or hurt it. Do the same on all four corners. Tighten the last screw down, flip your chair over, and you're done. It's ready for seating.