Do-it-yourself old armchair remodel. Do-it-yourself office chair upholstery: features, instructions and recommendations

Landscaping and layout 29.08.2019

Landscaping and layout

Used daily soft furniture quickly overwrites and loses its attractiveness. It is not necessary to buy a new chair at once: when the frame is in good condition, you can independently replace the upholstery and give the product a “second life”.

The restoration begins with an inspection: the integrity of the wooden parts and their joints, as well as the condition of the springs or foam filler, are checked. As a result of the check, a conclusion is made about the constriction with new material or the complete replacement of the soft parts. In the process of updating the chair, the following tool is used:

Screwdrivers are used to unscrew the screws;
Wrenches are used to unscrew bolted connections;
Nippers and pliers are used to remove nails and staples;
The new casing is fixed with a stapler;
use if the fabric cover has a complex shape;
The flaps are held together with a needle and thread in most cases.

New fabrics are selected according to density and quality; tapestry, jacquard or velor are suitable.

The old upholstery is carefully removed, which will play the role of templates - the removed pieces are superimposed on the new fabric and outlined with chalk with a margin of 20-30 mm. Worn springs are replaced with jute harnesses intertwined in checkerboard and attached with a stapler to the back of the frame. A filler will rest on top of the shock-absorbing fabric, for which they are used various materials and their combinations:

Sintepon;
Foam rubber;
Batting;
Coir;
Horsehair.

The advantage of do-it-yourself restoration is the ability to choose the most convenient structure of the updated chair.

The substrate is made multilayer:

Burlap and foam rubber are cut to fit the seat;
The synthetic winterizer is cut off 50–100 mm more on each side;
The first layer is burlap, the second - foam rubber;
The third layer of padding polyester due to large sizes closes the pie;
The edges of the upper material are hemmed to the frame;
The pillow in the middle is additionally fixed with threads in 4–5 places.

The seat trim is in progress. When cutting off new tissue, remember that replacing the springs with a different filler may change the size of the flap dramatically. We take this into account and leave sufficient allowances. The cut cover is placed in the center of the seat, the edges are folded and shot from the bottom of the frame at first rarely, then the folds are leveled and the fabric is fixed around the entire perimeter. The corners are sewn by the nesting method: one side is wound and grabbed, the second is overlapped so that the fold is at the corner, and all this is attached with staples. It will be easier to work if you remove the armrests first. They start finishing the back - the technology is similar to the considered order of the seat upholstery, but differs in the use of furniture buttons. Foam rubber is placed on the back, holes are marked and cut out for decorative elements... The next layer is batting, holes are also made in it. A synthetic winterizer is applied last and is shot with a pistol. The back is covered with a front fabric, the buttons are inserted into the grooves and fixed on the back. The use of this technique, called capitonné stitch, avoids unnecessary folds - they "go" inward along with the buttons. It remains to sew a piece of fabric to the back of the back. Here the best option it is considered the use of specific fasteners - metal clamps for hidden cladding. Such planks are purchased at furniture hardware stores. But you can not spend money and use more available ways: shoot with a stapler or studs with original caps.

If you have an old chair at home, don't rush to throw it away, try updating it! To restore the chair, you do not even need to go to a special workshop, it is easy to repair it yourself.

Do-it-yourself chair repair is a completely simple exercise and accessible to any beginner. In this article, we will introduce you to a simple restoration of a chair with wooden armrests.

Tools for repair

First, let's take care of the necessary tools.

To restore an old chair, you may need:

stain of a suitable shade;
construction stapler;
varnish for furniture (varnish in a container is suitable);
screwdriver;
vibration grinder;
upholstery material (curtain material can also be used);
drill;
foam rubber (to make the seats softer and thicker);
wooden shield;
glue for wood.

Dismantling the chair

Remove the coarse calico from the bottom of the seat (spunbond, chernukha). Under it, you need to find and unscrew four nuts.

Then we open the backdrop made of upholstered plywood or fiberboard, we find 2 nuts. After completing these simple steps, we remove the armrests.

The back and seat are secured with two more bolts. We also unscrew them and disassemble them into separate elements. As a result, the chair was disassembled into the following elements: seat, backrest, 2 armrests and backrest.

Removing the upholstery

The upholstery material can be removed in two ways:

slowly, gently pulling out the staples with the staple remover;
in order to save time, you can simply tear it off with pliers and a powerful screwdriver.

When removing the upholstery, keep in mind that there is a large number of garbage. After removing the upholstery, be sure to remove any old staples from the frame or punch them out with a hammer.

Chair restoration

First you need to inspect wooden parts chairs for breakages and cracks. They must be glued with wood glue and fixed with a 16 mm clip.

If, when disassembling the chair, you notice that one of the parts of the legs has cracked and began to crumble, you will have to replace it. For this purpose, you can use a wooden furniture board.

Next, you need to sand the details. This process is the most difficult and time consuming. Using a special drill attachment, we remove the varnish from the parts. Then using grinder, we clean them until a shade of wood appears.

Cut out the elements from the building board necessary form... Cover the details with stain and wait about 5-6 hours.

After this time, we cover the parts with furniture varnish. If you want to maintain the wood effect, do not try to apply too thick and shiny varnish. The varnish dries from about 22 to 24 hours, depending on the thickness of the coating.

Check how tight the belts are. If not too much, then remove the bracket from one side and, using pliers, pull harder. Torn belts will have to be replaced. For this, special elastic belts for furniture, rubber strips or any dense fabric are suitable.

It is also advisable to make a drum of dense fabric over the belts, it covers the belts and is nailed with staples. Thanks to the drum, the belts will last much longer and the old foam will not spill out.

Restoration of the chair filler

First of all, we look at the state of the foam rubber or foam rubber. If the condition leaves much to be desired, then it must be changed or tried to restore.

To replace it, you need to measure the thickness of the old filler and add another 1–2 cm to it (over time, the foam rubber sagged) - we need such foam rubber.

For the repair of chairs, special foam rubber is used for furniture with a density of 22–25 and a thickness of 1–3 cm (depending on the state of the old filler).

To increase the density between the new foam rubber and the old foam rubber, you need to glue spunbond or coarse calico. New foam rubber is glued and fixed around the perimeter with staples.

Upholstery

Doing everything preparatory work, cover the individual elements with a cloth.

Pre-measure the old fabric and make a margin of 3-5 cm on each side. Having made the necessary measurements, we cut a new fabric.

Remember to stretch well. The corners must be fixed last. We punch the staples, observing a distance of 2-3 cm. More often it makes no sense to do this, and if less often, differences on the new material will be visible.

After finishing the upholstery, use a long screwdriver to make holes for the bolts and punch the brackets around them so that the material does not tear at this point.

Assembling the chair

We assemble the chair in the reverse order. Nuts and bolts can be replaced. Be sure to pull through the washers, over time the nuts can push into the wood and the frame will wobble. On the lower part of the seat we nail a new coarse calico and, if available, a piece of new fabric.

That's all, the renovation is over. As you can see, it is not so difficult to restore the chair, there would be a desire. Enjoy the revamped vintage style chair!

Video: how to repair a chair with your own hands

Video: how to update an old chair

Unfortunately, sooner or later, any chair loses its appearance... After all, the more convenient it is, the more often it is used, and, accordingly, the upholstery of the chair wears out faster. In addition, a good-quality chair may not fit into the updated interior after the next renovation. All these problems will be solved by the armchair upholstery with a new fabric.

Another reason to resort to is the purchase of an inexpensive faceless "semi-finished product" that requires a beautiful cover or replacement of the upholstery to give it individuality. This chair will be used as an example. The upholstery of the armchair is made of linen, which is usually used to upholster the bottoms of armchairs and the backs of sofas facing the wall. Such material does not possess increased wear resistance and is not treated with dirt-water-repellent impregnations, like special furniture fabrics. Therefore, it loses its appearance rather quickly and requires replacement.

Tools and materials:

pliers
furniture stapler and staples
screwdriver
ripper
tailor's scissors
safety pins
marker
mixed cloth for internal parts
decorative furniture fabric
synthetic winterizer 25 mm thick
strong threads 45 - 70 LL (reinforced lavsan-lavsan threads usually used in the manufacture of upholstered furniture)
sewing machine and needle for heavy fabrics (no. 100)
confident sewing skills

1. Take your camera and remove the chair from all sides, paying Special attention knots - places where several cloths are connected. These photos will come in handy when you need to collect from patterns new case... Don't trust your memory.
2. Unscrew the legs. Use a screwdriver to pry the furniture brackets and remove them with pliers.
3. Remove the old fabric from the chair. Rip apart the seams that interfere with this, and then use a ripper to separate the cover into parts. It is not necessary to cut the fabric with scissors, because all the parts should remain exactly in the form in which they were made by the manufacturer of the chair.
4. Iron the details and sign them.
5. If it occurred to you to wash the details, and after washing they have significantly sat down, then you have to do the following: take a piece of cheap fabric, use safety pins to fix it on the chair so that it duplicates the decorative upholstery. Pin the darts and draw with a marker. After you remove the fabric from the chair, details should be drawn on it. Add seam allowances, make sure the symmetrical parts are really symmetrical. This method of constructing patterns is also used when the old upholstery is not removed, and an additional removable cover is made to update the chair.

6. Calculate how long you need a piece of decorative furniture fabric. To do this, you need to prepare a cutting plan. Lay out the pieces so that they fit 1.4 meters wide. This is the standard width for special upholstery fabrics. Position the parts so that the longitudinal thread of the canvas runs along the seat and along the backrest, and across the arms of the chair. The sample chair has no armrests, so only the general direction of the threads is observed for cutting (all parts lie across the longitudinal thread of the warp).

7. If the fabric you have chosen has a graphic pattern that will need to be joined, the cutting plan must be made directly on the canvas, purchased with a decent margin. You should also take into account the direction of the pile if you have chosen a pile material. Usually the cutting is done in such a way that the pile is directed downward.
8. Cut open the parts with a small margin in case the new cover does not fit perfectly. Baste the parts with a temporary hand seam.
9. Examine the chair. Reinforce loose parts, tighten screws and nuts. Replace caked padding polyester. Try on the cover by temporarily securing it with several staples where the fabric is hidden from view. If the fabric comes in waves, adjust the pattern by removing the excess in the seams or, conversely, adding where the fabric is too stretched. The patterns may not sit down right away, because during operation, the old upholstery is most likely deformed. Make as many fittings as necessary to eliminate all defects. A hand needle will not leave marks, while a ripped machine stitch will leave punctures that will ruin the look of the fabric.

10. Prepare sewing machine to work with heavy fabrics according to. Check the quality of the seam on unnecessary fabric remnants. Sew all the details. Make cuts in the allowances where one piece is sewn to another in a curved line or at right angles so that these allowances do not pull the material from the inside.

11. Place the new chair cover. It is better to fasten the fabric with staples together in order to be able to evenly stretch the cover. First, the inner contour is fixed on the reference chair, then the outer canvas is attached to the bottom. Excess fabric goes into folds that are invisible on the visible part of the back of the chair.

Then, using a stapler, the inner part of the seat is fixed.

12. In those places where the holes for the legs are located, holes must be made in the fabric and the legs must be screwed on.
13. Cover the removable part of the seat (in our case, a piece of foam rubber) with padding polyester and insert into a new cover.

At first glance, hauling a chair may seem like a simple and enjoyable exercise. This is true if you have sufficient sewing skills, patience and free time... Better to choose for the first time office chair or simple forms tending to a rectangle. It is better to entrust the banner of a lush chair with a complex volumetric structure to professionals.

One of the easiest and most unexpected ways to update an old chair is to repaint its upholstery. This option will help if the upholstery is not damaged, but, for example, you need to hide stains or just want to change its color. You can repaint the upholstery using paint from a spray can or from a can. Choose an all-purpose paint or acrylic for your fabric, and a coat of special primer can be applied before painting. You can find paint and primer at home improvement stores, arts and crafts stores. The bonus of this alteration is that the upholstery treated with paint acquires not only a new color, but also water-repellent properties, and stains from it can most often be simply removed with a damp cloth.

You will need:

Fabric paint;

A large brush for covering wide surfaces and a small brush that is more convenient to paint over the edges;

- container for stirring paint;

Spray bottle with water;

If desired, masking tape can be used to protect the wooden parts of the chair from paint getting on them, and the primer can be dispensed with).

1. First, remove the cushions from the chair. Clean out all dust, wipe the upholstery with a damp cloth if there is significant greasy stains, it is better to treat them with a stain remover so that they do not interfere with the paint to lie flat.

2. If you wish, cover the surface of the chair with a primer. You can do without it. In this case, first soak the upholstery with water by sprinkling it with a spray bottle. Don't forget the chair cushion (s). While the upholstery is still wet, dilute some paint with water in a 1: 1 ratio and saturate the upholstery with this mixture. This step is especially important if your seat is upholstered with thick fabric. Before painting, you can protect the wooden parts of the chair with masking tape.

3. When the first layer is completely dry, you can proceed to the second. This time cover the chair with undiluted paint. Carefully brush over all corners, painting over all the necessary areas of the upholstery.

5. If you wish, you can decorate the finished chair with decor by placing it on glue. Ready!

More ideas for chairs with repainted upholstery:

2. How to pull the chair: master class

This method is, of course, more difficult than repainting. However, by dragging the upholstery, you can almost completely update the old chair, getting rid of holes and scuffs and getting a practically new item for your interior.

You will need:

Binding fabric (choose a strong, dense fabric);

Scissors;

Sewing machine and thread;

Furniture stapler and staples for it;

Glue gun;

Braid for decoration;

A screwdriver to remove the staples from the upholstery of the old chair.

1. Using a screwdriver, carefully remove the brackets holding the upholstery to the chair. The removed parts will serve you as patterns for new, the same upholstery parts. You can not remove all of the upholstery or, if you wish, not remove it at all. Then you will have to take measurements from the chair and build patterns for new upholstery parts.