Having seen a friend's successful refurbishment of a set of dining chairs, I decided I would like to have a go myself. Not having done this before, it was an obvious candidate for the List.
I looked up upholstery fabrics online, and couldn't find any for less than about £8 a metre, including postage. Last week I went into Luton market, and found a nice fabric from the end of a roll for £1. Hurrah! This fabric was a plain burgundy/purply sort of colour, and was the only choice of upholstery fabric in the stall, so having no choice, it was easy to decide to buy.
I removed the old leather from the seat of my chair - it had been tacked on, surprisingly badly, with no trimming of the edges, just nailed into place and forgotten about. The padding was old but re-usable, so I left it in place. I cut the new fabric to size and wrapped it round the seat, leaving enough to attempt neat edges underneath. I used a borrowed staple gun to attach the fabric to the wood, and found it was much harder to use than I expected - you need to use considerable force to press down as you squeeze the trigger. The most difficult part was, of course, the corners. I had no idea how to do them, so it was a case of trial and error. I guess I could have looked it up on youtube, but wanted to work it out for myself. Having gone round the four sides, and then folded in the raw edges and stapled them to the recessed parts, I discovered that the seat pad no longer fitted into the chair. Argh!
It was getting late, and I felt discouraged, so left it til morning.
In daylight, it was clear that I had some bunching in a corner, and the padding had moved over to the side, thus making the seat pad wider. I undid one side, pulled out some padding and re-stapled the fabric with more care and attention.
It fits!
The wood needs a light sanding to remove some white spots of paint, but I an very pleased with the job, and there we are, another List item ticked off.
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