Tuesday, September 7, 2010

Office Chair Makeover

Here is the breakdown:

Chair..............$0
Paint & supplies...$0 (already had)
Fabric.............$7
Foam cushion.......$4 
TOTAL..............$11

The hubs and I were graciously gifted this chair by our neighbors who were moving and purging items from their shed. In this case their trash was definitely our treasure. I gladly took the chair with plans of "upcycling it". 
(BEFORE)
This chair serves as our desk chair, so I needed to spruce it up a bit. More importantly our desk is white, so the chair, as-is,  was clashing with the decor. 

The chair is in great condition, however, the seat was not the least bit cushiony (not a real word, I know). And not having (1) sewing skills or (2) a sewing machine, I needed a no-sew option for upgrading the seat cushion. So I bought some 1" cushion foam.....
And this great fabric at the fabric store.....
No wonder the seat wasn't cushiony enough....I turned it over and found this....nylon straps woven as the seat support. Who's butt wants to sit on that? Not mine.
So I disassembled the chair, removing the seat part from the chair frame. The hubs helped me do a rough sand to get the shiny finish off (no pics of this step...oops!). I applied one coat of primer to the sanded chair which was definitely needed because it then took 3 coats of white paint to hide the reddish tint of the original wood!
Re-doing the seat cushion was easier than I anticipated but forgot to take pics...oops! All I did was cut the 1" foam to size by tracing the original seat form onto the foam and cutting it out. Then I attached the new foam form on top of the original seat form using spray adhesive. I also sprayed the top of the new foam form with spray adhesive so the fabric would stick to it. Not sure this is an absolutely necessary step, but it couldn't hurt. The last step was to cover the newly enhanced seat with the new fabric using a staple gun....love the staple gun. It was super easy....and here is the finished chair!
(AFTER)

Next chair makeover project is to finish this diamond in the rough...stay tuned!

2 comments:

The Frog :) said...

It turned out great!!!!!!!

Edward Pratt said...

I want to see how it looks like inside your home office. Great job for the overhaul, by the way.