French Dining Chairs Reupholstered

Armchair Before

If you have ever wondered why reupholstering a chair is costly, this is why. It's a LOT of work! Today I finished working on six dining room chairs which included two French armchairs and four regular chairs with caning for the back. The French armchairs had a padded back which was open (so the fabric was actually on front and back) as well as the seat. I was uncertain exactly how the fabric was attached to the chair, as there were no nails or staples visible. The reason for that was that the staples were hidden in a 1/2" deep groove, which was created with a router so the welting could be pushed into it.

Armchair After

Removing the old fabric required a great deal of physical work, since the outer edges of welting was glued and stapled in place. My arsenal of tools included a pair of vice grips, needle nose pliers, scissors, hammer, and screwdrivers of various sizes and a lot of elbow grease. I began with the top section of the chair and cut the fabric right down the middle, opening it to expose the edges, then carefully began pulling the welting away and out of the 1/2" groove. Beneath that was the padding and behind the padding was another piece of reinforcement material that protected the back. More staples to remove!

This was no easy task and required some rather forceful collaboration between my foot holding the chair while it was on the floor and me ripping the old fabric away. I tugged and tugged until at last the welting and fabric tore free. Once this was done, the real fun part began, as I then had to remove the staples, which were deeply embedded into that 1/2" deep groove. There was simply no fast way to remove them other than using a straight screwdriver to wriggle them back and forth several times to loosen them, then yanking them out with needle nose pliers. This process took several hours because there were so many staples! Ugh!

Once I was satisfied with the top, I removed the seat cushion (luckily it was held in place with four screws on the underside). The seat cushion was by comparison much easier to work on since there were no deep grooves to deal with, buy nevertheless, it had a million staples. The first step was to remove the staples that held the black protective fabric in place first to expose the second layer of staples that held the welting down. Once all the welting was removed, I pulled the last of the staples from the cushion that held the seat fabric itself in place. Mission accomplished!

With the fabric now removed from the cushion, I began constructing the new material, using the old fabric as a template. I allowed an additional half inch around the fabric which made it easier to attach to the seat. Using staples, I attached the seat, making sure the pattern was centered vertically. Starting at the top, I stapled it in the center, then stapled the bottom, flipped it over and when satisfied that it lined up, I continued stapling the sides, tucking in the edges as I moved along. Since these armchairs had welting around the top edge, I sewed each section with the new fabric, being careful to have the fabric go in the same direction as the seat, then attached it to the bottom edge of the cushion. This was not a difficult process, but time consuming. The end result pleased me, since this was the first time I had reupholstered an armchair such as this one. It was intense, but I learned a lot and that was the best lesson I could have asked for.