My mom and I successfully finished upholstering my desk chair, and it looked so good! It’s not perfect, but it’s pretty good for two non-professionals who do upholstery projects maybe once every three or four years.
Here’s a look at the finished chair. Well, the upholstery is finished, but I have decided that I want to change the legs for one of those swivel desk chair bases, so that these legs are not completely on. If they look crooked, try to look beyond that. I’m still looking for a nice wooden swivel base with wheels. That being said, here’s a look at the finished reupholstered desk chair.
Here’s a quick look at the before and after of this chair.
Let me show you how we finished this chair. When I dropped it off yesterday, the chair looked like this…
And it had this raw edge of fabric that showed around the arms, the wings, and the top of the back of the chair.
So at that point we still needed to add the trim, nail heads, and sew the seat cushion. To make the flat edge to cover the raw edges of the fabric, I cut 1.5 inch wide strips of fabric and then sewed them end to end. To sew them together, I brought the ends together at a 90 degree angle and pinned them in place.
And then I sewed them diagonally.
That gave me an angled seam like this. The reason you want to sew the seam diagonally is so that most of the seam isn’t completely in one place on the edge. This way, most of that seam is spread over a larger area, so it can be hidden a little easier.
The edge of this part is just a flat edge, so no laces are needed. I made a zigzag stitch along one edge of the fabric to keep the velvet from fraying and then folded the fabric into thirds lengthwise. First, I folded the raw, unstitched edge over…
And then I folded the zigzag stitched edge over that, making sure it overlapped the first edge a bit.
And then I sewed right down the middle. This is what the front of that molding looked like once it was sewn.
With that trim sewn, I found the center of the trim piece, lined it up in the center of the chair back, and pinned it in place. And then, using my hot glue gun, I carefully placed the molding over the raw edge of the fabric, making sure to line up the molding so that the edge of the molding was on the edge of the wood frame. Since I was adding nailhead trim, I needed this trim to be on the wood frame and not just on the foam and batting. If you’re not adding nailhead trim, you don’t have to be as careful with placement, just make sure to cover the raw edges of the fabric.
I continued working from the center back, around the corner towards the brim and down to the arm until the entire side had a border covering that raw edge.
And then I finished it off by gluing the edge end under the chair and trimming off the excess.
I then repeated the entire process, starting in the center of the chair back and working in the opposite direction until the other side had a border that covered the raw edges on that entire side.
With the trim in place, I was ready to add the nail heads. I only use individual nail heads. I don’t like those nail head trim strips where you add a real nail head about once every four or five nails because I can spot them from a mile away. That product, IMHO, will never give a professional look because the actual nail heads every five or six points are always a slightly different color than the strips and stick out like a sore thumb. So if I’m going to trim the nail heads, I’m going to take my time and do it the right way.
You can buy tools specifically designed to make this process easier, but since I only do upholstery once every three years or so, I haven’t spent any money on special tools. You need a spacer, a hammer, and something to hold the nail head. For my spacer, I used some glued nails that were the perfect width. A tack hammer works best, but I don’t have one so I used my regular hammer. And although I started using needle nose pliers to hold the nail heads, I found that the tip of my wire strippers worked much better due to the flat shape of the tip, allowing me much more control over the nail head as I nailed
So when you’re not a professional and you don’t have all the special tools, I’m a “use what you’ve got” type of person. A nail strip, a wire stripper and a construction hammer worked well and got the job done.
Here you have a completely finished side.
After attaching all the nail heads, I needed to finish the trim by adding covered cords around the bottom of the chair. Covering the cables is very easy. Simply cut a strip of fabric about 1.5 inches wide, place the cord in the middle of the back of the fabric, fold the fabric around the cord, and sew the two layers of fabric as close to the cord as possible. A zipper foot on your sewing machine works perfectly for this.
And then, to attach this cord, I turned the chair to the front so that the bottom of the chair was accessible, and placed the cord on the edge of the frame…
And then I used this strip of cardboard to hold the cord and stapled them in place.
The purpose of the cardboard is to prevent the cord from wrapping around itself. If you try to staple laces on a chair like this without using the cardboard, you won’t get a clean, polished look. The cord will try to bend back and wrap around itself in some areas, and will not have a consistent appearance throughout. The cardboard strip comes on a roll and is available at any upholstery store and places like JoAnn Fabrics.
The last step left was to make the chair cushion. I’m not going to do an exhaustive tutorial on how to make a cushion. I’m going to say this. If you don’t have sewing experience, the cushion could be a good project to rent or do a little bartering with a friend who knows how to sew. Sewing pillows with laces and zippers is not a project for beginners, especially when working with thick upholstery fabrics. But here I will show you the basic concept.
For the cushion you will need a top and bottom piece, which are identical. Next you will need the border strip that goes around the entire edge of the cushion. And then you will need two long strips of covered cord.
The strip that surrounds the edge is made up of three pieces of fabric plus a zipper. Piece 1 covers the front edge and most of the edge on each side. Pieces 2 and 3 include a zipper, and this piece is long enough to not only cover the back edge of the seat cushion, but also wrap around the sides about two to three inches on each side. So once you’ve sewn pieces 2 and 3 together with the zipper, you smooth them flat and then sew them to piece 1.
Set it aside and then work on the top and bottom. You will want to connect the bead to the top piece as a separate step and then connect the bead to the bottom piece as a separate step. In other words, never try to sew everything together (top, cord, and trim) in one step. Place the cord on the top piece and then sew the edge piece. Sew the cord onto the bottom piece first and then sew the edge piece. This picture shows my mom sewing the cord onto the top piece of the cushion as a separate step before even attempting to sew the top to the edge piece.
And then once you put all those pieces together, you have a cushion cover and you can insert the cushion. And you’ll probably need an extra pair of hands for that.
Once the seat cushion was made, the chair was finished!
I am very happy with the result. The fabric is so deep and rich in person. I’m not sure if that shows up in the photos, but it is a very deep red without being too dark.
And since it’s velvet, it will be easy to clean when my cat sleeps on it, and I hope he won’t be able to destroy it, since the velvet seems to discourage him from scratching.
I’m so excited to find a nice new swivel base for this chair. I think swapping out these black legs for a nice wooden swivel base will take it up a few more notches.
And finally, here’s a look at the chair next to my pink cabinets and behind my desk.
This is a HUGE project that I can now cross off my list! This was definitely the biggest project I still had to do in this room, so now it should be a quick sprint to the finish line.
Addicted 2 Decorating is where I share my DIY and decorating journey as I remodel and decorate the 1948 upper that my husband Matt and I purchased in 2013. Matt has MS and can’t do physical labor, so I do most of the work in the house alone. You can learn more about me here.
