How to Recover Chair Cushions

Recovering chair cushions is a great way to extend the life of furniture and bring new color and textures into a room in need of updating. If you have dining room chairs that have upholstered cushions, it is a simple project to pop the cushions out of the chairs, remove the old fabric and place new fabric onto the cushions. Learn how to recover chair corners so that you can complete this useful project and update your chairs.

Difficulty: Moderately Easy

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

• Upholstery fabric
• Staple gun and staples
• Scissors

1. Place the fabric onto a flat work surface with the wrong side facing up. Center the seat cushion onto the fabric with the underside of the seat cushion facing up and at least 2 inches of fabric extending out beyond the cushion.

2. Pull one side edge of the the fabric up to the underside of the seat cushion (the top as you are working on it) and place a staple in the center of this edge of the fabric.

3. Pull on the side edge of fabric that is opposite to the side edge stapled in Step 2 so that the fabric gets pulled tightly across the seat cushion. Position this edge of the fabric on the underside of the seat cushion (again, the top as you are working) and place another staple directly across from the first staple.

4. Go back to the first staple and place more staples on either side of it along this edge. Fill in staples approximately every 2 inches and stop when you are about 1 inch away from the corners.

5. Repeat Step 3 with the opposite side of the cushion.

6. 

   Pull the fabric down diagonally across the corner as shown in the diagram and place a staple in the center.

7. Pull the rest of the fabric tightly around the corner and to the underside of the cushion. Trim any excess fabric and secure the fabric on both sides of the first staple with several more staples to make the corner neat and tight on the underside of the seat cushion. Repeat with the opposite corner.

8. Repeat Steps 2 through 7 with the remaining two sides of fabric.

9. Turn the cushion back over and replace it into the chair.