Chair Makeover- Burlap

I have always liked how chairs with burlap upholstery looked.  

doxa design group

I've never any kind of upholstery before so I didn't want to try and take on anything as involved as the above chair, but thought I could definitely try it with the $10 junk shop chairs I bought a while back.

It has taken weeks for me to start and finish this project because I wasn't exactly sure how to make the cushions.  I finally just bit the bullet and tried.

And it wasn't that hard!  It took two hours to finish two chairs.

Before

After

The Process 

 1.  Flip your chair over to remove the cushion.  Lucky for me, this cushion was screwed in and not like, hot glued.  I felt kind of like a pervy chair gyno.

2.  Clean your chair, especially if you get yours off the side of the road and it looks like someone peed on it.  Like mine did.

3.  Usually I try to paint furniture by hand, but I used regular old white semi-gloss spray paint on the chairs.  I highly recommend a Can Gun for even coats and to save your poor fingers.  My mom gave me one for Christmas and I'm crazy about it.  I gave the chair two coats.

 Tada.

5.  Remove the nasty fabric that may or may not have been urinated on.  Hopefully you won't find an even uglier, more urine-y fabric underneath.

Like I did.  

I also found out my chairs were made by Thomasville in 1965. 

6.  Keep removing nasty stuff until you find your cushion bottom.

7.  Trace your cushion bottom shape onto a poly cushion.  I'm sure this foam thing has a more specific name, but I can't remember.  I bought it at Hobby Lobby near the upholstery stuff.  I got 2" thick 'cause I like me some thick cushions.

8.  Cut it out.  I used regular scissors and didn't care about the unevenness of my cuts, because of batting and the burlap being so thick.

Tada.

9.  Wrap your cushion in batting and staple it down in the back.

**I received a couple questions about the stapler I used.  I bought a $20 staplegun from Home Depot and used 5/16 staples.  You can see little snippets of it in some of the photos, like the one above.  You can't do this project with say, a stapler from your home office.  Just sayin.**

10.  I next covered the cushion in a muslin liner, because as you know, burlap has some holes and stuff in it.  I kind of sucked at stapling it all smooth, but got it eventually.

Tada.

11.  Next, I did the exact same thing with the burlap. (You can find burlap at Hobby Lobby.  They have lots of fun burlap colors.  I bet you can find burlap in other places too.)  

Be really careful not to make your folds too thick under the cushion, or else your cushion won't be able to screw into the chair.  I learned that the hard way with Chair #1.

12.  Then I screwed my cushions in, and took a fine sanding block to the chair for some distressing.

Happy Saturday!