Office chairs can be expensive to replace, and my chair definitely was well worn. Instead of ordering a brand new chair, I wanted to try to save money for the work by reupholstering my own office chair. It was a fun project, but it's a lot of hard work, and once one has committed to this, you have to see it through. There's no going back. :-) Here are some pics of how worn my chair was. Being that I sit at the front desk, I didn't think that was representing well.
...so the first thing that I did was go to Hobby Lobby and bought a cute little feminine hammer. Yes, I asked one the clerks if they had girly hammers, and they did! It's covered in flowers....and the beauty of it is that it also converts into three screw drivers. It's a hammer and flat head and Phillips head screwdriver in one. The handle unscrews and turns into the screw drivers! So girly!
When I got back to the office and began working on the chair, I was surprised to find that my chair was put together poorly by the company that we had originally bought it from. Instead of screws, they had cheated and simply put heavy duty staples in it to hold it all together. What! I know! I was able to use a regular, as shown below, staple remover to simply pull the staples out.
Thanks to my everyday staple remover, I was able to remove all of the staples that were holding the plastic and the fabric to the wood. Once removed, I used the old fabric as a type of pattern to cut out the new fabric. If you are adding new padding in, you can also use it as a guide to cut that out as well. I didn't have fabric shears on me, so I had to use my office scissors. I will say that those things are definitely not made to cut fabric. I think I would have done better with a knife, but it got done.
As a temporary guide to hold the fabric in place, I used masking tape.
....starting on the back of the chair.....I decided to complete it first.
The time had come to nail in the upholstery nails. I wanted to put the chair back together right. Instead of the cheap staples.....the real thing that is suppose to be used to reupholster.
...so I nailed in well over half of the nails around the chair, but it took me over an hour to do so b/c of strength, or maybe I should say a lack of strength. Cory S. offered to help me hammer the nails in b/c it was taking me several hits per nail to drive it in, but since he's a student and was on the job I told him I'd be fine, so another 20 minutes went by with my girly hammering...and that was when handy man Dan walked by and offered to help. I gladly accepted the manly help this time. Three strikes and you're out, after all. :-) Wow, he finished the rest of nailing in about 10 minutes. He would only hit the nail twice and it would be in. I was thinking, I should have just gotten "man power" from the start. Could have saved time, and lots of noisy hammering in the office!
Voila! My office chair's new look! Costed around $30 for everything including upholstery fabric, hammer, and upholstery nails, etc. That's a lot cheaper than a new office chair of this type that costs $200-$300 new. Conner B. is going to come and secure the bottom plastic on with a professional tool when he gets the chance putting on that last touch. In the meantime, this is how it looks now. It's very functional, more comfy.....happy with it!
Update with Conner fastening on the plastic piece properly with the screw gun.
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