2 miracles: Finally Finished my DIY Upholstery!

I finally finished recovering 1 of the arm chairs in our sitting room this weekend! You can read about how I started and steps along the way. I am so happy how it came out and honestly cannot believe I was able to do it (with some help from my dear husband, of course). It really wasn't hard at all and I figured that if it looked terrible then I would just end up having them professionally done. But to save this much money, I just HAD to try it!

I suggest going to www.diyupholsterysupply.com and watching their videos. It took a while, but I think they were so helpful to me to get the basic premise. I also bought a few supplies from them for decent prices. But I was able to find a special staple remover tool at Sears. Here's what you'll need:

fabric (I used 5 yards)
glue gun and sticks
pliers, needle nose pliers (for pulling staples out of wood)
hammer (to drive in stubborn staples and to pry off things)
a tack remover tool- looks sort of like a screwdriver (this is what I bought at Sears)
a sharp razor blade (to cut off old fabric in places)
scissors (to cut new fabric)
a heavy duty stapler gun (again, think of renting one with an air compressor)
staples to fit gun
cardboard (for pieces you find in the chair that are worn/torn) I actually used shipping boxes I had on hand for my Cayenne Paper business
a big help for me was to have a magnetic catch-all dish (my husband had it in the garage) that I could toss staples in to avoid scratching my wood floor or sending one of us to the ER

I also HIGHLY recommend using or renting a stapler with the air compressor (heavy duty) because you will do so much stapling that it will kill your hands. Plus you want to make sure they are all the way in the wood and not sticking up like most of mine did. Note that this takes time! Don't expect to finish it in a few hours. I spent several hours each day over a weekend to do it. By then, I wasn't motivated to do the other chair, so I'm taking a break. Hopefully that one will be easier/faster since I sort of know what to do/not to do!

Start at the back of the chair and gently pry off that fabric piece which really acts as a cover for where a lot of your fabric is pulled to and stapled to. It has a strip of special tacks on each side here, so we were very careful not to rip them so we could use them again. I removed six trillion staples and took off each piece one at a time. I labeled the pieces and used them as templates. On the skirt, I didn't even take off the old fabric. I simply covered it up like wrapping a present because it has a nice sturdy base of some sort that I wanted to use. I just used my glue gun to tape it down! Same thing for the piping there.

Now I just need to do the other one! In case you're interested, I used Waverly Paddock Blue fabric from JoAnn. It is actually Sun & Shade fabric, meaning it is stain-resistant and won't fade. I also loved that I purchased it near the end of summer, so I got it 70% off! Total cost for re-upholstering this 1 chair = $60 and lots of heavy-duty staples and sweat equity. Oh, add a few bucks for tons of hot glue sticks, too. (Yes, I did have to resort to Old Faithful, my glue gun, in some places. She gets me out of all kinds of messes. A true friend for life!)