On to, potentially, the most important part of the chair...because what is a chair without a seat, right?
When we reupholstered our dining room chairs, we were fortunate not to have to buy new foam as the existing stuff had held up pretty darn good and was still comfy on the tush. This wasn't the case with the 'Berr Chair'. When Anthony removed the old seat cover, the cushion was literally falling in pieces to the floor and scattering in the wind. He joked that it was probably asbestos...joking hopefully being the key word. Either way, he took the seat outside so as to not litter our living room with tiny pieces of old foam. Here's the seat stripped clean of old pleather material, asbestos?, and tiny nails that were a pain in the patooshkie to get out.
On to the the foam. I wanted the chair to be really comfortable so I opted for a high-density, 2 inch, pre-cut into a square foam that I got at JoAnn Fabrics for $7 using a coupon. Using the serrated knife from our kitchen (you use what you got, right?) I held the foam together with the seat and zipped along each side to create the foam of the seat's dreams.
Side note: I did this holding the seat edge I was cutting over the end of our fireplace ledge in case you were wondering how I managed to not destroy our floors. Fireplace turned make-shift work bench...like I said, you use what you got.
The next part was the biggest learning experience for us as we tried to upholster the foam seat. You see, the high-density foam is pretty darn firm and so it was hard to staple the fabric on to get a 'professional' look...read on.
First we made sure to spray the fabric with Scotch Gard (very smelly so I did it outside) and then I simply laid the seat foam-facing-fabric-wise, wrapped the fabric around and up, and Anthony stapled. What did we get? A square-edged seat that looked like a cardboard box wrapped up with pretty fabric. Not what I was envisioning. Unfortunately, I didn't take a picture.
Out came the staples and in came the scissors. I ended up trimming off the top edge to made a diagonal edge in hopes that that would cure the problem. Then, with Anthony's help, I knelt on the edge of the side of the seat while he stapled so that when the fabric attached and I 'un-knelt', it would be pulled really tight to give a rounded effect to the cushioning underneath.
All done!
Cute, comfy, rounded, and ready to be paired with the 'Berr Chair'!
P.S. If you guessed that we'd used this fabric, kudos to you!
Cool, Sheena! A couple years ago, we got Bob's Moms old table and chairs. They still had the cracked leather seats and I wanted to re-do them. Took off the old stuff and guess what the "filling" was? Straw! Seriously....that's how old they were. Put new foam and material on them and they look great. Wish I would have used "fatter" foam, like you did, but maybe next time!?
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