Easy DIY Reupholstering Tips and Tricks

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Easy DIY Reupholstering Tips and Tricks is the topic for today. Sounds kind of fun right? Over the course of  blogging, I have done my fair share of upholstery projects. Some were fails which I ended up redoing and some were pretty successful. Today I am going to share a few upholstery tips and techniques that anyone can do and they don’t involve sewing either. I have included a few affiliate links to the tools that I bought and love in case you are interested.

Easy DIY Reupholstering Tips and Tricks

My first project was how to reupholster a chair. I had an old dining room chair that was in excellent shape the but fabric wasn’t my style anymore so I wanted to give it a facelift. The cost of the fabric was much less than buying a new chair or having a professional recover it. I purchased an upholstery Stanley Staple Gun that I could use with my air compressor. It’s a 22 Gauge staple gun so I purchased 22 Gauge staples. You can also purchase a handheld staple gun but they are more difficult to use if you have arthritis or carpal tunnel. Just be sure whatever staple gun you use, you purchase small upholstery staples. I love my little compressor. It was a gift from my dad when I first started blogging and it works with just about every type of nail gun there is.

For this chair upholstery project (you see the entire step by step tutorial on the how to reupholster a chair post), I worked in sections cutting my fabric wider and longer than needed and stapled each section at a time.

One tip that worked for me was to fold over the ends and create a seam as if you were sewing a hem. I strategically stapled where the staple wouldn’t be visible.

Now don’t get me wrong, this method isn’t perfect and if you want perfect, you may want to hire a professional. For me, I was fine with less than perfect! Here is the featured chair in Woman’s Day Magazine and our dining room.

Here is another upholstery project where I used old drapes to reupholster a couch that I sawzalled in half. Did you see that project? A while back, I decided that I couldn’t afford a new couch and this one didn’t fit in our space so I cut 2 feet out of the middle and put it back together with 2×4’s, screws and anchors. If you want a good laugh, check out our DIY Couch Tutorial and watch me sawzall it in half. Needless to say, I got a lot of eye rolls from my husband, dad and grandfather as this was going on in our foyer while they were watching football.

You can see how I reupholstered this couch (once it was two feet smaller) with a pair of old drapes that I had. Yes, you don’t have to buy fabric. Drapes and existing couch covers work great for upholstering furniture. Again, I worked in sections stapling the fabric to the couch. You can see the full DIY Couch before and after tutorial here using this fabric.

About a year or so later, I decided the drape fabric needed an update so I used an old beige colored Pottery Barn couch slipcover and stapled it to this couch. We moved the couch to our pool house and it is still there today, looking just like this!

Here you can see I spread the slipcover out on top of the couch and cut around the pieces I need to staple. Be sure to check out this no sew How To Reupholster a Couch Tutorial for all the details.

Easy DIY Reupholstering Tips and Tricks 

Isn’t it amazing what you can do with drapes, old fabric and a staple gun? You can literally transform old furniture in an afternoon.

In this last project, I changed the look of my mom’s old dining room chairs in under an hour. I simply unscrewed the seat portion of the chair, added the new fabric and stapled it to the seat. You can find all the details on our How to reupholster a dining room chair tutorial.

Step 1. I removed the back and seat.

2. Recovered with new fabric stapling the new fabric to the back and seat.

3. Screwed the back and seat back on the frame.

The great thing about chairs that have a removable back and seat is that you can change the fabric just about as often as you want. You can see the full tutorial and more pictures of this project on our How to reupholster a dining room chair post. I hope you found our Easy DIY Reupholstering Tips and Tricks useful and you are inspired to tackle your upholstery project. Who has a piece of furniture they would like to reupholster? Tell us about it in the comments below!