Back in March I wrote about some DIY projects that I was hoping to start while trying to make the most of being locked down at home for the foreseeable future. It is now the beginning of August, and I can finally say that I have not only started, but finished one whole project. That is, furnishing a desk and chair for my “home office”, which is really just a writing table wedged in between two couches in the living room/kitchen of our tiny open floor plan apartment.
After giving up on being able to afford the kind of desk that I really wanted – a campaign desk like this one by Theodore Alexander – I settled on one I found on Chairish listed locally here in Seattle. A 1970s mahogany Drexel Chinese Chippendale style, it isn’t exactly what I had in mind (or even close to it, for that matter). But it was a great deal less expensive and admittedly more practical for apartment living. It has a few minor nicks here and there, wear consistent with age, as they say, and a lovely burled top protected by a heavy piece of glass.
With the chair I was even less particular, forgoing the trouble and expense of trying to find the perfect specimen and settling for a $35 secondhand I found on Craigslist. Its Chippendale style lines and dark reddish finish approximated that of the desk well enough that I was satisfied they would not clash too horribly when placed in proximity to one another. All I had to do was replace the fabric on the seat, which sported a silvery white doily-like print that was altogether not to my liking. And that’s how I ended up on the living room floor last weekend, a chair seat pinned under my legs for leverage, yanking out what must have been close to a hundred staples with a pair of pliers. (I’d had the foresight to buy a staple gun for this particular project, but not a staple remover.)
Getting a handle on hardware
Actually, my little DIY project started well before this, back in June when I first brought home my new desk and decided that the hardware just had. to. go. The gold handles, though perfectly at home on a piece of Chippendale furniture, were, well, too gold for me, not to mention a tad traditional. So I found these sleek rubbed bronze handles that I think add a bit of edge. They’re not as dark in person as I would have liked (I was going for a kind of matte black), but that’s the trouble with online buying. The swap was relatively easy, the old handles coming off without a hitch, but I did run into some trouble screwing the new ones in. Apparently, even with careful measuring, sometimes things just don’t quite fit.
Turns out that the old handles have a piece of hardware called a backplate that functions a bit like a decorative washer, covering the hole and holding the screw tightly in place. The new pulls do not have this. So even though the 3 inch center-to-center pulls I bought line up with the existing holes, without the backplates, the screws can’t be tightened all the way flush with the drawer. Cosmetically, it’s a minor thing, not too noticeable unless you’re up close at eye level. Somewhat more irritatingly, three of the four handles wiggle up and down a couple millimeters as a result of the poor fit. I’d imagine this would be an easy enough fix with some improvised washers or, better yet, if I could source matching backplates. But that’s a project for another day.
Drowning in a sea of textiles
The reupholstering of the chair was a bit more involved. First and foremost there was the choosing of the fabric – very well the hardest part of the whole process. I mean there’s of course the primary matter of picking a pattern. Just deciding on a category – graphic, geometric, animal, floral, plaid, historical (e.g. Art Deco), solid (God forbid) – let alone one specific print, is agonizing enough. And from there, there’s the question of which color to get it in. Something to match the existing decor, or a pop of unexpected color? Then again neutrals are always a safe bet… And there’s the question of material. Should you go with a low maintenance, durable choice like cotton, or something with a nice textural quality, like velvet or linen? It may just be the hardest decision you’ve made all year.
Ultimately, I decided that since the desk and chair are pretty traditional, I’d have a little fun with the fabric and made my selections accordingly:
- Pattern – A fantastical jungle animal print complete with leopard-spotted, mohawked elephants and strange tiger-striped gazelle-like creatures. Side note – I had recently discovered this designer, Emma J Shipley, and was looking for a reason to purchase something from her wonderfully whimsy collection. This was all the excuse I needed.
- Color – Predominantly dark teals, blues, and greens. I actually played it a bit safer here, as much of my current decor is in the blue-green family.
- Material – Velvet, because who doesn’t love velvet. It looks rich and feels so nice on your skin. Plus it matches my emerald green velvet sofa beautifully.
Now because this is a “DIY” blog post, and it’s my understanding that people expect certain things from this type of content, I am going to walk you through my process for reupholstering a chair. Step-by-step, with pictures.
Follow at your own risk
Step one: Take a “before” picture of your chair or whatever it is that you’re upholstering. This will become critical when you later go to blog about your own DIY project and how incredibly crafty you are.
Step two: If necessary, remove the seat from the frame with a screwdriver or drill. Fortunately for me, the seat of my chair is not attached to the frame so I didn’t have to worry about this. (This becomes less fortunate when attempting to maneuver the chair while seated in it.) Once the seat is removed, use a staple remover, pliers, or anything else you have handy that will do the job, to remove every single staple that whatever sadistic person before you put there.
A word of warning: Do your best not to step on any staples that now litter your floor. Understand that even after a thorough cleaning, some staples will escape, and you will still be vacuuming up runaways days later. And whatever you do, do not let your dog try to “help” clean up. He will eat them, and it will be unpleasant for him later.
Step three: That said, an extra hand never hurts, so round up an assistant/model to help you. In my case, this is typically my cat, Odin. But your partner, house plant, or (I suppose) your dog will also work. Lay out your fabric on a flat surface and determine how you’d like the pattern oriented on the seat. Keep in mind that if the chair is going to spend most of its life facing towards the room with its back to the wall, it might make sense to have the pattern oriented towards the back of the chair. This way, anyone viewing the chair from the front will see the pattern right side up.
If, however, your chair is going to live predominantly under a desk or table, you might consider flipping the fabric around. That way, the pattern will be right side up for anyone standing behind and sitting in the chair, but upside down for those facing it. After all, if you’re predominantly going to be the one doing the sitting, the fabric should be arranged primarily for your viewing pleasure. This is, anyway, how I justified it to my boyfriend after he delicately pointed out that I may have attached the fabric upside down. And while that might be the case, depending on your perspective, I still stand (sit) by my choice.
Step four: Place the now denuded seat onto your still right-side-up fabric, including any padding. If the padding is in good shape and cushy enough to your liking, you can save yourself some work here. Otherwise, buy yourself some foam and measure out a new piece of cushion for your chair. Position the seat where you’d like it and use fabric chalk and/or pins to demarcate a line three inches, give or take, out from all four sides. I used neither of these, but this is typically not recommended. In either case, you want to make sure that you have enough fabric to fold over the sides and staple underneath.
Step five: Cut along the lines, keeping in mind that we’re not looking for perfection here. The idea is just to follow the marked outline as best you can while fending off any playful attacks from your cat or house plant. Remember that you’re the one holding the scissors.
Step six: Now that you have your perfect square of fabric cut out, it’s time for the most critical step of all – attaching the slippery devil to the seat. This is where that extra hand might come in handy, as the fabric must be pulled taut as you staple it down to the back. So grab your assistant (I tagged the boyfriend in on this one) and get stapling.
The tutorial I referred to (and where I’d refer you for an actual, useful guide) advised first putting one staple in the center of each of the four sides and then working out to the edges before finally folding and stapling the corners. I’m not convinced that this was the best approach for a smooth application, but then again, I did put my fabric on upside down… Regardless, everything seemed to be going well until we got to the corners, where all the excess fabric kept bunching up and creating visible folds. I ended up having to take out two staples so that we could pull the fabric tighter and attempt to smooth out the bunches. Not perfect, but it’s close enough – if you don’t look too closely.
Despite the little foibles here and there, I at least now have a functioning work space that commands a lovely view of the living room wall. The extra storage space that the desk’s three (mostly) operational drawers provide has also been quite nice. All in all the project went as well as could be expected, given my inattention to provisioning the right equipment and general lack of handiness. For anyone looking to update their own space with some DIY action, I’d recommend looking elsewhere for guidance. But if you’re interested in learning what not to do, well then I hope you found this post most enlightening.
Happy stapling!
