Upholstering help or tips

[Chris Daigh]

I am upholstering my dining chair seats finally. I build the chair side supports with a 4 degree angle. I am cutting out the corners of the material and leaving a 1 inch wide strip to cover the corners. Just wondering if anyone has any advice or tips.

[Kirk (KC) Constable]

Just my personal opinion...find an upholsterer and pay the money.

KC

[Tim Sproul]

Just wondering if anyone has any advice or tips.
Get a pneumatic upholstery stapler. You can get a good one and staples for less than $150.

[Vaughn McMillan]

I don't know if your chair seats are similar to the ones we have...ours are essentially a padded hunk of plywood with upholstery fabric stretched across the padding and stapled to the bottom. I recovered our cushions (without removing the original upholstery) very easily by simply pulling the fabric tight as I went, and attached it using just a manual staple gun. At the corners, I just gathered the fabric evenly and stapled every inch or so. (No fabric was removed at the corners.) When the seats were installed back onto the chairs, any irregularity around the corners was corrected or hidden when the seat was pressed into the frame.

- Vaughn

[Andrew Lunn]

Hi Chris. You might want to check out a Taunton video on chair making techniques by Jeff Miller. It's got a segment in it where they tape a guy upholstering a seat and he goes through how he's doing everything. I think they said he had been an upholsterer for 40 yrs or so; makes it look very easy of course; very fast. Very worthwhile. You might be able to find it at your local library, or sometimes Woodcraft stores rent those videos. Good luck.

Andrew