DIY Upholstered Wingback Chair

I am SO excited to be writing this post today! I have been wanting to get this chair done for what seems like an eternity. I showed you the "before" picture HERE way back in January, but life happened and I had to put it on hold until this past weekend. It was worth the wait though! I am IN LOVE with the finished project! So now for all the dirty details!

I had no idea what I was getting into when I started this. Prior to this project I had zero reupholstering experience. So if I can do it so can you! My best advice would be to pay attention to the details. Label and save every piece as you take it apart and you will be fine. Be prepared to work hard and be patient. It's time consuming and tedious, but so worth it in the end!

 

This is what I started with. It was mauve (do I need to say more?) and dirty. I found it at Goodwill for a whopping $25.

 

Removing upholstery is like peeling off layers of an onion. Start at the bottom and just keep removing staples and peeling back layers. I used a flat head screwdriver and pliers. 

 

After the bottom was finished I moved on to the back side of the chair. It was nailed in with what seemed like a million little teeth. I used a screwdriver to pry them loose. Make sure you save the tack strips that are on the back sides... you can reuse them when you reassemble the chair.

 

Once the top back layer was removed I worked on the next layer of staples on the back of the chair. 

 

After that I worked on the sides of the chair. There were more tack strips and staples and then I discovered the nasty batting. Yuck! This stuff was gross!

 

The front was next and oh look! More nasty batting! This was as far as I got back in January. Fast forward to this past Saturday...

 

Then off came the fabric on the arms. When you start on the front make sure you label each side (right & left) of each of the arms. Label the batting as well since you will reuse that later on.

 

Once I got to this point I was just ready to be done so this was where I failed on the picture taking. Basically I just peeled and peeled off layers until the chair was bare. In order to remove the fabric on the cushion and back of the chair you have to unscrew them first. But that's it, really! Now for the fun part! 

 

I enlisted my fabulous mother-in-law to help me with the sewing. She will probably die when she sees this picture! Sorry, Bev... I just wanted to make sure you got credit for your amazing work! The cushion requires a couple stitches as well as the arms. If you want to add piping you will need to sew that too. 

Again, I failed miserably at taking pictures as we put the fabric back on. I was too excited about getting it finished to stop to take pictures every five minutes. So are you ready for the Before and After? Drumroll, please!

.......................... Ta-da!

 

 

To wrap up, I purchased my fabric from Fabric.com for $7.48 a yard. I bought 6 yards, but I only ended up using about 5 yards. I also purchased an electric staple gun for $30.00 just to make the project a little easier on myself. So the total cost of this project (excluding the electric staple gun) was just $70! Paying $70 for a custom upholstered wingback chair made it worth every second of the work!