New Chair Cut

This week while I was at home I decided to pick up a new craft! I saw this post on reupholstering these kinds of metal folding chairs that my parents have all over the house. I will use it as my new desk chair in the apartment instead of the ugly black chairs that the apartment comes with. Here is the result!
Note: I didn't bring my camera home so sorry about the quality!

I started off removing the seat covers from the seat itself. It was really easy and all I needed was a screwdriver. You can see the places where the screws were. This only took me about 5 minutes.

I took some regular house cleaning and sprayed off and wiped down the chairs before painting. If you take a closer look you really start to see the wear and tear on the seats. This one had random paint marks and scratches seeing as we have had these chairs for so long now!

Here are the cushions taken off..they aren't so bad. They only had a few scratches here and there from normal use. On to the painting!

I used this spray paint and it didn't work good at all. It really is my fault. It's supposed to be for flowers...but in my defense it also said it could be used on wood so I thought...why not metal too? Anyway the real reason I bought it is because I loved the color. It matches my accent in the new room kind-of. It took me 2 cans of this stuff and it still didn't really cover that well and scratches off really easily.

I ended up having to put on this sealer on in order to make a glossy look as well as keep the paint from chipping like it was.

Here is a glance at what the chair looked like after the first coat of paint. It took me about 3 1/2 coats of paint to finish this off and almost the whole day in time. I decided not to waste time (or paint) spraying the seat and the back rest because I knew the fabric would cover all of it. But as you can see it really is splotchy regardless and thats how it looked all over! It was a pain to do the little cracks and crevices of this chair.. folding and unfolding it etc.

After spraying the chairs three times it was finally time to get to reupholstering the fabric. We chose a black and white patterned fabric from Jo-Anns that I really liked and that somewhat matches my room as well. First I had to measure out the length of the chair seat. I added 3 inches to both the length and the width (which came out to about 18' on each side.)

Afterwards, I measured in 1.5' on each side so that I knew what was the middle of the fabric and also so that the pattern would be even. It's hard to explain but the picture shows it pretty well!

This helped because I knew exactly how much fabric I should be folding over. I used this staple gun from Walmart and it worked amazingly because I didn't have to use any arm strength (good because I have none) and it plugged right into the wall.

Now for the stapling! Pretty simple. Just fold over and tighten as much as possible to avoid creasing. Here is what it looked like after I had stapled all 4 sides and left the corners.
Tip: Put one staple in the middle of each side to put the sides in place first and then start working on opposite sides starting from the middle and going out to the sides. Leave the corners for last.

The corners were a little bit more tough, but not so bad! I cut some off of the corners because it was too much fabric and creased the inside to make the outside look like it wasn't creased.

And voila! There you have it! New seats (excuse my swollen feet). Next I did the back rest and assembled it all back together using the screws that I took out earlier on!

Heres the finished product once again. I love the results and I especially love the way it fits right into the desk and I hope it does the same in the new apartment.