For our monthly craft day, my neighbor and I reupholstered two dining room chairs.

The seat was only laid into the chair frame, so lifting it out was easy, then we removed the staples with flathead screwdrivers and serrated needle nose pliers.

There were so many staples. The velvet had a set of staples, then there were three layers of thick cotton surrounding cotton filler and each layer had a host of staples.

When we got down to just the frame, it was obvious that the seat had been reupholstered many times. The jute webbing was in good condition, so we left it in place. To rebuild the seat, we found a 3” dense foam chair cushion, some upholstery quality heavy cotton, and some beautiful red velvet. The cushion was the same depth and width as the chair seat, it just needed some trimming with an electric knife to match the profile. We secured the pad to the frame with the heavy cotton cloth and heavy duty staples.

Because we used a foam block, we didn’t need as many layers of cotton as was previously installed. The cotton layer did help to do the initial shaping of the pad and make applying the velvet easier.

We did have to switch to longer staples, particularly in the corners, with the velvet. It was good that I brought along a selection.

We were able to refinish both chairs, including shopping for fabric, in about three hours. Chair seat reupholstery is a very doable project with a good heavy staple gun, selection of staples, and a pair of pliers.