French Arm Chair Makeover

How to easily update old worn out thrift store chairs with some paint and fabric by A Ray of Sunlight Furniture. Love the navy blue and white makeover!

Thrift stores are so hit and miss. Most are overpriced, but I still have the hardest time driving by without stopping. Every once in a while I find an amazing deal, or just the piece I was looking for and it makes all of those extra trips inside worth it.

A few weeks ago I was looking for some extra seating for our living room. I wanted something pretty, but something that could be functional when it needed to be, and I didn’t want to spend a ton. We don’t have guests over too often, but when we do, we need some extra chairs. Or lets be honest, when I want to lay on the couch and my husband is home, we need an extra chair for him to sit on. 😉 ha!

Before

I ran into a thrift store since we were passing by. Lo and behold, two matching arm chairs were there to greet me! I wasn’t completely sure about the style matching what I had envisioned, but after a quick call to my help line (of course my mama!) I quickly snatched them up.

The fabric was old and worn out and definitely not the color I was going for. But the great thing about these chairs are how easy they are to reupholster! Don’t get me wrong, they are harder than regular dining chairs, but so so much easier than a big upholstered chair or couch.

The naked chairs once all the fabric was torn off.

The worst part of all is the first step; removing all of the fabric and trim with pliers and a flat head screwdriver. Man that stuff is always stuck on so hard! Then I prepped the wood for a new paint job by lightly sanding and wiping everything clean.

I gave both chairs a new crisp white finish with heavy distressing and a few coats of poly for extra durability.

I used the old fabric (adding a couple inches to the edge of each piece) to figure out how many yards of fabric I needed for the chairs. I decided on some navy linen fabric from Joann and grabbed a roll of batting.

This time around I finally got smart and purchased this pneumatic staple gun instead of using my old manual staple gun. So. Much. Better! I should have bought it years ago because it made it so much easier and faster! I bought the Surebonder that takes regular old T50 staples, just like my old manual staple gun. If you’re thinking about reupholstering, you NEED to get a pneumatic staple gun. This one was cheap and it works great! I just plugged it into our small air compressor and went to work!

I used the old fabric as a template to cut out my new fabric and batting. But since the cane backing didn’t have fabric over it before, I just measured the size of the cane, added 4 inches and cut out a rectangle for each side of the cane.

For the seat I started by stapling on the batting in a few spots and then cut off the excess with sharp scissors. Then I stapled on the new pretty fabric, making sure everything was tight and in line.

For the chair back I kept the cane for the extra support it gives and followed the same process for both the back side and the front. First batting, then the fabric. I stapled them on just outside of the border of the cane so it would have wood to attach to, but I stayed as close to the cane as possible. I didn’t want to cover the whole back of the chair.

Once all the fabric was stapled on I used sharp scissors to cut the excess away, making sure to cut as close to the staples as possible.

For the trim I used 3/16″ cable cord and 2.5″ strips of fabric to make double welting. Vidya at What’s Ur Home Story has a great tutorial explaining how to did it. Then I just used glue to attach the trim onto the edges of the fabric to cover up the staples and ugly edges.

I couldn’t be happier with how these chairs turned out! They look super expensive and are just what I wanted in the space! Wahoo!!

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Search for things like “Repair Damage”, “Add Legs to Furniture”, or “Remove Paint”.

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