How to restore the back of a chrome chair. How to restore an old wooden chair at home with your own hands. Metal washers and bolts

It takes ~2 minutes to read

Save

If you have old chairs in your house, don't throw them away. They can still serve you for several years if properly restored. You can do it yourself. So you save your money and have fun.

In this article, we will tell you how to make the restoration of old chairs with your own hands, as well as consider ideas for their upholstery.

How to restore an old chair

Required tools:

• Scissors.
• Paint brushes.
• polishing machine. If this is not, then you can do with a simple sandpaper.
• Putty knife.
• Electric drill and drill.
• Face protection mask.
• Copy paper.
• Electric saw.
• Paper.
• Pencil.

Save

Restoration stages:

• First you need to get rid of those parts of the stool that cannot be restored. For example, using a jigsaw, remove the crossbars and decrepit parts on the back.
• Now attaches a thick sheet of plywood to the seat. With a pencil, mark the intersection with the tops of the back, as the sheet can be very large. Using carbon paper, transfer the pattern to the blank. Drill holes into the plywood for easy cutting patterns.
• A sheet of plywood must be fixed between boards or on a workbench. Using a power saw, make the shape of the back of the stool. Put the finished part in place. Using a pencil, mark the places where the screws should be placed, on which the wooden planks and plywood will be held. Using a drill, make holes narrower than the screws themselves. Insert the screws and fill the holes with putty.
• We give time to dry. After that, you need to level everything. For this, sandpaper is used.
• If you need to paint the chair, then first you need to apply a layer of acrylic primer to the surface. Wait until dry. When processing, special attention must be paid to the back of the product, since all edges and lines must be processed carefully. Now you can paint. After the paint has dried, the chair is varnished.

seat trim

There are times when restoration of the stool seat is necessary. To do this, you will need the following materials and tools:

• Furniture stapler.
• Staples.
• Screwdriver.
• Foam rubber 5 cm thick or 2 pieces of fabric 2–3 cm thick.
• Thick seat upholstery fabric and backing fabric.

Save

So, how to re-upholster the seat of a wooden stool:

• Remove seat and upholstery. Don't throw away the base.
• We turn the chair over and remove the fasteners that hold the seat.
• We remove the factory brackets and pull out the frame with the spring. It will have a filler, or rather, the remnants of it. We remove all this.
• Cut out the rectangle. The upholstery should extend beyond the edges of the seat by 6–8 cm.
• We put a substrate of dense fabric on the springs. It must be fixed with a stapler to a wooden frame.
• We put the filler. Permissible thickness 4–5 cm.
• Making chair upholstery. It is best to do this with two people. For upholstery, linen, leather or textile materials are used.

Do-it-yourself restoration of old chairs

The process of restoring an old lacquered stool is slightly different. First of all, you need to prepare:

• Acetone.
• sponge.
• A brush.

To carry out the restoration of a wooden stool, it is necessary to remove the old coating. To do this, treat the surface with acetone. Thus, removing the old coating in the form of varnish.

Using a brush, cover the stool with a new varnish. Leave for a while. After that, you can use the chair again.

Small tips (master class):

• To cover small cracks, you can use putty made by yourself. To make putty, you need to take flour and PVA glue. The mixture should be very thick and resemble plasticine.
• To freshen up a wooden stool, you can use stain. She has different shades. Be sure to fix the stain with varnish. Otherwise, do not wash your clothes.

How to decorate an old chair in an original way - a master class

Save

At home, you can paint the stool as you like. If you choose the right design for the chair, it will be able to complement the interior of your home. For example, choose two colors for coloring, the first is turquoise, the second is white. Now let's move on to the back. It needs to be treated with fine-grained plaster. There will be a "worn out" effect. Choose the upholstery material so that it matches the color of the product.

If you want to make a vintage stool, then choose cream, blue, pink paint. Then do the painting on the chair. You can paint the entire stool or individual parts. Now you need to apply gold paint. Small cracks in this case will be in the subject. They will create the effect of antiquity.

If you need to make a chair in the Empire style, then choose the milky color of the fabric for the upholstery. It also has floral prints. The frame is covered with gold paint.

If you do not want to mess with paint, then you can sew a cover. It will completely cover all the shortcomings of the old stool.

You can replace the usual upholstery with leather straps. Take about 30 leather belts of different colors and weave them together. You need to bind according to the “basket” principle, and then fix it on the bottom with self-tapping screws.

Restoration: patchwork technique

Save

Each of us has a whole package of unnecessary things that we definitely won’t wear again. It is this material that is useful for creating a patchwork stool design. You need to decide on the range and choose the right materials from things.

It is worth noting that you do not need to use elastic materials. Pick simple things without complicated patterns. Use the old upholstery as a template.

If you are restoring chairs for the first time, then you need to choose square or rectangular elements for upholstery.

Cut the required number of patches and distribute them over the surface of the seat. The patches may vary in width. This will create a "mosaic" effect. Sew a ribbon from pieces of fabric. To do this, you can use a typewriter or do everything by hand. Collect the resulting strips into a single canvas. Try on the template for the seat. Cut off all excess. Fix upholstery.

Decoupage technique for the design of an old chair

This technique will help turn monotonous stools into original and beautiful items that will decorate the main interior of the house. To create a design, you will need napkins, fabric with a pattern, you can take leather applications. If it is possible to walk to the store, then you can buy special cards for such equipment.

Save

After you sand the chair, you need to close up all the cracks with putty and cover everything with a water-based emulsion. Cut out the picture, grease it with glue and apply the drawing. Gradually you need to move from the center to the edges , thereby smoothing the pattern. Let the surface dry and then varnish it.

Restoring an old chair with your own hands is not so difficult. The main thing is to do everything in stages. An old product can look like new if you pay attention to its design. It can be painted, re-upholstered, slipcovers sewn, or different design techniques applied. Then the chair will not only perform its functions, but will also become an addition to the interior of the room.

Do not rush to throw away old things. They can be useful for the restoration of an old stool. We looked at different options for stool design that anyone can make.

Video: how to restore a wooden chair at home

Before updating an old chair with a backrest with your own hands, you need to examine the condition of the furniture. Before restoration, the strength of the fastening of the legs, back and seat is checked. If they stagger, then they need to be tightened or re-glued. The next steps will depend on the type of restoration work to be undertaken.

Similar articles:

How to update a chair with a back

In most cases, old chairs require a major overhaul. Furniture is cleaned of paint and varnish, chips, cracks and potholes are repaired on it. Objects from the array are covered with impregnation or stain so as not to overlap the texture of the wood. Furniture is also repainted in other colors.

To update a chair with soft elements, you need to remove the old upholstery and replace the foam rubber. If necessary, install new springs in the seat.

chair painting

The easiest way to reconstruct wooden objects is to repaint. Furniture can be made plain, highlight the back, legs or seat in different colors. Also, a pattern is applied to the furniture.

Features of the reconstruction:

1. Removing the old top cover. The easiest way to remove the paint layer is with a grinder. The device must be directed along the fibers of the tree. Otherwise, you can ruin the texture. To remove the coating in hard-to-reach places, use coarse-grained sandpaper. Another way to remove old paint and varnish is to apply a wash. It is necessary to cover furniture with this chemical solution in a respirator and with open windows. The peeled top coat is removed with a spatula.
2. Elimination of defects. Potholes and cracks are sealed with wood putty or a home-made mixture based on small sawdust and PVA glue.
3. Preparing for painting. Before you update the chair, you need to make its surface smooth. Furniture cleaned of paint and varnish should be treated with fine-grained sandpaper.
4. Painting. You will need a small foam roller and synthetic brushes of various sizes. You can use alkyd paint, water-based compounds, impregnations. The first layer is applied with a roller. So the coating will be more uniform. Subsequent layers are applied with brushes. After repainting, the chair is varnished. Experts recommend using protective compounds that are resistant to mechanical stress.

If you decide to combine several shades in furniture, then you should use the color wheel to select them. Patterns are applied using a stencil. You can also transfer a sketch to furniture through carbon paper.

Seat and back padding

Upholstered chairs will take longer to update. In this case, it will be necessary to replace the springs and foam rubber.

Fabric for new upholstery must be durable. For the back and seat, you can choose from the following materials:

1. Tapestry.
2. Rogozhka.
3. Jacquard.
4. Artificial skin.

For stretching you will need:

• Screwdriver.
• Pliers.
• Roulette.
• Scissors.
• Furniture stapler.

How to reconstruct a wooden chair with your own hands:

1. Dismantling furniture. First you need to disconnect the staples on which the fabric is attached from the frame. They pry off with a flat head screwdriver. Then they remove the old upholstery and disassemble the seat. If the frame of the furniture has been glued, then it is worth disconnecting the legs. They are cleaned and then re-mounted to the seat base. This is done to increase the stability of the chair.
2. Replacement of old fittings. Springs need to be changed if they have rusted and started to move away. They can be purchased in stores with furniture fittings. A structure made of flooring, felt and batting is pulled over the springs.
3. Construction of a pattern for the seat and back. You can duplicate the old upholstery. It is detached and then placed on paper. Details are outlined and cut out. When building a pattern for furniture without upholstery, paper is placed over the back and seat, and then their boundaries are marked with a pencil. When cutting out parts, you should take into account the thickness of the foam rubber and remember about allowances.
4. Upholstery replacement. First form the back of the back. The fabric is fixed with a stapler. The direction of movement is from the central part to the corners. Then foam rubber is glued to the back and the front part is attached. After that, pull the seat. Foam rubber and synthetic winterizer are attached to it, and then covered with a cloth.

Upgrade an old chair with a slipcover

You can also update old chairs with covers. The easiest way is to make a design with a “skirt” that covers the bottom of the furniture. Removable cover can be sewn from 5 parts. When cutting them out, 1.5 cm is added to the allowances, and 3 mm to the free fit. For sewing, you will need about 2 m of fabric.

Pattern details:

• Seat. Consists of 1 part, fully corresponds to the parameters of a similar piece of furniture.
• Back. Sewn from 3 parts. The back part consists of 2 rectangles, between which a hidden zipper is sewn. At the bottom, these parts are hemmed, making a double hem. The front is folded back and sewn to the top of the back.
• Bottom. Cut out in the form of a long strip. It is sewn to the seat and bottom of the back. The part can completely cover the legs or be less than them in height. Its lower cut is processed with a hem seam.

Time passes, and even good things wear out, lose their former gloss and simply break. But do not rush to send a shabby stool to the landfill, it can still become a stylish and functional piece of furniture. Restoration of the chair will take a lot of time and effort, but the result will exceed all expectations.

Before deciding how to restore an old chair with your own hands, you need to take care of its stability. With prolonged use, the furniture loosens: the wood dries out, and the glued tenon joints cease to fulfill their function.

A stunning effect can be achieved simply by painting the chairs in different colors.

Joinery

• First, the nodal connection is disassembled. Be careful not to damage it. The spike is swayed and at the same time tapped with a hammer on the knot.
• The groove site is cleaned of old glue and dust. It is convenient to do this with a chisel or knife.
• Then the spike and socket are evenly and thinly smeared with glue with a viscosity of 200.
• After the knot is assembled and clamped in clamps. The product must be in the clamping device for at least three hours. The remains of the dispersion are removed with a damp cloth.

Important! If a bolted connection needs repair, place metal or plastic washers under the nuts and tighten the nuts.

• If the wooden elements are not adjacent to the eyes, you can increase the missing volume with a thin piece of wood. Use casein or skin glue. The seal is left in a pressed state for 8-10 hours in a warm room. Professional craftsmen use a belt tie, which allows you to achieve the desired force when gluing.
• If the spike is broken, it is better to replace the defective part with a new one. The leg is processed with a hacksaw and the nest is cut out with a chisel to a depth of 50 mm. After that, the insert of the desired size is cut out and hammered into it.

Advice. Use a PVA dispersion, it is non-toxic and non-degradable. Epoxy glue "Master" or "EDP" is also suitable.

You can securely fix the legs with wooden scarves. You will also need studs with nuts and washers

Removing the old coating

To get rid of the old coating, use sandpaper. It is not necessary to remove the entire top, it is important to create a smooth and even surface. Restoring chairs with your own hands will not seem too exhausting if you use a grinder.

Advice. You can remove the varnish with technical acetone. They moisten a napkin and wipe the product well. At the same time, the natural color of the wood remains.

Speed ​​up the process of removing the old layer with a grinder

Finishing: painting and varnishing

Since the tree absorbs liquid quite well, it is necessary to prime the surface before finishing, this will reduce material consumption. A colorless primer is suitable if the tree will only be varnished. In other cases, choose a white primer. Chairs in white or black look great with contrasting upholstery.

Important! Before work, put on a respirator and gloves.

• Apply 1-2 coats of primer. When the chair is dry, go over it with a fine-grained sandpaper.
• Now use a wax balm, it will give the surface a special shine. Then polish everything with a brush.
• Paint the chair twice. The second layer is applied to a dry surface.
• Apply a thin coat of varnish along the grain of the wood.

Advice. Use water-based paint, it is easy to apply and dries quickly. You will also need a stencil if you want to decorate the chair with an original pattern.

Polishing and painting is best done outdoors.

Dismantling and hauling the seat

You will need: a furniture stapler, staples, a screwdriver with nozzles, foam rubber 5 cm thick (or two pieces 2-3 cm thick), thick fabric for the backing and upholstery fabric for the top. A synthetic winterizer, batting, foam rubber can serve as a filler for seats.

• First, remove the seat and upholstery. Don't throw away the solid wood base.
• Turn the chair over and remove all fasteners that hold the seat. Remove factory staples.
• Pull out the spring frame. Free it from the remnants of the filler.
• Cut out a rectangle of thick fabric according to the size of the seat, cut out the upholstery with a margin. The allowance should be 6-8 cm.
• Place a thick fabric backing on the spring. Attach the fabric to the frame with a stapler.
• Lay a layer of filler on top. The optimal thickness for the seat is 4-5 cm.
• Then install the upholstery material, it is most convenient to do this with an assistant. Upholstery can be a special textile material, as well as linen and leather.

The fabric at the corners can be fixed in this way

Creative solutions for exclusive design

• First, the chair is painted with two paints of different colors, for example, turquoise (1st layer) and white (2nd layer). Then the surface of the back and legs is carefully treated with fine-grained sandpaper so that the “worn” effect appears. The color of the upholstery material must be in harmony with the color of the painted part.
• To give the chairs a vintage flair, they are painted in cream, blue, pink colors. After that, the entire chair or only part of it is decorated with a painting. Then individual parts are isolated with gold paint or craquelure varnish is applied to the entire surface. Small cracks will create the effect of antiquity.

Also a curious vintage

• If you want to recreate the Empire style, choose milky satin with a floral print. Cover the frame with gold paint.
• Make a chair cover, it will not only protect the furniture from dirt, but also change its design.

Sewing a cover will take a couple of hours of time, even a novice seamstress can cope with such work.

• The seat can be upholstered with 30 different colored leather straps. They are intertwined with each other according to the “basket” principle and are fixed from below with self-tapping screws.

Seat strapping

Patchwork - patchwork upholstery for a "bright" mood

Often there are things in the closet that have not been worn for a long time. An old shirt and worn jeans are quite suitable as "raw materials" for the upholstery of country chairs. If suitable shreds were found, you need to choose shades and cut out the constituent elements.

Tip: Do not use elastic materials. At first, choose simple, uncomplicated drawing schemes.

Bright accents will dilute the strict monotony

We decorate a stool using decoupage technique

Do you want to update your kitchen in an inexpensive way? Decoupage is able to make the most nondescript furniture original and attractive. You will need napkins or fabric with a suitable pattern, leather applications are also suitable.

On sale you can find special cards for decoupage

1. After processing with sandpaper, the cracks are sealed with putty, the product is primed and coated with a water-based emulsion.
2. Then a suitable picture is cut out from a napkin, the surface of the chair is smeared with glue and the pattern is carefully applied. Moving from the center to the edges, smooth it out.
3. Absolutely dry surface is varnished.

You can decorate in this way the seat, back or legs. Decoupage is ideal for furniture in the nursery or in the kitchen

Great solution for transforming an old stool

Video master class: renovating old furniture

An unstable chair irritates with its creak and carries a potential danger - at any moment it can fall apart under the weight of a person sitting on it. If you have experience, you can strengthen the structure, repaint the base and drag the seat yourself. But if you do not know the secrets of carpentry, you should turn to professionals who know how to restore an old chair, and therefore they will carry out repairs efficiently and quickly.

Photos of chairs before and after the transformation

Hello, friends! Today, let's forget for a while about universal problems, turmoil in the economy, and other global topics.

I want to suggest to you, if you have a little extra money, free time and a desire to do something with your own hands, change the interior of your house a little.

Actually, I don't like to keep old things in my apartment. But somehow it so happened that, with a total renovation of the interior after another protracted repair, four old chairs remained standing in the kitchen.

At first, I made a promise to myself that I would soon replace them with new and stylish ones. But they took root in our family so much, they became almost “native” and somehow I did not dare to throw them into a landfill.

Then, looking at them carefully, I thought: “but they are not so bad - wooden, strong, well, except that the upholstery has already faded and does not quite match the color of our new kitchen.”

And if so, I decided to act and repair the old chairs with my own hands. To tell the truth, not with my own, but with the hands of my husband.

He is a great craftsman and everything he does, he does only with a sign of quality (I will brag a little). Therefore, I entrusted this work to him without hesitation.

Since we only needed to replace the upholstery of the chair, and the rest of its wooden parts did not need to be repaired (except perhaps to renew the varnish in some places), we bought:

• Fabric for furniture upholstery - 1x1.40 m. This fabric was just enough for us for 4 chairs and there was still a little bit left (later for the upholstery of the ottoman). When choosing, we focused on quality, texture and a suitable color. The purchase of fabric cost us 360 rubles.
• Foam rubber. We decided not to use the old foam, but to buy a new one and make the chairs a little softer. Foam rubber was sold only in sheets. 1 such sheet measuring 1x2 m, thickness - 20 mm. His purchase cost us 240 rubles.
• A piece of plywood 6 mm thick, approximately 1x1 m in size. The plywood was left over from the repair.
• Furniture stapler and special staples for it. We didn’t buy it either, because it was already there.
• I also needed a small piece of wood. Small pieces were cut out of it, approximately 2 cm wide and 10 cm long. And some screws to fasten them.
• Water-based wood varnish (we also had it).

Work sequence:

• Removed the old seat

• New blanks were cut to the size of the old seat (if the old plywood is in good condition, you can leave it too)

• Pieces of foam rubber were cut according to the same dimensions. In order to make our chairs soft, the foam was placed in 2 layers

• Started cutting fabric. The fabric was also cut to the size of the seat, but at the same time 5 cm were added on all sides for hem

All. We have prepared all the blanks.

Let's start assembling

In order for the seat not to move on the chair and to be well fixed, special wooden blocks were screwed onto the plywood from the underside with screws.

We fix the fabric on the back of the base with a furniture stapler.

Everything - our beautiful and soft seat is ready.

And here, take a look at what we got:

The chairs are almost like new. Beautiful upholstery goes very well with wallpaper and fronts on kitchen cabinets. In addition, they have turned from semi-soft to soft.

And all this cost us only 600 rubles. Well, in which store will you buy four wooden chairs for that kind of money?

How do you like this savings? I really liked it. Something else needs to be repaired.

Oh, yes, I completely forgot that there was some fabric left, and I wanted to use it to reupholster the cover of the ottoman. But more on that next time.

What do-it-yourself interior renovation secrets do you have? Bye Bye…

Surely at home each of us has one old, or even a couple of good solid wooden chairs, which, however, are. And everything would be fine, but their appearance leaves much to be desired. It seems to be a thing with a history - almost a family heirloom, so it's a pity to throw it away. But why throw it away if there is a restoration of chairs with your own hands? It is not necessary to contact the master who can do it for you. After all, firstly, you still need to try hard to find such a master. And, secondly, in this old item you can embody your new ideas and design fantasies. Try your hand, and we will show you how to pull a chair with your own hands and make it the highlight of your interior!

Where to begin?

First of all, it is necessary to realistically assess the amount of work to be done. Remember that any chair, in whatever condition it may be. You can always replace worn and broken parts with new ones. After an objective look, you need to think about the final result. That is, what would you like to get out of this chair in the end. Think carefully about what room it will be in. And move on from that. The interior, in which the updated chair will be located, will be the starting point for the restoration at home of this piece of furniture.

Coloring

Whatever repair you are planning, painting or varnishing the surface of the chair is a must. To give this piece of furniture an updated look, you should get rid of the old coating. Therefore, you will need to use sandpaper. With it, you can easily remove cracked paint or varnish. But first you need to remove the seat and upholstery. For these purposes, use a hammer and, if necessary, a screwdriver. In some chairs, the seat is attached with nails, so you will need a nail puller to remove them. At the end of this stage, you can safely sand the legs, back and frame with sandpaper. If you decide to repair furniture at home, be prepared to work hard with sandpaper. Perhaps this is the most tedious stage in the restoration of wooden coatings. The wood can be painted with several layers of varnish or paint, so at first it is better to work with coarse grit sandpaper. Grinding is carried out with a fine-grained sandpaper.

Now you can go directly. It is known that the tree very well absorbs any liquids. Therefore, our repair will not do without a primer. It will allow the paint to be more evenly distributed over the surface and last much longer. The primer can be white or colorless. The first is better to use if you are going to stain the chair. A colorless primer will be needed for those who will continue to use varnish and do not want to overlap the wooden texture. After applying one or more layers of primer, you need to wait for it to dry completely. Now it remains to once again walk with a fine-grained sandpaper and proceed with the application of paint or varnish. But if you want to give the product an even more polished look, use a special wax balm. It is applied after the primer has dried before applying the paint. It should dry well, after which it will need to be carefully polished with a brush. Now you can paint. To keep the product in its original form longer, it is best to apply two layers of dye, after allowing each to dry well.

Sometimes the interior project does not provide for the use of soft seats. Therefore, the repair of the chair ends with painting the seat and screwing it to the frame. If you want to completely refurbish the chair with new upholstery, proceed to the next step.

Upholstery replacement

It is important that the upholstery, the chair itself and the interior do not stand out from one design decision. Therefore, you need to think through everything in advance to the last detail. Use only thick upholstery fabric, even if you are not only repairing an upholstered seat, but also making a chair cushion.

Remove all brackets from the old seat. This is easy to do with large tweezers. Now we start replacing the batting. The pre-cut piece must be put on hot melt adhesive and allowed to fix well. If this is the first furniture repair in your life, we recommend that you get by with a plain fabric. (and even more so with stripes) you will have to constantly check how evenly it is located. And for a beginner, it can be quite complicated and troublesome.

Be sure to leave a five-centimeter margin of fabric along each edge. Maybe even a little more. Pin the fabric to the surface to control the placement of the pattern. Gradually stretch the upholstery, securing it with a construction stapler at a distance of no more than 1-2 centimeters. Depending on the shape, the fabric at the corners can be fixed as follows:

Now it remains to return the seat to its place and enjoy the work done!

As you can see, as it may seem at first. The main thing in work is not to rush and show maximum attention to detail! Be sure to share your tips for repairing furniture at home!