Thursday, March 12, 2009

Upholstery Predicament

I have a bit of a problem regarding a chair seat I'm trying to recover. I have these two awesome aluminum kitchen chairs, kind of like these but mine cost a whopping $2 apiece at a garage sale. Mine though have a detachable seat which is covered in a nasty red vinyl that has paint stains on it. I've been meaning to recover them and after five years of owning the chairs, I finally got around to it. I bought all the materials to rewrap the seats, took the first chair apart, and then realized that the chair seat is made out of some type of space age indestructible plastic and I can't use my upholstery stapler on it.

What do I do? How do you reupholster a seat if you can't staple or nail into it? The red vinyl is held on by little tabs that were cut into the chair seat and then the material was shoved under the tabs. Sort of like the back of a picture frame. (Did I mention that I'm terrible at describing things???) I don't think I can get my new materials under there with it because the tabs don't bend.

What to do.... any suggestions?

1 comment:

kelly said...

My first quick thoughts:

1. Super heavy duty epoxy-type glue.

2. I have some chairs that have the seat covers held on by velcro underneath (which is actually pretty cool because you can take them off to wash them) (although, in general, I detest velcro -- it ruins fabric!) Could you sew velcro on your fabric and then glue the other side of the velcro to the bottom of the chair?

3. Heavy duty elastic -- maybe even on clips. Have a couple going each way, clipped (or sewn or stapled) to either side of the fabric under there and stretching it across (Hi! I am also bad a describing things!)

4. Grommets and lace. Same sort of idea as the elastic -- put grommets around the edge of your cover, then lace it up under there.

Perhaps you could take a photo and post it -- I may have other ideas when I see what is going on.

Good luck!