Recycling Furniture with Paint

I gave new life to my old dining room chairs with a real recycling project–redoing the old upholstery.

Another idea is to paint older furniture and give it a new identity. Check out some ideas on what you can do with paint to breathe new life into your beloved furniture at The Decorative Paintbrush. I think you will find Mary's work inspirational.

Recycling Furniture - Part 2

The scariest part of reupholstering your own furniture is the day you take it apart to start the project and the moment you commit and put scissors to the new fabric.

Quality fabric is an investment and we calculated our needs pretty close. When you cut the fabric you don’t want to make any mistakes. We used the old fabric removed from one of the chairs as our pattern plus an additional 1.5-2 inches along all edges. You want to have enough fabric to hold on to and pull it, and you will trim off excess. Also remember that you will need extra fabric if there is a specific pattern to the material. The new fabric had a definite pattern and we wanted to make sure that the diamond shapes were always going the same way.


We started with the chair seats because they seemed the most straightforward. We had redone the support of the chair seat with jute webbing. Here you can see the fabric placed upside down, the new layer of foam (white) and then the wooden seat frame with the jute webbing and the remnants of the old fabric that was cut off (blue).

Recovering requires pulling the fabric snug before you staple it down. As novices, this was a two person job. I pulled the fabric tight and my husband manned the electric staple gun. We started at the back edge then pulled the opposite side taut, the front, then the sides, always working in opposition. We left the corners and then went back to them. Each corner was neatly folded, like wrapping a package.

We had carefully removed the black fabric from the underside of the chairs and saved it because it was still in good shape. Stapling it back in place finished the chair seats.

Next we took on the padded chair backs. We added new batting to the front of the chairs and carefully stapled the fabric on in the same way that the original fabric had been placed. It took four hands to keep the fabric smooth and tight, easing it over the rounded corners. The back was recovered last. We replaced the 1/4” foam, then pulled the fabric firmly and stapled it down.

The last step was folding over the fabric to make a smooth edge at the bottom of the chair back.

The final step was putting the back in place and attaching the seat.

It took weeks to take all of the chairs apart and remove the old fabric and staples. An afternoon to clean the wooden frames. An afternoon to redo the seat webbing and a day to upholster with the new fabric.

Our dining room chairs are beautiful and comfortable again. They look like new and we did it all ourselves! We saved money and natural resources and tried to reduce the amount of materials that were chemically treated. Best of all, we have a sense of accomplishment.

Starting with the Seats - Upholstery

Where do you start when you are taking on your first upholstery project? With the part that seems the least intimidating–for our dining room chairs, that was the seats.

Initially we thought we could keep the old seat support materials.

But as we took more of them apart, we realized that the plasticized fabric was disintegrating and had completely failed on some of the chairs.

As we set out to redo the chairs, I did some research into "green" upholstery materials. While natural latex materials are available through the Internet, finding them locally was an issue. The cost is greater and the durability less, in some cases. We chose to use natural materials where we could.

We cut the old synthetic material out and replaced it with old-fashioned jute webbing. Jute is a strong natural fiber. You probably know it from burlap sacks. Jute has been used to provide sturdy, yet comfortable, support in furniture for thousands of years.

By interweaving the jute webbing, you create a stronger support because the weight is distributed evenly across the seat area.

Using an electric stapler, we attached the webbing to the seat frame. This electric stapler is my new favorite tool. It made the upholstery project possible.

The jute webbing will support the foam cushion on the chair seat.

Recycling Dining Room Chairs. Next comes the most stressful step, cutting into the fabric.