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Sunday, August 24, 2014

Office Chair Makeover



Every year before school starts back I like to spruce my school desk up by covering it with new fabric. My desk/bomb shelter/ intruder shield is an a huge chunk of indestructible metal. It has big drawers and lots of room to organize all of my things. It however is sooooo ugly. So I try to cover it up and give myself a new look each year. Last year it was purple fabric on the bottom and the desk top was covered with grey chevron. The first year I did it was brown and pink polka-dots. This year I tried to just replace the desk top fabric to save money. 

I also had a terrible office chair which sat me to forward every time I sat in it. I hated it. So my friend and next door teacher offered up her office chair. It was super comfy but a little aged. So I started to think what could I do to give it a little life as well. I started looking on pinterest for tutorials on how to cover office chairs. They are out there but nothing to show how to cover a chair like this that has dents. So I decided to just buy fabric and adhesive fabric spray used in basting quilts to cover my chair. I needed a big staple gun so I drove my chair over to my friends house and she had the best idea. She had an old memory foam mattress for a twin bed and she suggested making a cushion from the foam to even out the dents! Genius! So we took the chair apart and got started. Sophie had to help!



After we got the chair taken apart the best we could We cut two squares of the memory foam out of the big mattress and then made closer cuts into the shape of the cushions. We the sprayed the cushion with the adheasive spray and then we sprayed the bottom of the memory foam and placed the foam on the cushion and pressed heavily on the foam to try and seal the foam to the cushion. It is forgiving and can be reajustied if you don't get it on just perfect. There is probably a better more permanent adhesive spray but I was in a hurry to get this project wrapped up.




I used the adhesive spray to spray the fabric a little bit at a time smoothing as I went until the fabric was draped and glued over the cushion The back of the chair had a hard plastic cover that I could not get off so I had to use the long screw driver to push the fabric behind the plastic and then a small pry bar when I was ready to staple it to the piece of wood that is behind the plastic. I would pry the plastic back with the pry bar and then staple with all my strenght and then let the pry bar go. When I would staple I would have to press really hard into the wood to get the staple in. 

I went through the same process with the bottom cushion and did not realize until I was finished with the bottom cushion that there were a couple of screws I could have unscrewed to take the plastic part off the bottom and it would have went so much faster. I am not sure how I missed them. Uhhhhh! Oh well now I know. 

After we wrestled with the chair for a couple of hours we decided the base needed a nice wash so that we didn't put a nice new covered chair on a dirty frame.



The only supplies I needed plus the fabric to cover the chair.
  • Adhesive Spray
  • staples
  • staple gun
  • long flathead screwdriver (to push the fabric behind the back plastic cover)
  • Scissors
  • allen wrench
  • mini pry bar


I think it turned out beautiful and the memory foam really was the saving grace in this project. Love reusing something that would have probably gotten thrown out
to make something new!

So next I cut a piece of fabric to cover the top of the desk and uncovered my sewing machine and went to hemming.


Here is what my first desk was covered in. I painted this 5 dollar lamp shade years ago and decided I would give it a new look to match the new fabric.



 I little black grey and purple paint and its all new.... I think I need some yellow to make it really pop.


I finally got it all together and I am so happy with it... I feel at home sitting here..... It is going to be an awesome year!



And I couldn't resist a picture of my sweet girl ready for her first day of first grade!