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D.I.Y.
Recovering the seat of an old chair.
Materials: One high-density 1" foam pad. 3/4 yard home decorating fabric. Matching thread. Staple gun and small (1/4"?) staples. Old chair.Time: Less than an hour.
Cost: No more than $20.
Now that I have a computer with an LCD monitor (as opposed to the 60-lb, 29" beast of a CRT that I'd been using since college) I've been using an antique desk that I bought off another graduate student as my computer desk. When we got it, the front edge of the chair's seat was fraying slightly. After four months of daily use, the fake-leather-y covering broke completely, no doubt accelerated by my cat's affinity for chewing at the loose threads coming from it.
An email exchange with my dad assured me that fixing this would be, in fact, just as easy of a project as it appeared. After a shopping expedition to JoAnn's (for fabric and foam) and Home Depot (for a staple gun and staples), we were in business. I selected a cheerily striped fabric from the home decorating section to cover the seat. My mom also noted that barkcloth or tablecloth-type fabrics can also work for this purpose, though they're harder to wrestle. I resisted the allure of the NASCAR-printed blue tablecloth plastic, however.
The process was easy: Pete unscrewed the seat from the chair frame, and used a screwdriver to pull out the old staples holding down the shreddy plastic fabric stuff. I threw that and the old seat foam away, the new seat foam was marked and trimmed to fit the new seat. (In retrospect, we should've left a little extra room on all sides of the foam to cushion the seat's edges, but oh well.)
Then, I broke out the sewing machine and iron and hemmed the edges of the fabric. This is completely unnecessary in most cases, but, as noted above, I have a cat who loves to chew and shred any and all available hanging threads. (Cough, Garth.) This was actually the longest part of the whole process. Pete had to sacrifice and play some Super Smash Brothers Brawl in the interim.
Next, we pulled the fabric over the new foam, and stapled it to the back of the chair. I bought the smallest staples at Home Depot that would fit in our gun, and they're not long enough to extend through the seat back and poke me in the butt. We had to pull out some of the staples to re-do one side because the fabric wasn't initially taut enough, but that was easy enough.
Pete then screwed the seat back on the frame, and we were in business. The whole project was so quick and easy that it was rather anticlimactic.
Now, however, the cat who helped shred the old seat has decided that he likes the new one even better. Not for shredding, but for sitting. The spirit of healthy competition lives on in the Jejune household.
10:00 AM
Good job! It totally looks like you bought it that way. Love the fabric.