DIY chair restoration

An old chair, inherited from a grandmother, with worn upholstery and peeling varnish can become a pearl of the interior if you put your hands on it. To cope with this task, you need to familiarize yourself with the technique of restoration work, arm yourself with the necessary tools and be patient. Consider the stages of turning a used piece of furniture into a chic rarity, dear to the heart as a memory of loved ones.

There are various approaches to renovating old furniture. Restoration is a classic approach that involves restoring the original appearance of the object with all the previous characteristics. This method is used if you need to restore a valuable piece of furniture in its original form. Here, a rather complicated technique is assumed, which will require the use of special-purpose chemical agents to restore the coating, carpentry work to eliminate functional malfunctions, it may be necessary to replace part of the wood or veneer.

This requires special skills and professional carpentry tools, the acquisition of special types of wood. Complete restoration of chairs is justified for collecting purposes or in case of damage to one of the items of an expensive headset. This is a rather expensive process, so it is better to entrust it to professionals.

If, for certain reasons, contacting a carpentry restoration workshop is impossible, then repairing old chairs can be done at home with your own hands.

It is necessary to start restoration work with the sequential execution of the following actions:

• First, we think over the design of the future piece of furniture, how it will look in the interior, what color it should be, what needs to be redone for ease of use.
• Then we disassemble the chair into its component parts, determine the degree of wear of the parts and the need to replace some elements, measure each part.
• After that, we draw up an estimate for consumables according to the size of the chair parts, with this list we go to the store and purchase everything we need.
• Finally, we replace the worn out parts and the coating with varnish or paint. If the chair has retained its strength, it is enough to simply repaint it to make a new piece of furniture. You can paint an old peeling highchair in a new bright color and paint it with a simple pattern, which will make the child incredibly happy.

Having determined the degree of deterioration of structural parts, it is necessary to stock up on the necessary tools. Let's try to figure out what is required for the repair.

To strengthen the frame, you will have to get a chisel, wood glue or PVA glue, wooden blocks to replace furniture spikes or spacers. The spikes are used to fasten the frame parts.

If the legs of the chair are loose, the spikes must be removed, coated with glue and inserted into the structure, after which the elements must be fixed for several hours. At home, you can use a regular strap for fastening parts.

Chairs can be varnished, stained or painted. To remove the damaged coating, you need to sand the surface of the chair - it is not necessary to completely remove the old layer of paint or varnish, it is enough just to level it. Here you need coarse and fine sandpaper or a sander.With a complete change of design, it is worth using a special composition that dissolves paint - technical acetone.

After completing the preparation of the frame for a new painting, you need to apply a primer under the paint - usually it is gray or white. You will need varnish-and-paint materials. They are selected depending on the conditions of use, whether this household item will be adversely affected by moisture, steam or the sun. Each coloring agent comes with instructions. After reviewing it, they choose the right one.

Before varnishing, for the preservation of wood, it is treated with wood stain, wax or oil. These furniture products are available in different colors to match different natural wood colors. After covering the frame of a wooden chair with a water-based stain of the desired color, a layer of varnish follows, when using a polymer-based stain, varnish coating is not necessary.

Next, you have to decide what will be the finishing of the seat. If it is a hard seat, then paint according to the same rules as the frame. If you have to tackle a soft seat, you need to stock up on foam rubber and upholstery fabric. This is where a furniture stapler with matching staples comes in handy. The fabric can also be secured with special furniture nails and a hammer.

When working with a spring block, it may be necessary to replace the springs or the entire block. You need to ask in advance if these materials are available for repair work or if you need to change your strategy and abandon springs in favor of foam rubber.

The chair connection diagram is well known; it is not difficult to disassemble the structure yourself. First, the backrest and rear legs are unscrewed. The assembly of the chair takes place in the reverse order, then all the grooves will fall into place. If the chair is mounted on glued spikes, you need to melt the joints with hot water - for this, apply a hot wet cloth several times or use a steam generator.

Found cracks are poured with a mixture of sawdust and glue, or sealed and pulled together to fix until dry. In case of damage to the spike joints, new plugs are made to replace the old ones, and to strengthen the side joints, a spike-groove fastening and gluing are used in them. It is necessary to drill a thin hole up to the spike and pour the glue into it with a syringe, fix it until it dries. If the legs are inserted into special grooves in the bottom of the chair and the chair staggers, then the legs are removed and the upper part is wedged, it becomes larger and fits more tightly into the groove.

If the highchair is being updated, in addition to the above, it may be necessary to replace the hinges or the swivel mechanism for transformation. Most wooden highchairs are made up of a large number of parts to ensure the safety of the child. It's a good idea to glue them again with wood glue for strength.

When disassembling the folding chair, it is enough to remove the axle pins connecting the backrest and seat and unscrew the seat. Chairs on a metal frame are simply unscrewed, in models with cast frames, only the seat and the soft part of the back can be unscrewed for upholding.

The chair seat can be equipped with a spring block. The unit itself does not need to be dismantled and torn off from the base; if necessary, individual springs are replaced.

So, at the first stage, our chair is disassembled, the damage to the structure has been repaired, the old paintwork has been removed, and you can start the renovation directly.

At the second stage, on the cleaned surface, we apply a primer corresponding to the type of material to be painted. After it dries, it should be re-processed with a thinner sandpaper. Then we apply the first layer of paint or varnish and after drying we check - if the base is visible, apply one or two more layers.

Each material has its own characteristics when dyeing. An anticorrosive primer composition is applied to the frames of iron chairs with the first layer, after drying, the main color is applied, and if the paint is transparent, then it is applied in stages in two or three layers. When painting metal chairs, it is better to use metal enamels.

The frame of a wooden chair is initially treated with wax, applying a little product to a piece of cloth and rubbing it thoroughly into the wood, or brush it with an oil primer. Followed by one or more layers of acrylic paint. These new generation coatings are convenient to use, odorless, dry quickly, and are suitable for indoor use.

To restore Viennese chairs, use a lacquer coating on a wax base or on a primer.

For plastic chairs, painting is undesirable, since the flexibility of the material will provoke paint peeling; it is better to sew covers or pillows on them from a suitable fabric.

Finally, the last step is to update the upholstery of the upholstered parts of the chair. After the old upholstery has been removed, the foam rubber of the desired thickness is cut to the shape of the seat base, it can be fixed with glue. The fabric is cut out, taking into account the hem allowance around the foam rubber with plywood.

With a furniture stapler on the back side, the fabric is first fixed from opposite sides so that it is tightly stretched, then the corners are folded end-to-end, folded along the base and fixed with staples in several places on the back side so that the fabric does not puff up. It is better to use a fabric with a floral print or a solid color. A geometric pattern requires a special arrangement of lines. The picture may be skewed, so skill is needed here.

When tightening a seat with springs, batting or other dense material is first laid, then a layer of foam rubber. The fabric is cut out and attached using the same technology as with one foam rubber, but here it is important to tighten the upholstery more in order to smooth out the relief of the springs.

When the chair frame is renewed and the soft parts are tightened with new upholstery, all that remains is to assemble the structure. The basic rule is to assemble in the same order as disassembled. The legs and backrest parts must be installed in the same grooves where they were originally, so the structure will not lose strength. The plywood on which the seat is attached is usually screwed to the frame; in Viennese chairs, glue acts as a retainer.

Knowing all the stages of chair restoration, it is not difficult to create a stylish and unique object with the help of finishing from an unattractive piece of furniture. Simply by painting the chairs in pink, blue, pistachio colors, you can get a bright color accent of the interior in the fusion style.

When updating old chairs, decoupage technique is used. This operation is carried out using glue, varnish and a pattern on a paper basis, it is convenient to use napkins. The paper with the selected pattern is cut or torn into pieces, then with the help of glue these fragments are fixed on the frame and the seat, and after drying, they are varnished. As a result, this piece of furniture is completely transformed and becomes an art object.

In modern interiors, designers often use one or two antique pieces. For this purpose, chairs of antique designs are required. First, they are painted with white paint, then a thin translucent layer of gold, bronze or silver paint is applied to the entire chair or its individual parts, depending on the environment and the decoration of the entire interior. The final stage is a layer of craquelure varnish. It creates small cracks throughout the surface, giving a luxurious touch of antiquity.

These chairs can be finished in the Empire style. The frame, painted in white, is painted with gold paint on the carving, on smooth elements you can copy a suitable pattern with a pencil and paint on this pattern with gold paint. In this case, the seat is covered with a glossy fabric - satin, brocade, velvet.The composition is very effective.

Provence style is popular today. The frame is painted in several different layers. For example, green first, white on top. The top layer is rubbed with a coarse-grained sandpaper so that the green base shines through here and there, then covered with blue, again rubbed with sandpaper. This is followed by a white layer again using sandpaper. This creates a layering effect.

This method is used to artificially age an object, to create the impression of many years of use and a burnt-out color. A light-colored fabric with a floral pattern is suitable for upholstering soft parts. You can also make covers or pillows from this fabric.

At home, the traditional place to sit is a stool. It also needs to be formalized in a new way. To give a national flavor, the patchwork technique has proven itself well. In this case, cuts of fabric that are suitable for design are purchased, and it is better to dispose of the used garments. The fabrics are cut into strips and combined so that the pattern does not merge, and they are pasted over the legs and seat of the stool. Everything is varnished from above.

When choosing a chair design, you should use the entire palette of your imagination or take a closer look at the already existing samples in art catalogs.

• The bright drapery of the old chairs made the boho chairs very stylish and luxurious.
• The kitchen dining group will sparkle with new bright colors after a bold restoration of old chairs

• Delicate mint and beige tones are suitable for shabby chic interiors, especially since the base is really aged by time.

For information on how to restore a chair with your own hands, see the next video.