You too can pimp your chair...

It seems I'm not the only one with an ugly glider in need of a little face lift. I don't have time to write a full blown tutorial on the process, but I will give you a few tips. OK?

First you need one ugly chair.

Check.

If your behind has the impression of springs after sitting in your ugly chair (like mine did) you may need to replace the cheap thin floppy foam. I bought a piece of 3 inch foam for the seat and 2 inch foam for the back.

Remove the old foam from the cover (just rip the seam open) and trace around it on the new foam.

The best tool for cutting foam is an electric carving knife. A very sharp serrated knife should work too.
After you cut your new cushions, make a pattern for the new covers by tracing around them- either on paper or directly onto the back of your fabric. Trace about 1/2 inch away from the cushion for seam allowances. For the seat I made a gusseted cover with a zipper in the back. The back cover consists of the front piece and back piece with piping between, no gusset and instead of a zipper, I hand stitched the opening closed after the foam was inserted. Since I didn't use a gusset for the back cushion, added an inch all the way around when cutting out the fabric instead of 1/2 inch.

I covered the foam with a layer of polyester quilt batting to soften the edges before putting the covers on.

The arms had pads that snapped into place in the seat and along the side of the chair. (In the before photo, I see that I didn't have the arm pads snapped in place along the sides- they shouldn't look all loose and floppy like that) My original plan was to just cover the existing pads, with a rectangle of fabric- much like a pillow case with the end stitched closed,  but how to keep them in place was the problem. My first attempt was to attach tabs with button holes to one end, sew buttons on the other end, wrap the pad around the arm of the chair and join it with the buttons.  I'm sure that doesn't make a bit of sense to you. I have no idea how to describe it so that it is clear. It really doesn't matter though, because that method didn't work. I grabbed my scissors and my much used, much loved stapler and improvised.

First I stapled the pad to the bottom of the seat.

Then I pulled it up and over the arm, estimated how much would be needed to tuck under the arm and cut off the rest, pad and all- then stapled it to the underside of the arm.

You can see in the above photo where the original pad would have snapped in place on the frame of the chair.

Another view. Not perfect, but a solution I can live with.

The ottoman was simple, it's just covered with fabric that is pulled taught and stapled to the underside.

Bayleigh and I are very happy with our pimped-out craigslist glider.

Comments

[Baba]

Great make-over! I have so many chairs to do, I'm dizzy just thinking about it.

[Julie]

That looks fabulous! Very impressive!

[Ravenhill]

I truly love this! Great job to turn a normal and nice chair into something extremely pretty, cool and fabulous!
~Emily

[Kay]

I must say that is very impressive. Now I need to get the turkey juices off my use-once-a-year-at-Thanksgiving carving knife...

[Sasha Libby]

Love the pimped chair! Oh, and those baby pics are AMAZING! Practice, you say? I say genius.

[lovespinkandpearls]

wow that looks ggggreat!

[raajia]

Great job

thank you for taking the time to write it and

Thank you for the inspiration on this one

[Magen]

I do not know how to sew and was wondering if you would be willing (for a fee of course!) to recover mine if I sent them to you. It's the exact same chair, without the ottoman.

[Melissa]

Oh, I am SO going to do this to my glider. It looks just as bad or worse than yours. Now to just pick out fabric...I'm posting a link back to this post on my blog.

www.perryjayne.blogspot.com

[Melissa McCoy]

I'm really bad at guessing how much fabric I'll need. What is your best guess on how much yardage this took?

[Tiffany]

I have this same ugly glider (prior to your re-do, of course)! We got it 5 years ago when I was pregnant and needed a rocker for the nursery. It was a cheapy from Wal-Mart and it's held up like a cheapy from Wal-Mart too! I hid it down in the basement as soon as I could and have been debating getting rid of it b/c the fabric and pads are SO HORRIBLE! Now I know what to do with it and it will be fabulous! Thanks!

[Nicole@Bugaboos]

It looks Awesome!! I love that fabric!! Love it!

[Camille]

I live in Colorado Springs. I would love to do this to my glider but I don't know how to sew anything besides a SIMPLE pillowcase. Gussets, bias strips, etc are all foreign words to me. Any of you ladies live nearby and want to recover my chair for me? :) :)

[Corinne]

I may be an idiot, but where do you buy the foam? I need a new back cushion!