Punk Guide: Repair Your Chair

[aetherograph]

Punk Stuff: Repair Furniture

So your office chair is sinking no matter what you do, or the wheels snapped off, or the cushion went flat, or your cat tore of the upholstery?

All of that is fixable--IF you have furniture made of wood. The way you can tell is flip the chair over. Do you see some staples or some plastic? If you see staples, there is wood under there and you CAN repair this creature. If you only see plastic, I'm sorry but that chair was manufactured as trash first and a chair second.

Tools for tearing off the old upholstery and putting new upholstery on:

• Staple gun
• Staple remover for staple gun staples (this is a specific tool you can't use an office staple remover for this, it isn't strong enough)
• Pliers
• Staples for the staple gun
• Fabric scissors
• Utility Knife

Materials:

• Fabric (heavy)

Step one: Flip the chair over, find the staples and start removing them. Do not fuss about the weird tissue-like stuff covering the bottom of the chair. That's fine to rip, it WILL rip, it's fine don't worry about it. This will be TEDIOUS. You may need to use pliers for some of the difficult bastards.

Now, if you WANT to make this a little easier, you can disassemble the entire chair--take the bolts that hold the chair lever and lift and rolly legs off, take off the bolts that hold the backrest on, and now you can work on the chair seat (or backrest) separately. But remember to take photos of the chair before removing the bolts, so you know how to put it back together. And keep track of which bolts go where, put them in like a section plate or something.

Step two: remove the fabric. At this stage you can also replace the foam. This will require 1. foam and possibly 2. a tool called a Hot Knife. You can also use 3. batting if you want to be Fancy.

Step three: lay the old fabric out on the new fabric and trace it on the wrong wide of the new fabric with a marker. Sure you could use tailor's chair or smn but I can SEE a marker a lot better.

Step four: Cut that new fabric shape out.

Step Five: Put the new fabric on the chair and staple one (1) staple in the middle of EACH side. Not a corner, a SIDE. It's best to pick the backmost side, the one that bumps into the backrest cushion, as your first staple, then the frontmost, then the left and right.

Step six: Start stapling around the edge, pulling the fabric snug but not crushing the cushion foam too tight. It will pucker on the bottom part, that's ok.

Step Seven: If you have disassembled the chair, re-assemble it.

Boom, done.

If you need to replace the hydraulic lift, that's a bit complicated but a new lift is like $20! There's also a special set of tools you'll need to remove the old lift, they're under $20 and you can help your friends or donate the kit to a maker space or repair OTHER chairs. And you just take the chair off the old lift, pull it off the rolly legs, and put the new one in, and set the chair on it, and bam, done. Lifts just sit there! They don't need bolts or nothin.

If you need to replace the rolly legs bc one snapped off, you can do that too and replacement legs are like $20. You'll have to just flip the chair over and pull off the old legs, which may require some help or a mallet. The new set of legs may also come with instructions! I have never done this one, but I have put many chairs together and the rolly legs aren't really bolted onto the lift at all, just stay together from gravity really.

If you need to replace the wheels, THAT is a bitch. That is a bitch. Pulling the old wheels OFF is the hard part. Putting the new wheels on is p easy though, and they make wheels that won't rip up carpet or wood floor too! Some of them even light up!

If you want to repair a SOFA or something, that can be a lil complicated and involve SPRINGS. Springs are a sign of Good Quality Furniture though, as is a wooden frame.

Anything without a wooden frame is designed to be trash. If it has a wooden frame, though, you can repair the hell out of it. New springs are cheap, so is twine, so is foam and batting; really, the most expensive part is the upholstery fabric, and caster wheels if you're getting caster wheels. You can put legs and/or wheels on most anything, btw.

And you know, repairing your own furniture is a lot of fun! You can customise it, you can get sth cheap as hell and fix it up! It's not a garage craft that requires a helluva lot of strength or ability either. I do get tired and need help with some of these steps, and space them out; but my joints is real fuckened and I can still fuck with an office chair or repair a sofa spring.

Just remember: wood and especially soft things like fabric or foam can harbor bedbugs & fleas. Do not shop on the curb unless you have a bug oven big enough to cook them dead!

 ETA 2 Feb 2025:

By the way, sources of wood for repair:

• Pallets, these are usually free but they're a lot of labour to take apart and make into useable wood. I know of a guy who makes everything from pallets though, have a look at his channel, he shows exactly how much work it is to make a pallet into useable wood.
• Old furniture, particularly TABLE TOPS, are a great source of good-quality large pieces! I learned that from one of my furniture guys today.

And yeah, watch Furniture Guys on youtube to observe how much work things are, what tools are needed, etc. I've learned a lot. I tend toward channels that have minimal or zero talking, where all the explaining happens in captions or not at all.

AT Restoration is another of my fav furniture guys, but I gotta give props to the ORIGINAL Furniture Guys, Ed Feldman and Joe L'Erario! I grew up watching their show on TLC back before there was any kind of HG Network or anything like that, when home improvement shows were just Bob Vila and Home Time and then these comedic characters, Joe and Ed. They're the only furniture guys I want talking in their videos.