Today Emily and I upcycled my old office chair. Originally fake leather, the poor chair had seen better days. It was so sorry looking it lived covered in a throw.

Today in the typical ADHD fashion at 3pm in the afternoon I got fed up with the mess it made dropping peeling fake leather topping. I tore it apart!

What’s Needed to upcycle an old office chair?

Well not much really. For ours Which was brought 5-6 years ago from Staples. here’s what we needed:

  • Screw driver
  • Allen key
  • Scissors
  • Fabric
  • Staple gun

Taking it apart!

  1. I started with taking off the arm pieces. These on mine were held on by 2 screws in each arm.
  2. Then I took off the wheel mechanism which was held on with 4 Allen screws
  3. Off with the seat piece next
  4. Lastly was the back piece.

Once the chair was in pieces It was time to start removing the old fabric. I left the old fabric on the back and seat. ensuring I instead peeled off the faking fake leather plastic coating.

To remove the fabric is easy. I used the screwdriver on my Leatherman to remove the old staples.

Putting it back together:

The Arm pieces were very simple, Once the old fabric was off I used that as a template for the new then re stapled it on pulling it tight. The new fabric was thicker than the old so had to make a few adjustments but it worked.

Next was the Seat, I carefully removed the bottom backing of both the seat and the chair back as I plan to reuse them.

Then I covered what was left without removing the old fabric. this was a little more fiddly because I didn’t have a template.

We Covered the seat first putting in a few staples down one side pulling tight and then stapling the other side before cutting the excess off.

Wont lie is was sheer good luck what was left covered the back nicely. I had no idea if i had enough material!

Saw it in a pile at Duncan’s mum and nabbed it from a charity shop pile.

All in all I don’t think we did too badly for complete beginners. We really enjoyed the process and love my newly upcycled old office chair. I plan to replace the wheels when I next have some spare funds. Will update when it happens.

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