DIY: How to recover a rolling desk chair

Sshh, I have a confession to make. 

It's not really a secret, just being silly. Ok, here is the deal-o. I heard about this site called Examiner.com., where they will pay you to write articles. Since I am in desperate need to quite the rat race, I'll pretty much do anything (except stand on the corner in a mini-skirt) to find ways to help support my family so that I can quit my job. I'd even settle for barely working, lol.

So, I check out the site, apply, and they finally said yes, we'd love to hire you, here's your category. They gave me 3 choices. So, naturally one of them was DIY. I thought that's right up my alley, heeeyy Crafty Allie, Ok, not so funny?

Anyway, they say my category is DIY in the Home and Living section. I am like what??? I am all about DIY, but DIY for home and living, that sounds like it will costs more to make than I'll get paid to write the article.

I am resourceful though! I put on my thinking cap and thought of a few things that I could do that wouldn't cost me a thing. Things for the home, that I wanted to re-do at some point anyway.

So, I decided to re-do my son's chair. But the site was not user friendly, it kept losing my pictures, and then wouldn't load them right, so half of my pictures were being cut off. Then as I am writing the article, they send me an email thanking me for starting the article, and since I am doing a how-to article, oh By the Way we're only going to pay you $2 an article. I was like oh nooo. I had some choice words, but I'll keep them to myself. I instead said, nope, not worth it, goodbye,laptop off, good night.

So now you guys get to see my DIY project. The best part is, I get to write in 1st person, not 3rd like a robot!

Without further ado...

I picked up this chair  from someone's trash. It screamed "SAVE ME FROM THE TRASH MEN!"

Oh trust me it was in a lot worse shape. I added the monkey tape (Gorilla Tape) to cover up the worn parts, but in the end it is worse off then when I got it, because this has been in my son's room. Boys will be boys!

I found this fabric on the $1 clearance rack at Walmart. It is a thick nylon/polyester material.

My son's room is in Army/Camouflage. For $1 a yard, I knew I just had to get it.

I began by taking apart the whole entire chair. I had to use a ratchet on this on because the screws looked like bolts. My husband helped with a few, but most of them I did all by lonesome.

I then took the bottom cushion and laid it onto the fabric and cut around leaving more than enough room to staple it onto the front and on the sides of the backside.

Then with a staple gun, I started stapling the sides to the back of the cushion.

Then I carefully did the corners, which is very tricky. But if it doesn't look right, take out the staple and do it again.

I then repeated it on the backrest cushion. I started stapling at the bottom of the cushion and left more than enough fabric to fold over onto the back of the cushion all the way back down to the bottom again. I didn't want to sew it so I carefully stapled it as close to the sides as possible so it would fall into the crevice and you would barely be able to see the staples. It's not perfect, but I think I will be the only one to really notice the flaw.

I even recovered the arm cushions, remember how hideous they looked?

After I stapled all the fabric on, I used an X-Acto knife to carefully cut out holes around all of the screw parts.

Then put it all back together and whaa-la. Its nicely recovered. My son absolutely loves it.

It feels so comfie now to sit in it. 

Hope this tutorial helped. Pretty please Pin if it did :)

Thanks for tuning in! Until next time...