Updating an Old Oak Chair

Last night I finished working on this piece. It was a very easy job and took about 6 hours. I torn off the old leather seat covering and determine it was the original covering to the chair. My upholstery teacher thought it might be so I was wondering if I should even fix it up. There was another student in class who is an antique dealer told me that the chair was not worth much and it would not matter if I removed the old covering. The old leather seat was torn while trying to remove it so there was no going back at this point. The blog called “New Arts & Crafts Chair” show the chair in its original condition.

After the leather and padding was removed, I cleaned the chair with soap and water and wiped it dry with paper towels and determine that was all it needed. I was lucky the chair looked great and I wanted to keep its patina as is. The old padding was replaced with a ½” polyester padding and staple in place. Then the leather covering was cut to slightly over lap the padding and temporarily tacked in place. Four 1” wide strips were cut about 4” longer for each edge. I marked a center line along the length on the back side of each strip and apply double sided tape down the center line. Next I pressed/folded the both raw edges to the center line forming my taped edging. The tape was used to cover the raw edging on the leather seat covering. I then placed painter tape on all four side of the leather cover and marked out how far and how many tacks were going to be used to hold the leather tape in place. Now I could staple the leather cover down in between the tack placement.

The center of each leather strip was place on each center edge and then tacked into place. I worked each side from the center out placing the tacks ¾” apart. Where the strips meet in the corners, the strips were mitered cut and a tack was place in the center of the cut to hold it in place. Here is the finished chair. I much prefer this to the original.

The total cost to redo this piece was less than $5 since the leather was left over from this other project.