Mom and I tackled a project at her house a few weeks ago. The foot stools in her sunroom had seen better days. Her three smallest grandchildren frequently jump off of them play on them and they were pretty dirty. The light pink fabric wasn’t helping the situation either.
Mom bought 2 yards of a mixed blue fabric to recover them and we got to work. She probably only needed one yard. To remove the base from the cushion I only had to unscrew 4 screws. (It’s so much easier with an electric screw driver like this (affiliate) one.)
I also had a lot of help!
I removed the black fabric covering the bottom so I could re-use it. Pulling the staples out to get it off is the worst part of the whole project. If I do much more upholstery work I’m going to order one of (affiliate) these babies. For this project, I just used a flat head screw driver to get them out.
I left the old fabric on the cushion and used it as a guide to cut the new fabric.
I added around 4 inches to each side of the cushion to allow for wrapping around the edges. If your cushion is thicker, you will need to allow more fabric.
I started by putting a couple of staples in two sides using a staple gun. Make sure you pull the fabric as tight as you can before you staple the second side. It needs to be tight!
I did the same on the other sides but left the corners for last. I gradually folded the corners down and stapled to make them look as neat as possible. This part gets easier with practice.
Finally, I stapled the black cover piece I salvaged from the original back onto the bottom.
I re-attached the base of the stool with the same screws. It looks so much better now!
Here’s a picture of the twins!
And here’s a before and after. This quick project made such a big improvement on these footstools and they should be good to go for another ten years in the sunroom!
