diy oversized chair - part 2

Full disclosure .... I plan to expose all the mistakes I made during the making of the chair. There really isn't a lot of information available on making your own upholstered chair, so there's gonna be mistakes. Quite a few actually. I'm not apposed to meeting a challenge head on - making adjustments as needed and learning as I go.

If you missed Part I of this article, you can find it here.

So my original plan was flawed in several ways. The deck was too high, so we actually broke the poplar out and cut it in half - then we put it back together. I also needed to add boards about an inch above the deck all the way around the chair as the red lines indicate. You'll need those for stapling the foam and fabric.

I had a Robotics meeting at the high school so I had to take off and leave Burke to having the fun of cutting springs and taking pictures. So excuse the messy pictures.

You can buy these springs precut, but in our case - the chair was over sized and pre-

cut springs weren't an option. So I bought a whole roll and cut the pieces ourselves using wire cutters. It worked just fine.

I did research on what type of springs to use and I went with these. They are call sinuous springs or zig zag springs. It was these or coil springs and I went with these for ease of use. They don't need to be tied down.

You get these clips, nail them in.

We spaced them about 3 inches apart.

We used this tool to stretch the spring to each clip.

We cut the springs about an 1 - 1 1/2 inches shorter than the span of the chair.

Make sure you nail everything down really well and file down any rough edges on the springs so they don't cut your fabric.

It really only took a couple of hours and no tying! 

To have the springs all move together when you're up or down, we used these long pieces of wrapped wire and attached them to the springs.

Next we took webbing and added them to the arms to provide reinforcement for the foam padding.

Someone I work with gave me burlap that was left over from his wedding, so I used it to reinforce the deck and outside arms.

Let's breakout the cost so far.

For the springs and webbing, including tools to put these on. $180.00. I have enough now for multiple chairs and the tools I need to put them on.

Mistakes I've made so far:

- miscalculated the height of the chair, so we had to take apart the kick board.

- not installed wood side ways for ease of upholstery.

- spending more on tools I didn't have or having to buy something in bulk because most people don't do this. :)

Total cost so far: $300