Deconstruction of a Dining Room Chair

Kevin Kennedy began training with European masters as a young lad of 17. For 42 years, he has been an Upholsterer for countless Boston area designers and leading art restorers, including consulting with and heading the upholstery department at Trefler and Sons, in Newton, MA. Commissioned to upholster Napoleon’s chair, and guest writer to the Upholstery Journal. His most successful venture yet, his studio in Arlington, Ma , Upholstery on Broadway, has been open since 2010.

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Everybody welcome back so I have here a dining room chair that’s been manufactured and we’re gonna be reupholstering these down in chess and I’m looking at this I know that the seat not going to be a problem but I’m wondering about the back and I say that because manufacturers sometimes come up

With very clever ways of speeding up the upholstery process and I suspect that they did something on the back to sped them up that I’ve not seen before so let’s explore together let’s first take these that’s going with the easy part with the slip seat I’m pretty sure it’s

Probably just screw it on like most of the bottle let’s take the seat off for us and I’m screwed I see one you know and I don’t have my electric my electric drill out so part of me I’m gonna take so we got a car I took two three four

Five altogether I got to be too bad so that’s easy you know we’ve we’ve shown you slip seats before past videos and slip seats don’t be fooled by slip seats not as easy as they look and then thing that makes them hard which I think I’ve mentioned before is that they move on

You you know a slip seat is not stationary when you’re a pulse on it so that that can be challenging to also something that’s moving on but there are techniques maybe what we’ll do is we’ll do a video in the future about flip seats and slow the process down and show

You the easy ways of doing that so that’s the slip seed has a base wall which will do doing the same so I look yeah some some of these a wood-paneled and they’re upholstered and then they’re and they’re put in those two pins up at

The top after you a pulse to them and there are two screws down here that hold it in place that’s one method usually I see that that it’s on higher-end furniture when they do that but when I put my screwdriver in here I this is wood so I don’t think there’s anything

In there so that’s that’s suspicious but that’s good enough again so let’s try since we’re reupholstering these let’s try to pull this piping off to see what happens as you can see on the back it has a desired recessed outside back and you could see the wood here it’s kind of

A design flaw rather than have a separate panel like the front so now let’s figure out how this is done let’s start at the bottom so we don’t do too much damages try to pull this piping away this is weird how this is on here

So let me just let me just fill this you know that I don’t feel any wood I don’t even feel any cardboard in there this is strange like I said I think ah I think I know what they did this is really interesting so what they did here folks

And I am NOT gonna do it the same way because they actually sew the piping onto the fabric and then they drove staples in this way to hold the cover on that’s after they put the outside back on so that’s not a really desired way of doing it because look how loose this

Cover is and they got away with it I think because of the fabric color they were losing a light color they would have never gotten away with this process this is just a like I said I suspected it was a way of just speeding up so

We’re gonna show you and I’m gonna show you a different way of doing this now I don’t have the fabric for this yet I’m just gonna go through the I’m just gonna describe what I’m gonna do so let’s take this off for us let’s take a lot of it

Off I bet if I get this going it’s another thing if once you get something going you get leverage on your see that how I’m using I wanted to go over a little tool usage with you and this is my side cutters that I’m using and of

Course we’re trying to preserve the void because there’s a high gloss and we don’t want to be using that as leverage so that’s why I’m starting at the bottom so I’m taking a really smart approach to this I want to try to preserve the wood as much as I can

Not one ding am I gonna put in this and I’ll show you how I’m gonna do it so I’m gonna these are really heavy staples that they use but look the more I take off the more leverage I’m gonna get so right now what I’m going to do is I’m

Going to hold a chair I’m going to pull up look at that and and I’m gonna give you a little tip to YouTube it depends sometimes it depends on the direction that you are pulling sometimes it pulls easier it’s it has to do with the fabric what the weave of the fabric

Not put much pressure on at all now I want to avoid using my side cutters this way right so sometimes I might even bring the chair to me and firm and get it from you know tight get it tight and then pull it careful when you do this

Because you don’t want to slip and hit yourself but you can always put it down on the ground too but it’s a little tough in this way see because the K so then we or the fabric so I I won’t I’m not gonna attack that yet let’s try to attack the other side

See if the other side comes up is easy sure a little tight little harder a little bit harder than that the right side but if it goes so it ripped easier left to right and right to left because of the weave of the fabric and you have

To kind of test that for each fabric is different isn’t that interesting so we are not let me just show you that they have this I’ve never seen this before I’m never seeing this this method before but I don’t like it because you can’t stretch the fabric properly so we’re

Gonna we’re not gonna do it this way so I wanted to explain after I take this back off so to usage is important this back has to come off so what they’ve done that this is a stretch of material that they use which I don’t like the way

They did that it’s not tight you might even put a piece of webbing in there but I’m not sure we have enough room sometimes it depends on the room today it’s highly recommended to get at least one piece of webbing and yeah so let’s see if let’s see if one side rips a

Easier than the other side here I’m gonna definitely I mean I don’t suggest if you could use your fabric to pull like I am without repping the friend I mean if you notice we’re not pulling him hold on the front not just pulling it and putting stress on the frame I definitely would

Advise that and pull the staples up as you pull on the fabric rather than one staple at a time now when I’m teaching a beginner I will have them take one staple out at a time edge practice especially around finished wood you know a little practice in the beginning to

Get tool usage down you know maybe with an awl and and a mallet and then your side cutters you could see how much more time that would take then this way so we’re trying to speed you up especially for those who have been upholstering now and you want you want to learn some

Tricks and there’s look how easy that ripped that way if I went the other way I would I would have been struggling so there it is it’s all off by the way that was the outside back so what they did was they put the outside back on first

Faced out this way they put a stretcher on another piece of fabric over that then they put their foam on and then they had that piece that they had already sewn piping to and they stapled it sideways which we’re not going to do

So so what I’m gonna do is I guess I can demonstrate on what they want some of that fabric so we’re gonna take the new fabric the outside back which is the only thing that probably the only thing we’re going to do the bay did and that’s

Outside fabric the outside back is faced out and it’s gonna get folded over like so up at the top first and stapled and then pulled down to the bottom stapled and then fold it up and then staple one side down and then the other side down

It’s a curve so you’re not going to stretch it too far side to side so that gets put up there first then the stretch of fabric goes on same manner okay now you really have to be careful when you’re using your power to Liam staple gun that you don’t skim this way

It’s very common for people to do that you really have to have a sense before your shoot of where that edge is so ideally you want your gun turned into the into the frame of the chair as a way of avoiding skimming out the way that’s

Kind of a pain when that happens because it’s really hard to repair so be careful of that so I think for support purposes I’m gonna get a piece of webbing over the stretch but I’m not gonna fold it like we traditionally do like so because that’s gonna create too much bulk and I

Don’t want too much bulk coming out so what I’m gonna do is we’re gonna we’re gonna put it on we’re gonna staple this on like so and we’re gonna hand stretch it to the bottom like so and and cut it cut it down here and we don’t have to

Fold it you don’t want to fold it okay so that the webbing gets on there and then we’re gonna put the chair down I would probably be working down like so and then we they’re gonna the client wants us to reuse the phone so and put

The phone which is okay in most cases it’s okay I like to as a as a good recycler if there’s nothing wrong with the phone why not it’s polyurethane based product especially if it’s a better high grade phone second it’s not going to disintegrate so for the sake of the

Landfill’s we don’t want to produce more foam to put into this and we don’t want to throw this away if week if we don’t have to I would encourage all you guys out there to try to recycle as much as you can as much as you can so we’re

Gonna we are known as probably the best recycle is out there I keep saying that I want it I want to stress that point so at this point we’ll probably takes a little cotton or Dacron and put it over the over the foam and then what we’re

Gonna do instead of what they did you know we’re not gonna we’re not going to sew that we’re gonna we’re gonna have a separate piece of fabric cut three inches bigger than the surface area here and it’s kind of hard to show you with this let’s just say and what we’re gonna

Do is we could start with it folded like so to neaten it up so you don’t have to trim it and then stretched up and stapled and then stapled on the sides and then after it’s stapled on the sides we’re going to run out piping we’re going to have a

Separate piece of piping and we’re going to run it along this along the edges to hide the staple work it maybe in a future video will we’ll do one of these chairs from start to finish okay so thanks a lot we’ll see you next time and also folks we’re gonna be offering more

Of a complete videos from A to Z like on this particular chair we’re going to show you the whole process and in the past we’ve been giving you tips on certain jumping in on projects at a half done or just starting a project like this one or showing how to cut fabric

Showing how to do double piping I mean we’ve got a lot of videos focus really necessarily hasn’t been on from A to Z we do have an ottoman YouTube video that we encourage you to look at that we did do that but that’s very basic upholstery but in the moving forward kind of

Excited we might even be setting up studio space to make it look a little better enhanced and so you don’t see the bass with the background and things like that so hopefully we’re moving ahead we’re going to we’re going to really concentrate now more on video production

Especially since I have my son who’s an ASA at this behind the camera so thanks a lot and we’ll see you next time