If ever you have tried using an ordinary hand stapler with upholstery, then next time I strongly recommend you buy an upholstery staple gun to use instead. Even on a small job having to press home the staples with your hand can very quickly leave your hand bruised and painful for days, whereas using even one of the budget priced upholstery staple guns will save you a lot of effort, aches and pains. If you’re about set off on a DIY project to re-upholster some furniture having the right tools to do the job will help you to make a good job of it, as well as getting it done as efficiently as possible.

Tools for Re-upholstering Furniture

You will find all of the following useful at some point during the job

- mallet
- screwdrivers
- pliers
- a sharp workmen’s cutting knife
- good strong and heavy pair of scissors
- long bladed knife
- a variety of pins and needles including half-circle and sack needles
- a staple remover
- upholstery staple gun.

Regarding the upholstery staple gun, do buy the best quality one that you can reasonably afford. If you are just doing a small one-off job, then perhaps the price you pay doesn’t matter too much. However, if you intend doing several re-upholstery projects then buying a heavy duty one will pay dividends.

Also, look for upholstery staple guns that can take several different sizes of staples; as again some jobs will require longer, shorter or even broader staples to be used.

Tips for Re-upholstering a Chair

If you’ve never re-upholstered a chair before, here are some tips to get you started. First of all, make the first chair you work on a fairly simple one in terms of its design and how easily you can access the parts you want to replace. So, a drop-in type of chair, such as a dining chair, will be ideal.

Turn the chair upside down and remove the backing material, then lift the seat out of the frame. Using the staple puller remove the existing staples holding the seat cover fabric, if you’re washing the fabric put it on one side, or if you’re replacing the fabric then simply discard it.

If the seat cover has piping around it you’ll need to take a little extra care as the piping is made by stitching the fabric over cord and stapling the excess to the seat. So, you might encounter two levels of staples to remove.

When you’re removing the fabric do take note of how it was all arranged and how the seams and corners were done. You’ll probably need to replicate these pretty carefully to get the new/re-furbished cover to look as good a fit as the old one.

Fitting the new or re-furbished cover is the reverse operation of its removal. If the chair you’re re-upholstering has webbing then you’ll need to use the staple remover to strip the webbing off the frame.

After replacing any broken strands or fixing the underlying springs re-fit the webbing as tautly as possible and using your staple gun here should make this job a lot easier as you can pull on it with one hand and use the staple gun in the other. You should find this to be a lot easier than trying to pull on the webbing, hold tacks in place and strike them with a hammer.