Anyone in the San Francisco area (penninsula prefered) have experience and know of a good place to get dinning room chairs upholstered? I am in the end stages of making 10 dinning room chairs and am fairly confident I do not want to do the upholstery for them myself.
thanks
Jeff
Replies
Upholstering chairs as a DIY job can be a PITA (literally and figuratively - lol). A quick tour through the Yellow Pages or Craigslist should give you numerous upholstery shops to choose from.
Depending on where you are in the chair making process, it may be worthwhile to take a chair to them. They may be able to offer ideas for seat construction and attachment that would make the process easier (and cheaper).
Jeff , Will the chairs be upholstered or are the cushions loose or drop in type ?
dusty
they will have a slip seat. The "platform" will be 1/2 plywood which I envision will be covered with a high density foam then the upholstery fabric.
Anyone who does cushions and pillows can cover those seats , it dosen't have to be done by an upholsterer . There are a few different ways of covering them. Sometimes we make a piping or welt running around the top edge and you can have a piping on the bottom as well or not at all .
Using high quality foam is important the cheap foam will quickly break down.
Have you chosen fabric yet ?
regards dusty
My wife has been going to fabric and furniture stores trying to find one she likes... I got to select the wood and the design, she gets to choose the fabric. Anything to watch out for? sounds like you have done some upholstery.
thanks for your comments
Jeff ,
My wife is the genius when it comes to fabric she is a 25 year professional Drapery seamstress and does pillows , cushions , chair seats , banquets and bolsters and such on a custom basis .
Fabric has what they call a " rub or double rub " rating like 40,000 or something that helps determine the potential wear factor. Also and very important is that you choose an upholstery weight fabric as opposed to perhaps a drapery fabric , they are not all the same .
As well as high quality foam a little dacron batting over the top of the foam will allow the fabric to lay smooth .
Make sure your wife chooses from the correct collection to begin to look through , so she dosent fall in love with the wrong fabric .
good luck dusty
Edited 12/12/2008 10:08 am ET by oldusty
My biggest suggestion for fabric selection is to get something that is water cleanable (cleaning code "W," "SW," or "WS"). Most of the synthetic fibers are this. Avoid "S" (solvent, or dry cleaning) as it is both difficult to obtain materials or service for this, plus S cleaners do not remove the most common stains (foods and beverages) for dining chairs.I clean upholstery with a specialty in "spot cleaning" tough stains. I would further suggest avoiding rayon chenille as any contact with water will damage it. Also 100% cottons are generally not colorfast to water or water-based cleaning.Or as one of my customers once said, "I don't know what prompted me to buy silk dining chair fabric when I have grandkids." Silk is usually only vacuum cleaned (code "X").
RJ's Upholstery and Fabric is a good place to get your fabric. They also can do the covering job if you want.
San Carlos, CA 94070
(650) 591-0220
thanks, have you used them?
Does anyone have any idea what I can expect to pay to have a slip seat "cushioned" and upholstered?
Jeff
Around here, runs $40-50 per chair plus materials. This does not include boxing or welt strips, just a simple slip seat.
Funny, I was going to recommend a shop in San Carlos as well... must be something about that city, lot's of upholsterers.
Old World Interiors
1023 E San Carlos Ave
San Carlos, CA
(650) 592-4200
I had leather seat and back cushions for a couple of Morris chairs I made done here. The old guy is quality, through and through. Not cheap but definitely worth it for something you plan on having for a very long time.
Jeff..
Very long ago.. I made a couch.. I thought it was really cool.. I tried to have it upholstered by a Pro. He just laughed at me. BUT.. a very ice person that told me what was wrong! I fixed it to HIS wants.. Not un-reasonable suggestions...
He said he could do a nice job on the first... but if I brought it back to do again he would not take the job.. I did what he said and it was re-upholstered several times...
My wife was happy.. All that counted!
Solid plywood with poly on top will probably be uncomfortable. That's really not how good chairs are made. If you go on Roy Underhill's web site, you'll find a show with David Salisbury from Colonial Williamsburg. David has made many hundreds of chairs. He shows step by step how to upholster a slip seat. He uses horse hair, which I think makes the process harder.
I think you and your guests will be happier with a real frame seat, a thin layer of good quality foam and some good batting. I used cotton batting for my last upholstery job. Be sure to do the real upholstery with cotton muslin. Don't use the "show cloth" for the upholstery. The show cloth should just be a cover.
Assuming you spent some time and effort making these chairs, I'd encourage you not to cut corners with the slip seats. People will decide whether you are a good craftsman or not the instant they sit down.
Adam
Adam
I was basing my design on a FWW article by Michael Fortune issue # 163. http://www.taunton.com/finewoodworking/pages/w00147.asp
In that article Fortune describes how to make a "comfortable, low profile" seat and uses a plywood platform and various densities of high quality foam. He says this seat is very comfortable and long lasting. So I am curious why you think it will not be a good approach. I have spent a lot of time building these 10 chairs and don't want to use a sub-standard or uncomfortable seat. Any opinions and help are most welcome!
With all due respect to Michael Fortune, I don't think his approach is the best one. There are two issues. One is the shape of the seat. The other is it's cushion density.The tradiional upholstery for a seat like this involves a narrow wooden frame, open in the center, with fabric webbing stretched across the opening in two directions. You pull these webs as tight as possible, typically using a tool called a bear claw. But the webs stretch when you sit, which is what you want. Comfort involves reducing the pressure points on the "sit bones". You can do this by cutting away the seat where the sit bones are. A racing bicycle seat is a good example and we all know how comfortable they are. But a better approach is just to reduce pressure under the thighs and on the bones at the base of your pelvis and spread out the pressure everywhere else. Foam does this. But if the seat shape begins flat, you don't really get even pressure across your seat, even with foam. (there's a difference between pressure and contact) What you really want is something shaped like your back side. Think about how Windsor chair seats are shaped or the steel seats on old fashioned tractors. I believe the webbing approximates this shape better than a flat piece of ply wood would. I don't think a few grooves cut with a router will compare. The plywood seat just isn't going to stretch and may only deform a tiny bit. I've sat in chairs like that in IKEA and they really aren't that comfortable. And IKEA often forms the seats a little. In my house, dining chairs are used throughout the living area for occasional seating (just as it was in the 18th c). So I want them comfortable. I think a lot of americans have dining rooms that see very little use. Americans also eat very fast and then leave the dining room to go watch football (I think we just don't like talking to each other, especially in mixed company). So manufacturers have responded to these customers' needs by providing fancy, uncomfortable furniture. The american customer doesn't seem to care. The problem with webbing is that it stretches permanently and the seat becomes saggy. There is elastic webbing available which may be one solution. Another solution is to use steel webbing. I've used all of the above. The steel webbing lasts a long time and is easy to install.When it comes to the cushion, I think having multiple densities can be a good idea and again, that is fairly traditional. 18th c seats may have been a combination of straw and horse hair (which is springy like dacron batting) or horse hair and feathers. I think some were just horse hair. Same idea. Again, what you want is to spread out the load. Polyester foam does a good job of that.Lastly, I think you want your top layer to be smooth. Batting does a nice job of that. I like cotton batting because it isn't so hot, but it compresses and moves around over time. Batting also smooths out the corners of the foam. That's important because the upholstery "show cloth" will wear on any sharp corner (even foam).My advice is to just do this job yourself. It's really not difficult. The materials can get expensive. You may need to buy whole rolls of batting and webbing etc that your local upholsterer has in stock. But if you do it yourself you can mock-up different designs. Try it Fortune's way and see how you like it.Last big job I did I bought an air stapler, which really makes this easy. But I've since learned to handle my tack hammer. I think the hammer is more fun. These hammers have one magnetic face. You put the tack on there and just tap it in with one hit. You don't drive it home. This allows you to pull it easier and make adjustments, which I think is an advantage for newby upholsterers like us. FWIW, 18th c upholstery was very rarely sewn. Everything was done with tacks. Sometimes steel/iron tacks were used to decorate a surface, set in fret work type patterns for instance. Obviously brass tacks were used as well. So this really is something you can do with a few simple tools, no sewing machine etc. AdamP.S. Sorry to write so much. I guess I just feel the devil is in the details. Guys sometimes skip over the details, then complain that FWW isn't challenging them. I find even simple jobs like this one really fascinating. I want to do as good a job on this as I try to do on anything else I do. I may not have the right answers here, so I encourage you to investigate this issue further. I think it's worth your while. I don't know if you saw my ladder back, but that was a good example of what can happen to you. I did a beautiful job building an ugly, uncomfortable chair.
Edited 12/16/2008 6:12 pm ET by AdamCherubini
Hi Adam ,
That's funny about how our usually dinning room chairs are so uncomfortable , I was taught it was so your company didn't out stay their welcome .
While it is so that the frames were used for seats instead of wood planks , I wonder if they had plywood would they have used it ?
The horse hair and other paddings used did indeed make for comfort but the proper thickness and grade of Urethane foam and Dacron batting to help the fabric look and lay smooth and to soften the flatness of the foam may produce a more consistent result . We re do them for clients as well as create other cushions .
I think the intention of the maker is paramount on the method used , what does he want to emulate or will he make a modern chair with a vintage style seat frame ? What will he want to end up with ?
In many years of repair and restoration work I have re rushed many seats and some of the really old ones had straw stuffed in a padding between the layers of Rush weave. I of course have found many horse hair upholstered pieces as you describe as well .
regards from Oregon dusty
I second webbing over an open frame. http://www.rockler.com/product.cfm?page=810
JeffS,We change the fabric on our dining chairs about every five years. A couple of times now I've played with the idea of swapping the wood frame/horse hair construction for ply and foam. I don't know what the horse hair cost but I was surprised at the cost of High Quality foam (ouch). Anyhow, the key difference to me between the two alternatives is the horse hair is cooler to sit on. It's easier to dissipate the heat through the fabric/horse hair.
This forum post is now archived. Commenting has been disabled