What’s the coolest thing about doing upholstery work? Aside from the fact that you end up with a new thing to sit on, sometimes the work only involves clever stapling, and no sewing is necessary. Such is the case with [wyldestyle]’s upcycled jeans chair, which started as a bare-wood swivel number from the dump. In fact, this project is almost completely made from recycled materials, except of course for those staples that hold it all together. And really, that heavy-duty stapler is likely the fanciest tool you’d need to make your own.
[wyldestyle] didn’t have any furniture foam, and we think that stuff is too expensive, anyway. So the padding treatment begins with a piece of thick Styrofoam that covers the seat screws and bolts. This is glued in place and trimmed down to match the contours of the chair’s seat and back.
Here’s where things gets tricky: the next step is wrapping over the stiff foam board with a few layers of that foam sheeting stuff that’s often used as packing material. This sheeting needs to be taut, but pull it too tight, and it will rip.
To add some loft to the chair, [wyldestyle] stretched and stapled the stuffing from an old pillow that was headed for the garbage. The final step is strategically scissoring jean scraps to fit, then stretching and stapling those to cover all the layers underneath. We like the way this chair looks, and would probably try to place pockets somewhere useful, like the back of the chair.
It’s a shame that so much denim goes to waste all over the world. There’s often a lot of life left in most of the fabric, which can be repurposed into all kinds of things, including eyeglasses frames using a wicked set of jigs.
