ReFurbishing A ‘90s Desk Chair into a Statement Chair

Last summer I found a basic office chair on the side of the road. I think it’s dated around the early 2000s or late 90s and has an interesting chrome body…but the rest is definitely lacking some life. As soon as I saw it on the side of the road, I had a plan to make it cuter… a no sew reupholster hack with two throw pillows. Keep reading to see how I did it or watch the video below to come along on the process with me!

Before

As you can see, this chair needed a facelift…

Inspiration

I was mainly inspired by the iconic "Maralunga" Chair, a design by Vico Magistretti dating back to 1973. The resurgence of the "slouchy" style in contemporary design, particularly within the realm of mid-century modern aesthetics, gave me some ideas for this chair.

The Plan

This got me thinking… to mock the "Maralunga" Chair, could I just use pillows instead of actually reupholstering it?

disassemble

The first thing I did was take apart the chair so that I could cover the seat and backing.

Removing Fabric

Next, I removed the pre-existing upholstery fabric. I also decided to keep the foam padding on the seat for extra cushion.

Assembly

The seat and back are 17" wide, so I needed something close to that. Ideally I would have found some second hand pillows for this but after a few tries at the thrift store and some actual stores, I had to end up getting some online.

I decided to go with this set of matching shams - they are 18 x 18 " for just under 16$ which was nice for keeping the costs down, and I thought a gold/mustard with a velvety texture would look great against the chrome.

To make the seat, I simply covered the wood seat piece with the pillow and adding some extra filling over the foam that was already there to really fill out the pillow.

As for the backrest, the vision was to have the illusion of another pillow folded across the back, so it needed to be half the size of the pillow. To do this, I cut down the back rest wood piece so that I would only fill half the pillow. Then, I covered it with the same filling, put it into the pillow and filled the other half with all filling so it could fold in half.