How To Recover A Seat With Recycled Denim Jeans

You can recover a seat with recycled denim jeans so don’t throw out your old denim! The stool is a statement piece now.

Today I show you how I painted a vintage vanity stool and recovered the seat with recycled denim jeans….my old fat jeans. 

The project is easy. To recover a seat (any padded fabric seat) just take out a few screws to remove the seat from the furniture and staple new fabric to the seat. Anyone can do this. Trust me.

This project is not about re-upholstering like you would do to sofas and overstuffed chairs. That technique is a lot more involved and not for me.

The newly paint stool is no Plain Jane. For a touch of whimsy I added a strip of colorful fabric to the denim seat cover. The denim pocket,  jean seams, and pretty fabric give the seat a unique look.

The photo above shows what I started with. Miss Sofi and I were in Warehouse 41 Vintage Market where I have a booth when I spotted the stool.

The price was $10 and I passed on it the first time. I was in the shop a few days later and the stool was still there. It had potential so I brought it home with me.

The makeover was really simple although I did have to make a few changes when I started placing the denim and fabric on the seat.

First thing to do with chairs, benches, stools, etc. that have fabric seats is to remove the seats from the chair or whatever. All you have to do is turn the piece upside down and remove the screws holding the seat in place.

You don’t need any special tools. A plain old screwdriver works just fine for this job.

I had a plan that involved rose pink paint and an old floral sheet. That plan never even got off the drawing board. Glad there was a couple of days in between deciding on the plan and actually doing the makeover.

I painted the stool off-white and the photo above shows how the stool looks with one coat of paint.

The paint is Beyond Paint and as you can see from the photo of the jar it is an all-in-one paint. It’s great for painting cabinets too. I brushed on two coats of paint.

Next we need to do some distressing. I distressed the white paint by hand using 100 grit sandpaper. It’s easy just to rub the sandpaper over all the raised details.

It’s better not to wait too long after the paint dries to do the distressing. That paint is hard to get off after it cures a few days.

Now  we come to the coolest part of the project….re-covering the seat. The fabric and padding seemed to be in good shape so I just gave the seat a good cleaning with Simple Green and let it dry before moving on.

When we painted our master bedroom and cleaned out the closets and junk areas I saved the jeans that were too big for me. I didn’t have any projects in mind for the denim but knew something would come up and this is it.

The pretty fabric is a curtain panel. I don’t remember where I bought the panel because I’ve had it for a long time. It came from the junk store or a thrift store for sure.

The plan was to cut up one side of the jean legs on both pairs of pants and work with the seams, pockets, and different shades of denim. A piece of the curtain panel was going to lay across the short side of the stool between two pieces of denim.

I tore the strip from the panel instead of cutting it and wanted to show the torn frayed edges on the seat cover.

This is how I laid out the jeans and fabric getting ready to staple the stuff to the seat.

I started stapling the denim piece with the pocket to one end of the stool. While working with the piece I noticed that the pocket was folding over the edge of the seat.

I ripped out staples and started over. The second time around I liked the layout. The reason the denim pocket is so close to the edge of the seat is because of the way the jeans are made. I didn’t want to remove the pocket and sew or glue it to the denim in another spot.

When stapling the fabric to the backside of the seat it’s always best to work one side then pull the opposite side tight and staple it. Then work on the end and the corners in that order. I have a cover a seat tutorial here.

Sometimes the staples don’t go all the way into the wood and I just hammer them down.

Working the corners is always trying. Getting all the crease and folds out is a must. Then there is always a wad of fabric at the corner that needs to be trimmed.

The material should lay nice and flat after it’s stapled down and trimmed. If you have big lumps of fabric there will be a noticeable gap between the seat and the stool when you put them back together.

You can see in the photo above how the first denim piece looks on the seat, nice and tight.

At this point I was still going with the plan to lay the fabric panel straight across the short side of the seat parallel to the two denim pieces. But when I was trying to place the design like I wanted it and get everything straight it didn’t look right.

I started pulling out staples again. To remove the staples I used a straight tip screwdriver and a pair of pliers.

The new plan was to lay the fabric strip at an angle and you can see how I did that by looking at the stapled strip on the back of the seat.

The photo above shows how the fabric strip is angled on the front of the seat. I placed the design in a way that wouldn’t cut off the blue leaves or only show part of them.

I also decided to fold under the edge where I tore the strip and not show the frayed edge. The left side of the strip in the photo will lay under the second denim piece and I didn’t fold under the torn edge.

I stapled the second denim piece to the seat and then trimmed all of the excess fabric being sure not to get to close to the staples in case the fabric frays or starts to come apart.

You guys know how the legs of jeans narrow as you get closer to the hem. Well, that meant it was really hard for me to get those two leg seams to look nice and straight but I did a pretty good job. The denim piece on the left is all one piece from one jean leg.

The three pieces I used to cover the seat are not connected in any way to each other. They should stay in place just fine though. The pieces are all pulled taut and I used a whole bunch of staples.

The only thing left to do is screw the seat to the wood stool. To make the job easier be sure and trim all of the fabric away from the screw holes in the seat. Sometimes the holes get covered up with the new fabric.

If the fabric covers the screw holes as you are turning  the screws to tighten them they twist the fabric around the screw and that might mess up your newly covered seat.

I have to say I’m patting myself on the back. This project was a lot of fun. It had me thinking throughout the whole seat recovering part trying to work out all the pieces.

It’s kind-of boring doing the same old thing. Yes, just using one pretty piece of fabric to recover this seat would have looked nice and been a lot easier….but would it have been as cool?? 

So….what do you guys think of the recycled denim jeans stool seat? Is it a hit or a miss? This piece would be perfect in a teenage girl’s room. I have more denim so give me some project ideas!

I was looking back at some of my older videos and thought you guys might like this one. It shows how to spray paint a bunch of small home decor pieces at one time then how I distress each of the small home decor items. Watch the video below….

As always thanks for being here and have a great day, Kathy