Scavenger Chic

Repair Lumpy or Sagging Ikea Henriksdal Dining Chair

• By Joan
• August 12, 2021
• 6 Comments

Repair Lumpy or Sagging Ikea Henriksdal  Chair

Today we’re repairing a set of very uncomfortable IKEA Henriksdal Dining Chairs.  These chairs were once owned by my mama, who passed them on to my oldest son Keith and his wife. Time has passed and these chairs were now slated for the Thrift store.

Why, what happened?  They looked good to me.  The covers were in decent shape and, you know I’m all about using what you’ve got. 

He said the chairs were uncomfortable. How bad could they really be?  So I took a test drive and oh man, they were terrible!  You could feel the wood sides of the chair with your tush, they were so bad.  OK, get rid of them.

Keith really wasn’t waiting for my permission to get rid of the chairs, he had already bought new and that was the end of that.  Or so I thought.

It turns out before the chairs made it to the thrift store he offered them to my youngest son Nathan who happily accepted the donation.   They did warn him that the chairs would probably need some work.

You may recall the last IKEA Henriksdal chairs I refurbished for my middle son.  The webbing on the underside of those chairs had totally stretched out.

The stretched out webbing left the chairs with saggy bottoms.  Those chairs were made almost exactly as these chairs but without removeable covers.  

For those chairs I removed all the staples, replaced the seat webbing and repadded.

We could have attacked these chairs in the exact same manner but I wanted to try a different approach.  One that didn’t involve removing quite so many staples.  This time we’re attacking the chairs from the bottom.

I say “we” because youngest son wanted to give it a try with his first upholstery  and I was perfectly happy to boss him around.  😀

Cut off all the webbing on the underside of the chair as close to the sides as possible.

Remove all the pieces of foam that have disintegrated or torn. 

We ended up saving the two square pieces of foam to reuse.

Go ahead and cut off the remaining webbing but leave the white fabric intact.

Cut a pattern from scrap paper that fits exactly inside the bottom opening of the chair angling the corners to fit around the legs of the chair.

My measurements,…Top edge  13″ wide, bottom, 16 3/4 wide with a height of 16″. Your measurements may vary.

Transfer that pattern to a 1/2″ piece of plywood.  One 2 ft x 4 ft piece of plywood was enough wood for 3 chairs. Hopefully you have scrap wood available.

Cut with a jigsaw and test your fit.  Do any trim cuts until it fits perfectly in the bottom of your chair.

First layer of padding on the new chair is a piece of quilt batting.  Use your paper pattern and extend the sides about 3 inches.

Tuck the  quilt batting flaps up into the sides of your chair making it as smooth as possible.

Now, we could have gone out and bought upholstery foam but it’s kind of expensive.  What we did have was a 2 1/2″ piece of memory foam  from a full size bed that was just taking up space in my garage. Memory foam condenses more than your typical upholstery foam so we are using 3 layers of the foam.

For the first layer of foam, using the same pattern we used for the wood base, we’re marking on the foam  about an inch wider than the pattern on all sides.  This will go on top of the wood side pieces of the chair.  Cut with scissors.

Trim off the corner of the foam just to make a nice rounded edge.

Place the trimmed corner side of the foam next to the quilt batting.

Cut 2 more pieces of the foam the same size as your pattern.

Piece 2 of the foam stuck inside the chair.

Piece 3 of the foam stuck inside the chair.  Don’t worry it condenses.

Before we sealed this puppy up we stuck the 2 additional square pieces of foam that were saved from the original chair padding between layer 1 and 2 of the foam padding.

If you still feel chair edges you can use additional batting to fill in any nooks and crannies, other than that you’re ready to seal this guy up.

Predrill the plywood in the corners to prevent splitting.

Attach the base with screws.  Two per corner should do the trick.

This is the before and after from the bottom of the chair.

It really doesn’t matter how the bottom of the chair looks, the most important thing is no lumps, no sagging and it’s super cushy for the tushy.

It’s hard to tell the difference from the picture because they are both white but the tushy knows.  The chair on the left, lumpy.  On the right, smooooooth.

The Henriksdal fabric chair comes with removeable covers that are machine washable and they cleaned up very nicely.  IKEA no longer sells these chairs but you can still get replacement slipcovers at Amazon.

Pretty sure this is my last Henriksdal makeover.  I don’t think any other family members have this chair, but you never know.

Until next time, stay inspired.

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