Recover Cedar Hope Chest

This is the hope chest that I received for my 16th birthday. I’m afraid the 1980’s blue shows my age. The cover on it was stained and the fabric was getting very thin. After looking at how it was put together, we decided we could recover it.
Here’s how we did it.

On the inside of the lid, unscrew the screws that hold the top seat part onto the chest.

Remove the staples that hold the fabric onto the wood. There was also some sort of adhesive used, so we had to pull the fabric off. At this point, examine the old cover carefully to see how it is folded and stapled onto the wood.

Pin the old cover onto the new fabric with both right sides facing down. Make sure you smooth it to get all of the wrinkles out. I got this fabric in the decorator’s fabric section during a sale at our local fabric store.

Cut out the new fabric, using the old cover as a pattern.

Place the foam and board from chest onto the fabric.

Staple the fabric onto the board. This is the tricky part. It is easier if you can remember how the old cover was folded and stapled! We had to keep looking at the old cover to figure this out.

Be sure you have the fabric stretched evenly as you staple.

Once we had it all stapled, we turned it over to make sure it looked right, then stapled even more. Since we weren’t using any adhesive, we used a lot of staples.

Then we used the hammer to make sure all of the staples were flush.

Screw the top back onto the chest.

Here’s the finished hope chest. From “Hunny, would you please help me.” to “Thank you!”, it only took an hour and a half.