My Adventures in Upholstery: Adding Nail Head Detail and Final Reveal

Published October 18, 2015 | By Danielle Serar

Its finally here. All my hard work, sweat, swears and tears…lots of tears…has finally paid off! And I LOVE my chair! The last task to share was both the easiest and the hardest all in one. Nail heads.

You would think that nail heads should be easy. After all, its position, hit and admire. And for the most part this is true. The tricky part came with keeping them aligned and the dreaded plygrip. (I hate plygrip. Checkout this post for why.) Besides the nail heads, if you are taking this project on, you’ll need a soft head mallet or a soft tipped hammer, hot glue and a hot glue gun. I didn’t have a small enough soft mallet so I took my upholstery hammer and added a felt button to the end. It was a cheap fix for a small inconvenience. Then it was a matter of tacking the nail heads in along the edge of the chair. As I said, it was pretty easy until I hit the plygrip.

The metal of the plygrip kept getting in the way so every time I went to hammer in the nail head, the nail portion bent. There were a few not so lady like words, a few “I give ups” and lots of tears. (Imagine being so close to the finish line and tripping inches away from the end. That was me and these nail heads.) Here is where the hot glue and gun comes in. I took the nail heads that had bent nails, removed them (well those that hadn’t already lost their nails), add a dot of hot glue to the back and stuck it in place. Best. Idea. Ever.

This chair was definitely a learning project, definitely hard work and definitely worth every moment of the process. Here it is. All finished. It started as a beat up, stained and broken $5 yard sale find and now is one of my favorite pieces of furniture, not to mention one of my favorite projects ever.