Ideas on recovering Dining room chair bottoms

[baileyuph]

The bottom of these chairs were built with a removable bottom board with a hole cut out.  Over the cut out the factory put a stretch membrane over the cut out.  Another way to look at this is the factory installed a sheet of stretch material over the cut out hole.

The chairs might be 20 plus years old and customer wants the bottoms recovered.  The upholstery is simple in that the one piece of material covers the seat board and a cord is added around the edge.

The main issue is the customer says when he sits on the chair, he feels the edge of the cutout and not comfortable.  He says a very firm seat is fine, he just doesn't want to feel the cutout which the membrane covers.


My question here is to give me ideas on the type of covering might be an option over the the hole;   

How to prepare the seat board so the customer won't feel the hole cut and covered by  the membrane covers?

Several options:  weave jute webbing across the hole or weave strong rubber webbing
across the hole?  I don't want to cut a new board without the cutout.............

Or any other suggestions?

I told the customer if firm wouldn't bother him, the weave could be jute webbing, he said firm would be fine.

Your ideas would be appreciated.  Paul or Dennis and others may have confronted this same problem - thanks in advance.

Doyle

[MinUph]

Doyle we run into this all the time. The bladder as we call it is really crap. I use a nylon webbing (jute is fine) to replace it with. The seat is a bit firmer but much more supportive. I have also used elastic webbing when the customer wants a softer feel. Notice the sides of the bladder are usually not stapled. Unknown reasoning for the factory but that how it seems to be on 90 % of them.