Pros do most nailing, tacking, or stapling of upholstery to furniture frames with pneumatic guns. For the do-it-yourselfer, regular staplers will often not be able to drive the staples in far enough, especially in hardwood frames. Lifting the rear of your stapler off the wood and pushing down very hard on the head will drive the staple with the maximum force, and may get the job done, if you are lucky.
However, the best bet if you want to do a little refurbishing yourself is to buy yourself a magnetic tack hammer and use good old-fashioned "spit nails". These are called spit nails because the old timers would load up their mouths with these very sharp tacks and then ?spit? one forward, pick it out of their lips with the magnetic end of the hammer, set it into the wood with one blow, roll the hammer over to the other end, and drive the tack in. All of this was designed to leave the other hand free to hold the cloth in place. Much less hazardous to your mouth (both the sharp tacks and the swinging hammer can be nasty) is to scatter the tacks out on the table and seek out the head of one at a time with the magnetic head of the hammer.