A New Look For Old Chairs...

Warning! You are about to see pictures of our dining room chairs. They are totally super-gross and junk. Scroll down only if you wish to subject yourself to the torture that is seeing them.

You've been Warned!









Now that we got that out of the way, let's talk about these chairs. These were part of a dining set we bought from Walmart when we first moved in together. Given their origin, they aren't exactly high quality, so you may be wondering why we are even bothering with re-upholstering them. The short answer is that we're cheap. With so many big projects looming over the pocketbook, a furniture upgrade is a ways off. So new material is our quick, cheap fix.

Color me NOT impressed...

 Gross, huh? Well, if you were a chair, I'd like to see how you look after surviving two toddlers over 8 years. However, now that the kids are older and spills are less frequent, we can't fall back on the, "Sorry, we have kids," excuse anymore. We had a sales rep over to the house the other day and a bit of panic ran through me when I realized the only place for us all to sit was at the dining room table, so the madness has to come to an end.

On a shopping trip in Joplin the other day, we were wandering around the mall and came across the new (to us) Jo-Ann store. After looking around and becoming thoroughly confused by the sheer number of materials to choose from, we decided on a pattern we liked that was also on sale. Then we booked it back home and got to work.

Not being trained upholstery folk, which I imagine to be a lot like carny folk but better smelling, we just started cutting and stapling. In hindsight, I will say that my original plan is what we should have stuck with. That plan was to dismantle the old cushions and use them as patterns. However, this plan was abandoned after about 5 minutes of trying to get staples out and only getting two removed. In the long run, it probably worked out better anyway. The two yards of material that I thought would be overkill was just barely enough to get the job done and far more material was used for the old ones.

The other lesson we learned is that corners are tricky. We probably should have watched a YouTube video or something before going at this project, but it just seemed so straight forward, you cut, you pull, you staple. If only. First, you have to fold in the corner material just right, otherwise it makes folds instead of just stretching over the corner. Then, we ran into the issue of having more material bunched up than our staple gun (or rather the size of staples loaded in the gun) could handle. To fix that, we had to cut away some material and re-stretch it over the corner. Not exactly hard labor, but definitely a three handed job. That's why I was glad that Tracy jumped in on this project to help.

The last step, which I regrettably don't have pictures of, was Scotchgarding. Only the future version of myself knows whether or not it will actually work, but if it even works the slightest bit, it will have been worth it. A lot of the stains on the old material probably could have been avoided with some Scotchgard, but who knows. So, after two coats of Scotchgard and some time to dry, they were ready to go back on the frames. And that brings me to our third lesson, don't cover up your holes with fabric. This kind of goes back to our issue with the corners. Using too much material leads to taking up more space on the back, which in this case meant we stretched the fabric farther than it was meant to cover. Namely, over the screw holes that anchor it to the chair. Oh well, another life lesson learned I suppose. With the last screw back in place, they were finally finished. A couple hours of frustration, but so worth the piece of mind of not having nasty chairs anymore. Be sure to check out the Before and After pic below, and as always, thanks for reading.