Upcycling Dining Room Chairs

Some years ago I bought 10 dining room chairs on EBay from a local restaurant.   I didn’t want or need 10 chairs, but that was the offer.   In fact, in retrospect, it wasn’t a bad buy at all.   A couple of years after this I bought a large pine table from a garden centre!   Quite bizarre, I know, we actually went to buy a Christmas Tree :-).

Anyway, the chairs were not quite the colour I wanted, and as I hesitated on viewing them the seller offered to include 10 chairs covers.  I was persuaded, and bought them all for a very reasonable price.

I was never completely happy though with the russet colour and often on special occasions, or just for a change, we used the swanky covers :-).   However, as I know have more time on my hands, I decided it was time to upcycle them with bright new covers.

I have to admit I was shocked by the price of upholstery fabric.  Even searching on line for sale fabric remnants I found little to fit my budget.   I decided to spend some time looking around the local charity shops and found a pair of curtains in the first one!  I bought them!  :-)

I have watched  many upcycling/ home decorating programmes on TV and along with watching several videos on YouTube I felt reasonably confident that I could tackle this.   The tools used include: Heavy duty staple gun with a new pack of staples, screwdriver, pliers, scissors, and tape measure.

    

I began by removing the seat, it was simply held in place with four screws.  I measured the seat to work out the size of each piece needed to cover one chair.   I had already decided that I would use two contrasting fabrics if there was not enough fabric in the curtains.   I removed one seat from the chair and working on the floor (the best flat surface I had) I laid the fabric square out face down and then the seat on top.   I had picked up that its best to start from the corners, stretching the fabric tight to prevent sagging.

I folded and stapled the corners first as tightly and neatly as I could.   Then pulling the fabric tight around the edges I stapled it to secure it to the seat.

I always try for a professional finish, and that means taking care of the detail.   In my stash of fabrics and spare linens I had some black out fabric and thought this would make good strong backing for the seats.   Again, I measured and cut the fabric and stapled it to the back as neatly as I could.

After giving the chair frame a good clean I reattached the seat.   TaaDah!   I’m really quite pleased with the finished look.   

The fabric is even better than I had imagined, the colours are perfect for a dining room looking out over the garden :-).  And I still have a whole curtain left!