My grandmother gave Mr. OverKill and I her antique dining room set when we moved into our house. It’s is very beautiful. But, it has been through her family, and my uncle family before it came to us. The chairs have seen their better days and are in desperate need of repair. While trying to find someone who can repair the chairs correctly, I picked up 6 wooden chairs at our local Habitat ReStore for about $30.00.
The seats were a very ugly country pink, covered in plastic. I didn’t recover them immediately because I hoped we would get the antique chairs fixed quickly. But..yeah anywho…I decided to go ahead a recover them to match the colors and curtains in the room.
So, here is the before picture…
Grody, I know! The plastic on this chair had ripped, and every time one of the kiddos spilled something it got trapped under the plastic. Yuck!
OK, onto the instructions.
Start at the bottom
You’re looking for the screws (usually 4) that hold the chair seat onto the chair.
Remove the screws…Oh I forgot to mention…You’re going to need one of these…
It’s called a staple lifter, you can get one here.
This is what the end looks like…
Ok, so once you have the seat off the chair, simply remove all the staples holding the old fabric.
Once you have the fabric removed, you will use it as a pattern for the new seat bottom material.
By the way, these chairs have been around for a while, can you tell???
Once you have your new piece of fabric cut, lay it right side down on your work area. Then, place you seat on top.
Oh, you will also need a heavy duty stapler. Next, you will begin stapling the new fabric onto the seat. Begin with one staple at the middle of each edge of the seat. Make sure to pull the fabric taunt.
Then, continue around the the seat, stapling and making sure the fabric is taunt before each staple.
At the corner, I folded the material up, in sort of a “tuck”, making sure to pull it taunt.
And, here is what you will have when you are finished.
I think they came out rather nicely…
I did two of the chairs in an “accent” fabric that matched the curtains…
They look SO much nicer! I opted not to go with plastic this time around. Instead, I coated them all with Scotch Guard, similar effect, nicer feel.