Dining Chairs Before and After

A couple years ago I bought 6 dining chairs and a china cabinet off Craigslist for $125.00 total (and yeah I know, total slacker here!). I basically got the chairs for free since the china cabinet alone is worth $125.00 so it was a big score. However they all needed a lot of work. I knew I was going to paint and reupholster them before I could use them anywhere so they stayed in storage or hidden throughout the house over time. They were hideous!

See what I mean? I did like how they were tall, the cushions were in great shape (very sturdy), and they were in the “french” realm which was right up my alley. I knew I wanted them white and we had a paint sprayer that went with our compressor so we thought we would give that a try….

Yeah, this disaster happened. We did these back in November and it was cold. Don’t know if it was the weather, if we didn’t do the water to paint ratio right, or if we didn’t get the pressure of the spray gun correct, but it just didn’t work. We ended up sanding them down and using good ole spray paint. We used an outdoor primer and a simple gloss white spray paint by Rustoleum.

We started with them bottoms up.

And then spray painted them upright when the bottoms were dry.

They immediately looked MUCH better. Then it was off to do the cushions.

Once we removed that hideous yellow fabric, we checked the cushions and they were in great condition, only yellowed, which happens over time anyways.

I chose this greek geometric fabric.

The cushions needed batting to go around them. It helped cover the yellowing of the foam and it smoothed out the edges. I chose this batting because it was great quality but still very soft.

Next I cut all the fabric and batting and proceeded to the staple the fabric to the chairs. We used the following chose this staple gun for the job.

And these staples.

These worked pretty well, but sometimes the staples wouldn’t go in all the way. We didn’t know if it was the wood or the pressure, but tweaking here and there did the trick.

First we laid the cushion on the batting.

 Pulled the batting taught and stapled all around.

Then we trimmed off the excess.

This is what it looked like flipped over. Nice and new! We then did the same thing with the fabric. Since it had a pattern it was a little more tricky, but I kept the pattern even with all the chairs by centering the fabric where I wanted it first.

Then I just counted the squares and made sure I cut them the same for the rest.

The rest of the process was the same. We flipped it over and stapled it down.

We cut off the excess fabric.

And viola! A beautiful new cushion that I just LOVE!

Then we simply screwed them back on the chairs and were done. Now I want to say that this process was easy, but it was not. This was very time consuming. First with removing the cushions, removing the fabric from the cushions, sanding, painting, re-painting (we tried 3 methods total, ugh!), the weather being too cold, finding the right staples and staple gun, figuring out the right pressure to use for the staple gun….. and on and on I can go. BUT I will say, everyone loves the chairs when they see them and the money we saved on them was HUGE!

Other great fabrics for something like this would be:

The best part about them is that they are all $11 per yard or less!

 

Hope you like the final product!

Here is another angle…

Let me know what you think!