Make Over!!

My dining room chairs were in need of a drastic make over.  This dining room set is over 30 years old and belong to my parents before I inherited it when I got married.  The fabric is the original fabric so it was pretty threadbare.  However moving the table and chairs into the conservatory of our home in England the sun had basically damaged the fabric and the chairs cushions completely.  My friend offered to help me re upholster the fabric recently and spent an entire day helping me, while our children played.

Ok concentrate on the chair and not the messy floor in the background:).  See the sun damaged top panel and the kids have picked at or ripped the seat cushions beyond repair

First thing we had to do was take the chairs apart and remove the fabric and cushions, and with any project you run into some problems like finding out the top panel was practically super glued on to the wood was our first huddle.  But with team work we manage to remove the fabric panel without breaking the chair, WHEW!

The original seat cushion was beyond repair so I bought new seat cushions and we used the wooden seat panel as our pattern to cut new cushions.

I used my electric knife to cut thru the foam.

Next we had to measure out how much fabric we needed and cut out chair patterns.  I relied very heavily on my friend for this as I am not a seamstress by any means.  I think I bought enough fabric to recover all the chairs but we wanted to be sure to be fugal in our cutting of the fabric.

The back cushion was bit trickier as it was glue on and I couldn't find foam suitable to use to replace it with so we decided to just work with what we have as it wasn't in quite as bad of condition as the seat panel.

My finished chair, doesn't it look so much better.  We were able to get 3 chairs done that day!!!

I am so happy with my "New" chairs.  I am busily working on getting the other 5 chairs stripped down so they too can be redone!  I have to say having never done anything like this before and I found this project easier than I thought it would be.  Instead of needing to buy a whole new dining room set when we return to the states, which is what I told my husband we would have to do, we will be able to continue to use this one and I will no longer be embarrassed by the condition of the cushions.:)