Friday 22 February 2013

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.:)

8 comments:

  1. They came out lovely! I also like how your floor picked up itself during the process! :-) You have a very nice friend to help you with that. Usually, people just tell me, "Oh, you can do that yourself, you know." I've never had anyone actually then offer to come over and show me how. Just be sure to warn the movers that if they damage those chairs, you're going to go banshee on them!

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  2. The chair looks wonderful! Great job. I have taken on this type of project in the past, and I must say you did a much better job than I did. What a great way to reuse a great piece of furniture. Love the carving scroll work on the back of the chair.

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  3. We have similar chairs with similar problems. Can I send them to you?....... Thanks for the info on how to fix them.

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  4. That is really impressive. Lovely chairs.

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  5. You did a great job on this chair. It looks beautiful. We had the same problem a few years ago we redid our dining room chairs. When we moved we gave them to our daughter. The chairs got ruined again; so my dear daughter did them over. Funny that now she has them looking good by her hard work; she is taking better care of them.
    Blessings!

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  6. Amazing!!
    The chairs look so much better afterwards...and you made it look so simple...so you looking for a second job? (smile)

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  7. Hi, I am new to NOBH:)I love you blog...it screams inspiration and happiness of which I need in my life right now.

    I love your chair redesign. I did the same thing to an old dining set my hubby and I have. With kids, I am finding I need to update it every couple of years. Love the fabric:)

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  8. What a great job! My chairs have seen better days as well...we were not thinking about kids when we bought all of our white and cream furniture :-)

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