Dining Chair Update

While in Southern California, my best friend mentioned that she has thought about reupholstering her dining room chairs, but was nervous about it.  That got me going on all the ideas we could do with them.  They were a garage sale purchase by her husband and his roommates back in college that they have been using ever since.  The vinyl seats were ripped in spots and they looked all-around out of date.  So I talked her into tackling them while I was down for the week. 

We went to Lowe's and purchased these materials to accomplish our project:

Rust-o-leum Glossy White Spray Paint
Drop Cloth
Staple Gun and small staples
Course Sand Paper
1 1/4 yards of fabric for seat (JoAnne's)

Overall the project for 6 chairs cost: $83


Step 1:

We unscrewed the seats (pried the first one off, until we realized they were screwed on...oops!), and cut off the vinyl.  I started to take the staples out that held the vinyl in place, and decided that whoever upholsted it, went crazy with the staples, and I didn't want to remove them all.

Step 2:



We used coarse sand paper to scrub away at the years of sticky finish...we even used a putty knife on the top part to scrape some of it off.  These took quite some time since they had lots of "scrollie" spindles.

Step 3:

Next, we cleaned the chairs of any dust in preparation for painting.  The paint we chose was a White Gloss Rust-O-Leum spray paint, and away we went.  This also took some time to make sure we covered everything well.  We did about two coats each, which amounted to about 1 1/2 cans per chair.

Step 4:

In between coats of painting, I worked on stapling the fabric to the chair cushions.  I kneeled on the cushion and pulled the fabric as tight as possible and then...bang! Stapled it.  And guess what...I used just as many staples as the originals had!! haha....had to make it perfect, tight, and smooth.

Step 5:

Last but not least, we took coarse sand paper to the edges of the chair to give them an antiqued look, dusted them off, and re-attached the seat cushion.  Overall, these took a lot of time, but what a change!!  So worth the $83.

Sweet and Simple!