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April 14, 2014

Dining Room Chairs Before & After

I figured that it'd be a great start to the week to start things off with an amazing and colorful furniture makeover!!

Because those are always my favorites.

If you're wanting a HUGE makeover and haven't seen it yet, head over to check out my dining room transformation.
But don't forget to come back here to check these amazing chairs out.
Because it all goes together :) 

One thing before starting the dining room makeover that I absolutely knew I wanted was mismatched chairs.
Not necessarily mismatched colors, but I wanted a couple different types of chairs that all went together. 

I had to wait a while but finally I had enough to complete my set of six :) 


The wooden ones on the left were from my grandma who was getting rid of them. 
Then the ones are the right were given to me when I first moved into the house.
Gorgeous, sturdy chairs but not my style with the dark wood & winery upholstery.

But I had four of those suckers :) 


So first things first,
they needed a facelift.
I unscrewed all the cushion from the chairs and ended up finding some amazing colorful fabric for them.
(This was about three years ago when I redid them, and the fabric has held up wonderfully) 


Here's the quick & dirty on on how I reupholster chair cushions.
First things first, lay your cushions upside down on your fabric. 
Use the cushion as your guide to cut the piece you need.

Make sure you pull the fabric around and over the cushion to see how much you need on the sides as you cut. 
You'll be pulling the fabric super tight as you reupholster, but you still need plenty of fabric to work with. 


Once your fabric is cut, then...
(follow the numbered pictures below) 
1. Start on one side of your cushion and pull your fabric to the back. The first side isn't super important to pull tight but the other sides, you'll be pulling it tightly as you staple to get nice, taut fabric across the top of the cushion. 

2. Staple as you go around. Be generous and don't be scared of putting them in!
I use a regular hand-held staple gun and put extra staples in each of my corners.

3. For corner, I fold the fabric under to make a triangle and staple one side and then overlap the other and staple that on top of my other triangle.
This makes a nice fold on each edge.

Tips for rounded & curved cushions, just make sure you pull TIGHT. If you're too loose with the fabric, it won't look right on those curves. Pull, pull and pull some more. 


Before re-attaching my cushions, I gave all my chairs several coats of "Ebbtide" by Sherwin Williams. 
Love love love this color. 
It matches my living room walls and compliments it nicely from my dining room. 

It took about three coats and I HATE hand-painting chairs but I stuck through it and it was so worth it!!


After the paint dried, I lightly distressed around the edges and legs of the chairs.
I knew if I left them perfect, I'd constantly be worried about them getting dinged up. 
And we have two kids so they were going to be well loved :) 
I love that distressing lets those natural dings just blend right in and look perfect. 


I loved how the caning turned out once they were painted!!!
A lot of the caning was very worn and faded so a coat of paint made it liven right up! 


And then they were ready for the cushions!!
I reattached them and just admired all the gorgeous colors together!!

I figured darker fabric would handle mealtime a little better and it's held up so well the past three years. 
It cleans up easily and every now and then, I scotch-guard them for a little extra protection. 


My plain wooden chairs also got a fresh coat of Ebbtide.
They took forevverr with all those slats but I'm so happy with how they turned out and I forget about all the hard work after seeing how pretty they are!!!


Don't both styles of chairs look so perfect together? 

And of course, the amazing Before & After shot: 


These chairs were definitely a labor of love but they make me smile every time I walk into the room.
Which definitely makes all those hand-aching and back-aching moments of painting worth it!!!

What do you think?
Do you like the mismatched chair look??


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1 comment:

  1. Wow! That chair's transformation is gorgeous. I love the blue coat and the rad prints. They're a very nice combination. You did an amazing job with that one, as with all your projects. How I wish I have your magical powers of restoring things to an even more beautiful state. Thanks so much for sharing!

    Bob Ward @ Allure Treatments

    ReplyDelete

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