Hello and Happy New Year to you! It’s 2014 and I’ve already written my first to do list and on my list I wrote recover dining chairs (FINALLY).  I blogged about how we had bought a mid century dining table set on ebay way back in November and I’ve been wanting to do it ever since.

I’ve continued to search for the right fabric to recover the chairs.  I initially wanted to use a family friendly vinyl and I bought some really cheap black stuff (£2.99 x M) I spotted in Dunelm Mill as a trial run.  Unfortunately, when I got the vinyl home I really hated the shiny look and this made me feel very uneasy about spending much more than a few pounds on fabric to cover the seats.  However, they really did need recovering urgently as, in addition to being threadbare, they were now covered in sticky Nye hand prints of varying colours and textures.

Over Christmas as we were tidying I found some wood patterned fabric I bought from Ikea to use in our old kitchen.  It dawned on me that I had enough fabric to cover the four chairs and I thought it would look kitchy used on these old chairs.  Especially when we get the lovely Marimekko wallpaper up and try to create a mid century look.

 Here’s my How To Re-cover Dining Chairs Tutorial.

What You Need:
Fabric (Enough to cover the cushion covers and preferably in a thick and durable fabric.)
Fabric Scissors
Staple Gun
Staples
Hammer

Instructions:
1.Remove the seat pad from the chair (ours lifted off easily, you may have to unscrew it or lever it out.)
2. Lay out your fabric, upside down, and place your seat pad on top.
3. Turn the pad over to check you are happy with how the pattern is aligned. (Think about whether you want the pattern centered for example)
4. If you are happy with how the pattern looks, cut out your fabric to fit the seat pad. I gave myself quite a bit of extra fabric on each side to allow for mistakes.
5. Use the staple gun to attach fabric to the chair. Start by securing the centre of each side, pulling the fabric as tight as you can .
6. Work your way along the sides from the center, leaving the corners until last.
7. Pleat the corners by pulling the corner of the fabric diagonally towards to center of the seat base. 
8.  Next fold one side of the corner down so that the edge runs diagonal, then fold the other side down and staple.
9. Once all corners are complete, trim off any excess material and hammer down any staples that haven’t gone into the seat base completely.
10. Return seat pad to chair and secure.
11. (optional) You may want to use some kind of stain guard to protect the fabric.  (I haven’t done this yet but I’m interested to see if it helps keep the material clean.)

Ta Da! What do you think?