Ginger Bisquite

Lifestyle, DIY, Family & Food

Tag Archives: dining room

How To Re-cover Dining Chairs

January 3, 2014 by Jenni Clutten | 22 Comments

recovering dining chairsHello 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.

DIY.chair.collage

 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.)

How To Recover Dining Chairs Continue Reading →

Mid Century Dining Room – Stylish Sunday

November 17, 2013 by Jenni Clutten | 4 Comments

So now the nursery is finished and off my radar I have moved my attentions towards the kitchen / dining room and Neil and I have decided that we would like to go for a mid century style.  Our new house has a lovely big kitchen dining room that is furnished in a inoffensive neutral way.  It was a shame to move out of a house where we have designed every inch of the kitchen but this one is far bigger and feels somehow more grown up.  Of course there are things I would love to change but at the moment we are trying to personalise it decoratively rather than splashing out on new tiles, kitchen doors.

Here is the a picture of the kitchen as it was on the day we got the keys.  I failed to take a picture of the other side of the kitchen (on the right hand side of the picture).  It is purely an empty space with a cream wall and grey floor tiles just the same at the kitchen.

Kitchen Before

We started thinking about how we wanted the room to look when we realised that our previous kitchen table and chairs were too big (and getting a bit rickety) i.e we lost a screw from one of the legs…  When I eventually gave in to the idea of a new table and chairs we immediately agreed that we would love a mid century dining room.  I was quite surprised that we agreed so quickly on the style we would like, especially as it is dramatically different from our previous country kitchen look.  The good thing is, I knew that we would be able to get a lovely solid table and chairs for a reasonable price either on Ebay or at an auction house.

Mid Century Dining Room

In the end we won a lovely extendable teak table and 4 chairs on Ebay for less than £30 and I used the wonderful Shiply courier service to get them here. All together it came in under £100 which I don’t think is too bad for a set of solid and stylish table and chairs.  When I put my moodboard together on Polyvore I tried to find something similar to show the kind of look we were going for and the table alone is over £1000!  So after we got the table we found some Marimekko kippis wallpaper on ebay for £30 and I’ve designed everything around that for now.  We’re still deciding on the colours but I think I good lick of bright white paint will be a good starting point and a marked improvement on the lovely shade of cream we’re currently living with.

Mid Century Dining

The first job we have to do is to recover the cushions on the dining chairs as they are far from Nye proof.  I am planning to cover them in a child proof vinyl, but still on the search for something that compliments the wallpaper.  So far these geometric triangles are my favourite but I haven’t committed to it just yet.  There are loads of tutorials for recovering dining chairs with vinyl online.  I’ve pinned lots for inspiration on my Board as well as lots of other nick nacks and gorgeous style inspiration.

What do you think of the look so far?  Got any dining room renovation plans of your own?