diy dining room furniture makeover: the chairs (a lesson in un-upholstery)

I'm sorry this post has taken so long to get to. To date my first post about the inspiration for this post has had the most views on the blog. That's pretty damn cool. So, here we go. We bought the dining room furniture in 2012…and now it’s 2014 and we are just about done with the project. I never thought about making this project a DIY how-to until now. 


I initially decided to start with the chairs, assuming they would be the most time intensive part of the project and get them out of the way first. I was right, the chairs by far took the most time to complete. But now that everything is done (almost) this project finally seems worth it.
The chairs also had batting and foam to take off (but that was pretty easy). The hardest past was getting all of the staples out of the wood bottoms. That took forever. Several had broken while I was taking off the fabric so I was left with little metal shards. I tried to remember when I had a tetanus shot. We managed to get all of the staples out and then saw how poor of shape the wood was in now. My husband decided to use wood putty to fill in all the holes and reinforce the four corners where the screw attached the legs.

I love the scroll or whatever on the back of these chairs. I HATE the fabric and the color of the wood. I think that I started to take the fabric off before I began looking for new fabric. It took me an entire day off from work to take off the fabric, and I think my husband had to help with the last chair because I was exhausted and my hands were killing me. Five of the chairs had two layers of fabric to take off, a protective plastic and then this ugly fabric. One chairs had four layers. Four. FOUR! 

Once you get down to bare wood you are ready to really get started. First you will need to cut your foam. Scissors kind of, not really work. I purchased an electric knife, you know the kind you use at thanksgiving for turkey…yeah one of those. Have fun, it’s going to look horrible, but the batting will help to smooth everything out. I bought two-inch foam for the chairs. I used spray adhesive to secure the foam to the wood. Then I went nuts with the stapler and the batting. Sorry no picture. As I was getting the batting in place I knew I was going to have a problem with the corners and the weird rounded shape they had. My chairs were now much thicker than where I started. Once you have the foam and batting on you need to start being careful.

Unfortunately for me I picked a pattern for my chairs and one that was made up of lines. I had a hell of a time making sure I cut all the fabric in the right spot so each chair would be identical. After you get your fabric lined up on the chair bottom you will pull as tight as you can and staple in the middle of the top and bottom, leave the sides for now. Once you have the middle of the top and bottom secured you can staple to about once inch from the corner. Next you’ll want to staple the middle of each side and then out until you are an inch or so away from the corner. The next part was hard, at least for me. The corners of these chairs were an absolute bitch. I have no idea how to described what I did, but here is a picture.

Then you know , you’re done. At least with one. Then you have to finish the rest. Sigh.

Celebrate you have completed part one of stage one. Now on to the painting!

next up: diy dining room furniture makeover: the chairs (how to use a paint sprayer)