Welcome to Legal Tender Farm

Welcome to Legal Tender Farm

Thursday, September 20, 2012

Dining Chair Redo

It's time to reupholster my dining room chairs; probably past time.

First of all, let me show you my dining room in my last house. 

This dining room I loved.  I know that pink ceilings are not everyone's cup of tea.  It certainly wasn't our realtor's cup of tea and he lobbied to have the whole room painted beige.  He finally won when the water heater broke and ruined some walls.  I gave him permission to have the painter paint the dining room "while he was at it".  Blah.

Anyway, I had the chairs upholstered in a pink tweed-like material.


  I paid to have it done instead of doing it myself, like I normally would, because I wanted the seats to be sort of rebuilt with new padding, because these are the most uncomfortable chairs on the planet.  Pretty, but uncomfortable.  And, you know how people won't leave the dining table after a dinner party.  I can hardly drag them away from the table and into the living room.  I can't imagine why anyone would want to sit there any longer than necessary.  So...I paid to have it done right.  Did they do it right?  No.  There was no extra padding and since the fabric covered everything, I didn't know what was under there, until now.

So, there is no pink in this farm house.  The pink must go.  While I was at Hobby Lobby buying the iron scrolly things for the doors, I saw that fabric was on sale and there was some that I really liked.  Instead of my usual waffling and agonizing, I just bought it.  Just like that.  Bought it.

Now I have this terrible, excruciating job.


Pulling the gazillion staples out to get the old fabric off.  As I was pulling it off, I saw that the old fabric was still on there and is attached with tiny little tack nails.

Man, the crummy upholsterer must have wanted to make sure that the pink fabric never came off - ever.  There are two rows of staples, most of them about a half an inch apart.  Ugh.  It may be a very long while before I get one chair done,  much less all six.    
This may be what my dining chairs look like for the coming year.



3 comments:

Meagan Claire said...

Once you get the old fabric off, the new stuff goes on pretty quickly. Especially just plain chair bottoms. You could get some foam at Hobby Lobby and use a coupon. I've seen rolls of webbing and packages of those dust covers for the bottoms at Joann's.

Mosaics said...

Yeah, it's the tearing off that is awful. I'm having to dig each staple out with a screwdriver, then pull it the rest of the way with pliers. Some of them are so deep that I can't get the screwdriver under them. Bah.

Unknown said...

We hunted and hunted for the kind of foam we were being advised to use for our dining room chairs.... until we said 'forget it!' And we ordered the pkg of 2 foam seat pads at Walmart's website for the 'site to store' delivery to save on shipping. They didn't have any in stock. Using that cushion with a piece of pure cotton quilt batting was perfect. It doesn't seem like it will provide that much padding, in thought. But we've been surprised. And the compliments have been many. I think you'll be so pleased with yourself, by the time you reach finishing that last chair!!