Morning Room Dining Chairs Makeover

Morning Room Dining Chairs Makeover

Hello - Happy September!

I have been very busy "staging" my home to put it on the market some time this year. I have a need for pieces of furniture around the house, so instead of purchasing new pieces, why not make them- or make them over?

My realtor says I need 4 chairs for the farmhouse table I made last year,  you know, to add to the ends of the table, and opposite side of the bench. He suggested preferably short ones as to not block the nice view to our backyard.

Off and on I have been looking for chairs that would be easy to make over. And came across these beauties at a yard sale in town. They were 4 dollars each...so, 16 dollars for all 4 chairs. Yes!

The middle one was missing a seat, no problem for this girl...Il make my own. 

The color was an ugly white, the cushion fabric, covered in dirt, dust and mold.

I purchased a canvas drop cloth - like the ones at HD or Lowes as fabric. I have worked with this material before, see these projects Canvas Drop cloth cushion and pillows. 

Here is how I made them over... really it was VERY easy.

First: I cleaned each chair with a soapy rag.

The cushions came un attached so I did not even have to remove them. ( Even better!)

Then, I ripped off the old fabric from the tops of the cushions by pulling the staples off with with a scraper tool.

Next. I put the chairs out in the yard and spray painted each of them with Rustoleum Ultra Cover 2x Black satin finish spray paint. 

I used 4 total cans, one per chair. 

Satin sheen. 

I added nails to the bottom of each leg, then raised them
up off of the grass by using scrap wood. 

Spraying, spraying.

For Cushions:

**For the chair that did not have a cushion... I took one of the cushion wood pieces and traced it carefully onto a piece of 3/4 inch plywood I already had. I cut it out using a jig-saw. I had to sand the edges a little as to not rib the fabric. 

Then, I cut a piece of high density foam I had left over from another project- the foam was appx 1 inch thick. Sorry, I have no pics of this step. 

Then, I used my hot glue gun- (no pics of this step either) and glued the new foam cushion to the new piece of wood. This is not going to hold the foam perfectly it's really just to "steady" the foam. 

***For the 3 other chairs that had a cushion I just reused the wood and cushion, but not the original fabric. The "innards" were in pretty good shape. 

Meanwhile - back in the house, I used the original fabric as a pattern and cut out from the canvas I purchased, I cut 4 identical pieces. Note, I added appx .5 inches around the original pattern because I wanted to make sure that I had plenty of fabric to pull over the cushion.  

  

 Then I used ironed the fabric with steam. 

Then, I pulled tight around the plywood stapling every couple of inches. 

 More pulling and stapling with the staple gun....

Lookin- good. Trim any extraordinarily long pieces of fabric, but most of it won't been seen. 

After the chair frames had completely dried, I sprayed them with poly- acrylic in a satin finish. Then allowed to dry overnight. 

Then, I flipped the chair over and lined up the cushion to the chair to attach it. They matched up perfectly. Sometimes, screws pull the fabric when being attached and you have to cut a small groove in the fabric for the screw to come through clean -but since this fabric is VERY sturdy canvas - it was not an issue, I screwed right through the fabric.  

 Then, I attached the cushions back to the chairs using 1 inch phillips head screws through the original holes on the frame. 

Done!

 Hope you like this little tutorial! 

Drop me a line. 

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Kristen