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DIY How To Re-cover A Dining Room Chair Seat {User Submitted}

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After I shared my DIY project: one of my awesome readers submitted a project she worked on with her daughter-in-law. She shared her own DIY on how to recover a dining room chair seat. This project is so simple and can save you hundreds of dollars. Dining room chairs aren’t cheap, so before you toss the spaghetti-stained chairs in your dining room, consider re-covering them first!

I speak from personal experience because my husband has re-covered our chair seats as well. When we found our dining room furniture at a discount warehouse I was thrilled, but when they only had the chairs in white fabric, I knew they wouldn’t last long. A few months after we purchased them I went to Hobby Lobby and found a fabric that matched our newly painted kitchen, so thick plastic, and he covered the chair seats so they would last, which they did!

Here’s Gail’s story:  Like you, I love garage sales and I enjoy taking old discards and turning them into beautiful items. I’m teaching my daughter-in-law how to stretch her dollars now as well, and she and I loved doing this project together and think it turned out really well. 

The week before we found a beautiful black dresser for her bedroom that matched her husband’s “close enough” and we cleaned it up and it looks great in their room. My husband and I live in Gainesville, Florida, but a few years ago we bought a repossessed 3-bedroom home in North Carolina.

It is completely furnished with our garage sale finds at minimal cost and looks fantastic. Recently, My daughter-in-law and I picked up a dining room table and 4 chairs at a garage sale for $20. We sanded out the white paint marks on the top of the table and touched up the scratches with a stain. She then spent $11 for fabric (at 60% off) and we covered the four chairs. In four hours (and for $31), we had a beautiful table and chair set.  

How To Recover A Dining Room Chair Seat:

– Fabric
– Thick clear plastic (if you need to protect the fabric from spills)
-Staple Gun
– Scissors
-Ruler or Tape Measurer
– Screwdriver

1. Unscrew seat pads from your chair.

2. Use the screwdriver or staple puller to remove the current fabric covering (we left ours on which made our seat cushions a little thicker).

3. Place fabric on the table and place the seat pad on the fabric upside down.

3. Trace with a pencil or free cut with about 3-4 extra inches of fabric on each side.

4. This is where it starts to get tricky. You need to make sure you pull the fabric as tightly as possible so it doesn’t wrinkle. You can fold it at the corners, and after you place your first staples you can cut the excess fabric from the underside of the seat pad.

5. After securing your fabric with staples cover in plastic and repeat or place your newly re-covered seat cushions on your chair and screw them back in.

Easy peasy!

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