We love repurposing vintage furniture to give it new life.  As we’ve written  before, vintage furniture is often higher quality, properly sized and more beautiful than mass produced furniture made today.

Sometimes, pieces still need to be freshened up with a modern makeover to give them a breath of life.  We often find this to be the case with chair cushions.  We find many beautiful dining sets that are flawless, but the fabric on the cushions is just … well, could be better.

It turns out there is a simple solution for those outdated fabric choices!  We’ve perfected a technique to recover dining room chairs to be the perfect finishing touch for your dining room.  Deirdre explains it all:

Supplies:

• Chairs to recover
• Fabric
• Scissors
• Screw Driver
• Staple Gun
• Batting

Directions:

Detach the seats from the chair.  This may require a screw driver.

Using scissors, remove the old fabric from the chairs.  If it is stapled on, use a stapler remover to untack the fabric and remove it.

Check the batting on the cushions.  If your seats are old, it might be necessary to add more batting or replace the cushion before re-covering it.  If you want softer seats, add batting.

Measure your fabric and cut it to the correct size that it can easily cover the seats and overlap to the bottom of the chair.

Pull the fabric tightly over the batting of the seats.  Fold the corners to ensure no overlapping and wrinkles.

Using a stapler gun, hold the fabric in place and secure to the bottom of the seat with evenly spaced staples.  For a smoother look, cover the bottom of the chairs with black fabric and secure at the corners with staples before reattaching to the legs and back of the chair.

Voila!  Beautiful like-new chairs for your dining room set!

If you find a dining room set in our store that suits you and you’re interested in recovering, let us know, and we’ll show you our amazing fabric selections.  Check out some of our past and present chairs and tables on Pinterest!