chair recovery

So remember how I said that we’re a family that doesn’t flip out over dirt and messes? Well, sometimes, it does bite you in the butt. Like when you have cream-colored chairs in your main eating area.

Side note: what do you call the area that’s NOT a formal dining room but not really a breakfast nook, either?

Anyway, my grandparents passed down this table and chair set to me when I moved into my first apartment … 10 years ago. Wow, I can’t believe that was 10 years ago. And it’s been my & our main eating table for that long.

The area doesn’t look like that anymore, though – there’s a light wood buffet on that wall under the painting, and the coat rack has been moved. And we’re going to replace that ugly brass light one of these days.

It’s a beautiful set (I love light wood), and I’m not going to replace it anytime soon. But the two chairs with off-white fabric were getting pretty yucky from spilled spaghetti and about 472 other different foods that never come out.

So I’ve been wanting to re-upholster them for a while, but it’s always been at the bottom of my “home improvement to-do list” – until I ended up with this fabric from Maine Cottage.

Now, I can’t let this post go by without telling you about the 90% discount I got on this fabric. I bought it at our local Garden Ridge and paid $5.99 for 2 yards. They have tables of 2-3 yard cuts of home dec fabrics for $5.99 – I’m assuming they’re just leftover cuts from furniture manufacturers. Finding anything good is like going to the thrift store, because you have to dig and dig and dig, but I’ve grabbed up a few cuts here and there just to have in my stash.

I was thinking about using this fabric in our bedroom, and I wanted to know if there were any coordinating fabrics from the designer. So, I looked up the designer that was printed on the selvedge and discovered that it was manufactured by Maine Cottage. And cost $50/yard! That’s a very average price for high-quality home dec fabrics, so I was shocked to find that I luckily grabbed it up for $3/yard.

I decided not to use it in our bedroom, because I don’t think polka dots is really the look I’m going for. Then I thought about the fact that the manufacturer uses it to cover furniture. And that’s when I decided to go ahead and use a little bit of it to re-upholster the [insert name of area here] chairs.

I didn’t do anything fancy – I just took off the cushions, covered the existing fabric with the new fabric, stapled it to the bottom of the cushion, and screwed them back onto the chair. Easy peasy!

I LOVE it!! I’m going to throw some lime green accents on the table and make it a fun little eating area. And then when I finally get around to painting our kitchen yellow, the fabric will still match perfectly.

The only thing I regret about this whole experience? Now, I want a lot more Maine Cottage fabric, but I can’t afford it!

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