In Which I Reupholster my Kitchen Chairs

So, we have this dining room table. It’s awesome – a Craigslist find (is there any other kind of furniture in my home? No, no there is not). Chrome & glass with these chrome/wicker chairs. We got it really cheap, for one very good reason – the seat cushions. Here, let me show you a close-up.

Yes. See? Horrible. The color wasn’t so bad (and went with our house, which is why they lasted so embarrassingly long), but they are worn out and dingy. But the set! It had such potential! (Sometimes I think my epitaph should read: Here lies Sierra. She saw potential in everything. Unfortunately.)

And so we bought it anyways and there it sat as I tried to find the right fabric to redo them. The fact that I had never reupholstered anything before might seem important, but I assure you, it’s not. My project/home improvement/life motto is that I never know how to do anything until I figure it out!

We were in Ikea on Sunday and saw they had a lot of new fabric and despite the fact that I’ve never really liked any fabric I’ve seen in Ikea, I found three different fabrics that I loved! Three! And one was perfect for the chairs. And so a few yards wound up in our cart and a couple of hours later I was watching yet another Frontline episode (this one, which was fascinating) and ripping apart our chairs with a combination of needle-nose pliers and a flat head screw driver (oh, you can buy fancy upholstering tools, of course, but why would I make things easy on myself?).

Here’s Bodhi, protesting the cruel dissection of his favorite chair by having one last nap on its carcass.

A few googles later (reupholster chair corner, how to; no for real, how do i make this look right, stop telling me it just takes practice), a chair!

And then, four chairs! One of the reasons that I loved this big print is that I knew I could cut the pieces out so that the chairs would all look similar, but different.

Not bad for $30 and a few hours of work. Of course, now I want to reupholster everything.