Recovered Dining Chairs

Thanksgiving was a couple days ago and we were so excited to utilize our newly updated formal dining area.  I am so happy that this random series of events has allowed us to bring a fresh look to our dining areas.  Today in the series, I am sharing our newly reupholstered dining chairs.

Last week I shared our new kitchen dining chairs, the leather parsons chairs.  Oh how I love them.  However, I recently fell back in love with our larger, formal dining table too!  The upholstered seats were boring, uninspired and nasty dirty.  Not anymore.

Over a year ago, I was perusing the mounds of fabric in my favorite local discount fabric store and came across this beautiful gray and white graphic upholstery fabric.  I literally scrounged through the mounds of fabric to find a couple of pieces that were reasonably good sized. 

The difficulty of the discount fabric store is they buy left-overs, end cuts, etc. so the pieces are generally not real large or can have damaged areas and flaws.  Any piece under 2 yards you must take the entire piece.  I didn't care because I payed $3.99 a yard for this designer fabric that is available at Jo Ann's for almost $30 a yard.  I was ecstatic.

While I have wanted to redo these chairs for quite some time, I feared ruining this beautiful fabric since we were still using these chairs on a daily basis.  Now that we were moving these back to the formal dining room, I was free to proceed.

Here is the dining table before.  As you can see, the fabric on the chairs was neutral and uninspiring.  (Never mind that it was snagged, stained and disgusting.)

And now with the beautiful new chair covers.  The subtle print and neutral gray brings some character and style to the seats.

I am absolutely loving the chairs. The table itself got small makeover too.  In our previous home, this was our only table and we used it everyday.  The finish was beginning to look dull and scratched.  After cleaning it thoroughly to remove any grease or food residue I used a 220 grit sandpaper and gave the top a very light sanding.  I followed this up with a couple of layers of fresh polyurethane.  I then declared this table off limits for a week in order to make sure that the finish had plenty of time to cure.  This simple one day project gave the table a bright and beautiful new life.

Finally, in order to add some accent to the head chairs, I made a simple lumbar pillow out a gray velvet I bought at the same time I bought the chair fabric.  With an elegant silver fringe, the pillows add a touch of glam.

Come back later this week when I share my favorite addition to this room, a new sideboard that has undergone an amazing transformation in the past couple of weeks.

New Chairs in the Nook

As I mentioned last week, we have experienced an unintentional updating of the dining areas in our home.  Over the next few weeks, I will be sharing some of the updates.  Expect to hear about some fun purchases, makeovers, sewing projects, art projects and simple styling.

It all started at the kitchen table.

We found an amazing like new Pottery Barn table on Craigslist when we bought our house a couple of years ago.  It is a beautiful round pedestal table that allows us to add a leaf when we have guests.  The table came with a wonderful piece of glass to protect the table top.  Unfortunately, the table did not come with chairs.  Bummer.

In the interim, we have used 4 of the chairs from our larger dining table.  This has worked fine but has never been our long term goal.  These chairs have cloth seats and after 2 kids, the seats were beyond nasty.

The series of updates was originally supposed to start with me recovering the chairs to give them a fresh, clean look.  I even purchased some fabric.  Well, the fabric sat here for a long time.  Then this summer the plan took a sudden change.

We happened upon a really nice chair for this table at the most amazing price.  As my husband wandered the aisles of Costco he found a simple brown leather parsons chair.  We went back over the weekend and in true Costco fashion, they were gone!  Bummer.  Fortunately, we returned from vacation and found that they had been restocked!  Yahoo.

These new chairs are awesome.  The rich chocolate color of the leather looks amazing with the dark wood tone of the table.  I love that we can wipe down these chairs after meals.

Just prior to finding these chairs, we had a slight problem with the table...

Our daughter was counting the money in her piggy bank and managed to not only break open the pig (not the intention) but crack the glass table top too!  She was so sad, but honestly, I should have known better than letting a 7 year shake a giant ceramic pig over the top of a glass table.  Life happens.  We have not replaced the glass yet because well, it is not cheap.  Soon though, I am tired of the lovely vinyl table cloth we have been using to protect the wood.

Isn't she beautiful.

Dining Room Updates: a series

It has dawned on me over the last several months, that without even knowing it, we have been updating the dining areas in our home.  We have two dining areas in this house, a combined formal dining/living room and our kitchen nook.

As my blog implies, this is our forever home, the house we plan to grow old in and it is and always will be, a work in progress.  While we have a long wish list of projects for our home, sometimes you just "happen upon" a great deal and then that item jumps to the top of the list.  Ironically, the dining areas have been the focus of these perfect finds and projects recently.

Over the next few weeks, I will share a series of posts on the updates we have made (and still working on) to these rooms in our home.  This series involves new chairs, broken glass, upholstery, refinishing, sewing, styling, savvy shopping and more.

Let me start by sharing the "before" of these two areas in our home.


Kitchen Nook
The majority of our meals happen at the kitchen dining table. This nook located just off the kitchen screamed for a small round table, perfect for our family of four and our everyday meals.

We were fortunate enough to find a beautiful Pottery Barn wood pedestal table on Craigslist when we bought the house 2 years ago.  It came with a glass top to protect the wood which is awesome. Unfortunately, the table did not come with chairs.  Chairs has been our wish list ever since.  For the past 2 years, we have been using 4 of the chairs from our large dining table until we found the perfect chairs for this room.

Formal Dining Room
As you enter our home you are greeted by a large open concept "formal" dining and living room.  I use formal in quotes because we are so NOT formal people.  Even when we have dinner guests, we are more likely to put the leaf in the kitchen table than use the dining space designated for this.

The formal living area was a new space to us, therefore we did not have any furniture for this room and it has not been a priority.  I know, we have lived here for 2 years and it still largely sits empty.  The only thing in this room is our large dining table from our other house.  The "nook" area in our other home was huge so we purchased a large table for this space.  This is what it looked like for the past couple years.

As a reference point, I wanted to share what our dining area/kitchen nook looked like in our previous home.  As you can see, the "nook" allowed us to have a dining table that seated 8 people comfortably.  That always baffled me but I loved that it freed up a space in our great room for other family needs.

I can't wait to share with you some of the amazing projects I have been working on.  Let me just say, I can't wait to host Thanksgiving this year in our new formal dining area.  I still have a lot of work to do but it is great to have a deadline!  We have so many blessings in our life and this year is not any different.