Sometimes I amaze myself!

So here is a photo of my dining room chairs. I bought six of them plus a 108 inch dining room table at a yard sale in Austin several years ago. I should say a shed sale because this couple was emptying out their old shed. These chairs and the table were pretty beat up. They were a pickled oak with a cream colored nubby fabric that was covered in years of dirt and grime and CAT HAIR!!! But the whole set was $30 which fit into my budget at the time.

So Mike ripped off all the upholstery and I painted everything black. I debated going with white but our rental house at the time had white walls so I went with black. The fabric was from Hobby Lobby as was the foam for the new seat bottoms. In all it was somewhere around $100 for paint, fabric and foam. I have never been crazy about the style of the chairs. I think they look pretty outdated, but hey for $30 who is going to complain? But over the years the upholstery has gotten spilled on and painted on and glued on, etc. Our dining room is much more of a crafting space then a simple eating space. At any rate, it was time for an update. I've been looking at new chairs for a few months and I almost went with brown leather ones to match our sofa and loveseat, but Mike didn't really want to spend that much (approx. $150-200 per chair). He figured if we were going to spend that much, just get a whole new set. Well, a whole new set isn't really in the budget and we are leary about buying new furniture for this house when we are not certain how much longer we will be here.

So I started thinking about recovering the chairs with a new fabric, something lighter in tone but durable. And then I saw a picture in a Pottery Barn catalog of some chairs with covers on them. Aha! I thought. That's the answer! I've made chair covers before for my last set of dining room chairs (rescued from the dumpster at our apartment in Lynnwood) so I knew it was a possibility. But I didn't know how it would look since the back of this chair isn't upholstered. It's kind of bumpy. So I ended up buying more foam! There is now a piece of foam cushioning the back and the chair cover goes over it.

Looks pretty good, huh? Kenzie helped me pick out the fabric. The cream goes with our wall color, the pale blue coordinates with the curtains in the living room curtains on the other side of the room. The mini stripes in red, mustard and sage coordinate with the accessories in the dining room and living room. Plus the cover can be stripped off and thrown in the wash!

I will have to admit this redo is much more expensive than the last one. The foam cost about $40 and the fabric was about $200. It was on sale and I probably bought too much, but I didn't want to risk running out. So far I have one finished and another one almost done. I am hoping to finish two today and get the other three done by the end of the week. Then I can post pictures of what it looks like altogether. But so far, I am pretty darn pleased!