Mad For Plaid: A Kitchen Chair Update

A short while ago I wrote about needing to recover my kitchen chairs because the fabric was torn and worn. This was the worst one. Yuck!

Before I could recover the chairs though, I needed to find new fabric and I also wanted to remove the old fabric and foam.  Easier said than done.

It took me a while, but I was finally able to remove the hundreds and hundreds of factory-installed staples from the seats of my kitchen chairs.  Each staple needed to be pried up with a flat screwdriver and then removed with needle-nosed pliers.  Did I mention already that this was not an easy or quick job?  I almost titled this post "Recovering From Recovering Chairs".

My first attempts to find good looking fabric for the chairs didn't go very well .  As it turns out, I found something I like even better.  I love plaid.

This is Burgess Plaid in Antique Red.  I found it at a terrific design store that I can't wait to go to again.  They have a huge selection of home decorating fabrics and accessories.

Since this was only my second time recovering chairs, I found it tricky going around the curved edges and I used a lot of staples.  I also added extra foam and batting to the chair seats so our people seats would be more comfortable. The chairs are now cleaned up and ready to show.  Much better!

This is how all the chairs look around our kitchen table.

Here is a closer view of the set.

I'm very happy with how the chairs look- so cheery and homey!  The green in the fabric matches well with the wall color in the kitchen and the gold ribbon adds a touch of lux. 

It's also really nice not having foam brush against my legs!

Recovering My Kitchen Chairs

We bought these kitchen chairs 8 years ago and after three children having three meals a day and lots of spills and other accidents, they now look like this:

I can't believe they look this bad!  And....what you can't see from the photo is how gross and stained they are...or maybe you can! (I'm also a little bit horrified to notice the finger prints and smudges on the little t.v. in the background.  I'll grab the glass cleaner in a minute.)

I had wanted to cover the chairs with this red material.

Unbelievably, in the 36 hours that it took me to decide if I liked it in the kitchen, some decorator bought the whole bolt of the fabric!  Apparently she wants to use the fabric on chairs in a restaurant.

 

So....that's not happening.  My husband and I went to another fabric store about an hour away. We discussed bringing home just a sample (that would have been the smart thing to do, in retrospect), but we didn't want to miss out again, so we bought enough of this material to recover the chairs.

 I don't want to tell you how much it cost!  Would you believe, it's just not right.

Can you tell I'm really new at this whole picture taking for the purposes of blogging thing?  Don't answer that!

Anyway, the problem with this fabric is that it's just too muted for the kitchen- even though it is lovely.  I am looking for something that is more vibrant.  This story will continue next weekend after my husband and I visit another fabric store.  I've got my fingers crossed.

In the mean time,  I think there are about a thousand staples per chair seat that need to be removed before this whole upholstery event can occur.

I also need to find a new use for a few yards of oops fabric!

Late to the Party

I've been reading and enjoying home decorating and DIY blogs for a while now and after a lot of thought and waffling back and forth, I've decided to start my own blog.  

I can't believe how many wonderful blogs there are, and I have gotten many fantastic ideas for my home courtesy of blogs. I even suspended my subscriptions to a couple of decorating magazines because I feel like "Blogger Style" is more my style right now.

I am very excited about creating my own blog.  I think this will be a lot of fun- and I know I have MUCH to learn.  But count me in....even though I'm late to the party...it's better late than never!