They’re FINALLY done. It only took me 6 months….And then another 6 months to blog about it….
Remember these??
After painting and reupholstering, here’s the finished set!!!
The painting was definitely, by far the absolute easiest part. And I like painting. Mikey helped me paint too. I thought I liked reupholstering furniture until I started on the backs of these chairs. Then the project came to a standstill and every few weeks I would give it another try, only to get discouraged again. It was tough let me tell you. And to be honest, the backs of the chairs aren’t quite right but I literally couldn’t figure out what to do with them, so it is what it is.
This dining room set had been in Mikey’s house for many years. He never used it. Like literally never sat on it. The table and chairs were a place for him to set anything and everything on. Some of the chairs were still covered in plastic. He recalls that he was given this dining room set by some people that he knew that just wanted to get rid of it and since he had a giant dining room without a table, he acquired it. For free. He did mention that the set was kinda dirty and kinda smelled like cigarette smoke and cat piss. Some of the chairs that weren’t still covered in plastic never even made it into the house. It had about 6 chairs or maybe even 8 but we could only salvage 4 and 1 took a lot of wood glue to try and fix. All throughout the process, Mikey kept saying “why don’t we just throw this out and go buy a new dining room set?” But I endured because I wanted to see the end of the project we started. And it barely cost us any money. The paint and primer were left over from the house remodel and the upholstery fabric was actually from curtains that I made when I lived in my town house!! Now tell me that’s not the ultimate recycling project!
Initially I wanted to paint a small dresser in my bedroom before I moved in with Mikey. I started to research painting furniture and came upon this awesome blog LiveLoveDIY. I never did paint that dresser but I did paint my kitchen island to match Mikey’s kitchen when I finally did move in. I used the recommendations from LiveLoveDIY for the island and also for the dining room table and chairs. We did use a small piece of scotchbrite to “sand” off the shine or gloss on the top part of the table before we primed and painted it.
The upholstering of the chair seats was fairly simple. I at first thought about removing the fabric covering them but then just decided to cover right over top of it. I cut the fabric about 4 inches larger than the chair seat on all sides and then using a staple gun, just flipped over the chairs and stapled the fabric in place. The corners get a little tricky but you just slightly crease the fabric underneath and smooth it around the corner as you staple.
The backs of the chairs, as I mentioned earlier, were a huge pain in the ass. Not only is there a piece of fabric stapled to the back of the chair, with batting underneath, there’s this upholstered cording that goes around the chair in the front and all of this has to fit into a ridge cut into the chair with 2 pieces of dowel rod to keep it all together. Umm yea, figure all that shit out. Now you know why it took me 6 months.
Some of the dowel rods were broke so I had to cut new ones.
I was able to reuse the cording and sewed my fabric around it.
Eventually to make it all fit, I stapled the fabric on the front and glued the fabric on the back. Then I put the dowel rods in and fit the whole piece into the chair opening and then glued the cording around the outside.
Let’s see that one more time….
BEFORE
And AFTER
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