When a gal wants a quick dining room makeover, she simply steps into her garage, waves her DIY magic wand and reupholsters her chairs herself!
Quick Dining Room Makeover
Dining Room looking a little tired? Sure, you can throw a pretty table cloth over the table, but what about those chairs! A simple DIY makeover to those chairs will give the room a new look and feel, AND you don’t have to know how to sew a stitch! Measure and Staple is all you do. I have been doing this since I was in my teens, now a grandma. Let’s do this!
DIY Is For Girlie Girls Too!
Shhhhh, don’t tell anyone but though I am a girlie girl on the outside (love fashion, makeup and lots of high maintenance), I love knowing how to do everything and anything I can do myself.
When I was a teen, I learned how to work with power tools in our garage. I can’t begin to tell you the powerful feeling that gave me. A sense of control too, because I was no longer limited to the confines of buying ready made things to decorate or have to pay someone to fix simple things, once I was a big girl living on my own. I became a DIY, before there was ever a word for it!
Food Blogger Stage Setting
Now that I spend a great deal of time cooking for my camera and YOU, I discovered there are so many aspects of dining that go beyond the plate of food, such as the area you are planning to serve the meal. We want it to look inviting and inspiring.
I also became a trash-picker, scavenger, garage sale, and consignment-shop gal way back in the 80’s. With a few simple tools, I was able to transform other people’s trash into beautiful new treasures.
Dining Chair Facelift
Above, on my video, you will see the process of recovering a few simple ugly chairs into something beautiful and new. You will need just a few things:
- Fabric – enough fabric to measure 3 inches bigger than the seat you will be covering
- Staple gun – electric is fabulous but a manual gun works just as well with a little elbow grease (strength), and they are very inexpensive.
- Scissors – sharp enough for fabric
- Needle Nose Pliers – small pliers with long pointy ends, or a small flat head screw driver and regular pliers
- Screw driver
Screw. Unscrew. Screw. Done!
With a screw driver, simply turn the existing chair upside down, and remove the existing seat. If the existing fabric is not too thick, you can cover over it, though it fits best if you remove the existing fabric. Slip your small flat-head screw driver under each staple and loosen it. With the pliers, pull them out. Now you are ready to re-cover.
Place the seat on top of the fabric you will be using. Measure 3-inches around the edge of the seat and cut the new fabric out. The rest goes fast. Pull the fabric tightly to the underside of the seat and staple. Go all around the seat you are covering and do the same, spacing the staples a few inches apart. Neatly fold the corners as you will see I have done in the video, and staple.
Now you are ready to screw the seat back into place on the chair. YOU DID IT!
I believe the table... that place that draws people to gather, is the most powerful symbol of togetherness. All that happens before the table is set, the planning, the gathering, the preparing, are all an intricate part of the dance that create the mood of celebration to share with friends and loved ones.
