Dining Chairs

I bet you didn't know that there are as many shades of black as there are any other color. More on that later.

I found a dining set (table and 6 chairs) and a matching hutch for a decent price on Craigslist. Of course, they were old and ugly. And filthy. They weren't so bad except for where hands touch. 20 years of oily hands make chair arms disgusting. FYI.

Here are some before photos of the chairs. 4 chairs are armless, 2 have arms.
I took the cushions off (they screw off from the bottom) and washed the chairs. I just used some soap and water (oxy clean, actually). Check out the before and afters of the dirty spots!!!





Don't forget the undersides of the arms!
I primed with a gray primer since I was painting the chairs black.
I can't believe I don't have a photo of when I was painting them black. All that time in my garage drying and I didn't take ONE photo?

Sorry.

Anyway, remove the fabric from the cushions. Just pull out the staples. I didn't bother keeping the old cloth for a pattern since you just pull and staple.


Here is how I layered it: wood seat, old foam, new foam (foam is exact same size as wood seat), batting, fabric. (Batting and fabric large enough to pull to under side of seat.)

Cutting out batting and fabric:

I ordered this fabric online from fabric.com.

Pull batting and fabric around and staple. I started in the middle of one side, then switched to the opposite side.

Then again on the other 2 sides. Just to be even.

Then stapled my way out to the corners.
Then I trimmed off some of the corner fabric to make it easier to work with.
Another view:

I found that the screw had trouble going through the fabric and batting. It just picked up the batting and wound it around and around the screw. Weird. So then I cut a little spot where the screw would go into the wood.

All stapled up:

Flip it over and admire your handy work. I didn't worry too much about the pattern. Trying to make them all match would make me lose my mind. Plus I only had so much fabric to work with.
Then screw it back into place!


About the black color. It is wrong. It is too gray. I painted the table (no photo here) first and that black was too green. Yes, green. Then this was too gray. Since it is so humid and all right now here in Oregon, I am going to just have to wait until it warms up to repaint it all with a true black. Any advice on that? But for now they work and look great! Don't you think?