Reupholstering.

Originally, I found our set of seven dining room chairs on Craigslist. They were vintage, had avocado green seats, and were only $20. Aka, they were right up my alley. Well, when I showed up at the seller's house, it turns out there was a major typo and the price was actually $20 per chair. The guy thought I was trying to pull a fast one on him when I said the ad stated "Dining Room Chairs - $20" After going back to his computer, and realizing he should have never asked his teenage son to create the ad for him, he offered $40 for the set. And he even threw in a child's wicker rocking chair for free. SOLD.

So the chairs have been doing their job for the past few months. But in a really annoying and shitty way. The bottom piece of wood that holds the whole seat in place was basically disintegrating before our very eyes and every time someone sat down, the chair would drop major sawdust all over the floor. Plus, the seats were totally flattened out and any life in those cushions had been squashed many years ago. Boyfriend and I were over that shit and decided to reupholster those mofos.

BEFORE:

Tip for taking the fabric off to get the original wood template: DO IT OUTSIDE. That shit is messy. The years of wear and tear on those seats turned the padding into what looked like a shitload of crunched up Cheetos.

We took the wooden template to Home Depot and purchased new cuts of wood. Boyfriend then used a jigsaw to make the shape of the chair frame.

Then we went to Joann's Fabrics for the padding, batting, and fabric. Originally, we went with a burnt orange color upholstery fabric, but when I got it home I realized it sucked. Did you know you can EXCHANGE fabric? Crazy, I know. So, I went back to Joann's and chose a patterned print from the "Outside Canvas" section.

From start to finish, four chairs done in one day.

AFTER:


The print may not be your thing. But seriously, you can't argue with all that padding.

This is the video we watched as a tutorial.

It was really easy and ended up costing roughly $42 per chair (chair, wood, padding, batting, and fabric) for a a matching set of brand new dining room chairs.

Go buy some old chairs this weekend and try it. You'll love the end result or my name isn't Martha Stewart.

In other nonsense, check out my latest post at Sprocket Ink where I discuss cheating husbands who happened to be named Weiner.