Have A Seat

Whoa. I did it. I finally managed to complete my first DIY home decor project. Move on over HGTV, a new girl is in town.

Okay, now that I've come to from my daydream, let me fill you in on my small accomplishment.

One of the things I'm most looking forward to in the new house is splurging on a farmhouse table. I rationalize this want by saying that I've had the same kitchen table set since I moved out to California--so for about six years. I got a real itch to get a new dining set about a year ago, but I knew that we were planning on buying a house in the near future and I didn't want to buy something and then not have it fit in the space we would buy.

Besides not liking the actual table, I also didn't like the chairs. While very durable, they seemed clunky and just overall blah. So a few months ago, I had a grand idea to re-uploster the chairs in the hopes to make them more lovable for the interim. I figured if I totally botched this project, at least I knew I wasn't going to keep them long term.

Here's what I started with:

See this material? It's worn and reminiscent of the typical outdated dining set that it is. Oh, and it's boring. I'm yawning just looking at it in this post.

To be honest, I put this project off for a bit. Mostly because I wasn't sure if I was in over my head and worried that we might be eating on the floor for a bit if I did something terribly wrong.

But to my surprise, re-uplostering a kitchen chair is pretty simple and straight-forward. The biggest trouble I had was figuring out which screws actually held down the chair seat. Once I figured that out, it was just a matter of taking the time to take out all the staples that kept the original fabric on.

These chairs are pretty durable and made very well, so when I took the old fabric off, I was left with a really good, solid wood base and some equally solid fabric cushion. Good thing, because I'm not sure I would have been very good at re-creating a whole new chair seat from scratch. I know it can be done, but I think it's best I keep my ambitions simple for now.

After I finished the first one, I was completely in awe of how much I loved the result!

It even makes me want to keep these chairs, but still get rid of the table. There's no hope for the table. And I really, really want that farmhouse table.

I used to dislike the color of the wood of the chairs, but with the new fabric, I'm even liking that better. Once I actually get my dream dining table, my thought is to paint the wood on these chairs white and then get two industrial looking chairs for the ends. Something similar to this inspiration photo I found on this blog, but nothing too pricey.

Photo found here.

But we shall see. My thoughts seems to change monthly, so only time will tell what I end up with. For now, I'm just happy with the fact that I not only succeeded in completing my first DIY project, but that they actually turned into something I like.

So much better don't you think?