Dining Chair Do-Over

When boyfriend and I moved in together almost two years ago, we bought this great little kitchen table and chair set from KMart, exactly what a young 20-something couple needs in their first little apartment - inexpensive, basic, and not lopsided.

It worked just fine, despite the fact that we never sat at the kitchen table, but the seats, made of a microfiber material, were definitely NOT as easy to clean as advertised. They attracted dust, fuzz, everything, and quickly turned dingy and stained.

Covering seat cushins is an EASY and INEXPENSIVE way to update any space. 

Because in just one year, I became a fully grown adult with a sophisticated style and demanded that our chairs  match our quirky dining room decor (in a new, much larger apartment), I determined to recover these chairs and bring them up to the speed of my Anthropologie table cloth (which I happened to get on clearance for $30, what what!?)

One of the perks of having a wonderful boyfriend interior design student who happens to be interning at Scalamandre is that he gets first pick of the recycle bin - sounds glamorous, huh? It's actually quite amazing for any DIY-er. All discontinued fabrics, old samples, scraps, etc. get tossed into a giant bin, and he can sometimes nab a good 7 ft-long piece of Scalamandre fabric, that would retail for about $500.00. And to think, little me with curtains that may be discontinued, but technically cost $500? What a good, good boyfriend I have.... ;) Not to mention their gorgeous wallpapers, and sometimes even furniture from the other designers with showrooms in the Merchandise Mart, it's a pretty sweet deal.

My boyfriend found these gorgeous fabrics, not for Scalamandre this time, but from a textile designer down the hall, Highland Court. They were the perfect size to fit over our gunky microfiber seats.

Before: gunky microfiber

And recovering the chairs was so easy, anyone can do it with a little bit of fabric and a staple gun.

Position the fabric over the seat, fold over the edges, and staple away! You have to be a little particular with the corners, tucking the fabric just so. We were lucky to have assembled these chairs ourselves, so the cushions unscrewed easily from the legs.

After: pretty chairs

These chairs are just begging us to not eat dinner in front of the TV. We'll see if that happens. We may have nice chairs now, but we're still in our early twenties...


I'm so happy my boyfriend has introduced me to the world of luxury fabrics. I'm never going back to microfiber. Ever.

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