Happiness is a Set of Re-Upholstered Chairs

An easy furniture facelift...

Thirty-some years ago, my other half purchased his first home. It came with a dining table set that he developed a strong attachment to; so strong that when he sold the house, he kept the set and when we sold our vacation home — where the table and chairs have been for the past fifteen years — he insisted on keeping it yet again.

I suppose he likes the fact that it's well made stuff. The set is stamped with a label that indicates its manufacturing origin as Kincardine, Ontario. Sort of unreal to think that we actually own Canadian made furniture.

Canadian made table and chairs...

Without doing some "research", I can't be sure, but I would hazard a guess that apart from specialty or custom pieces, it's not likely that many of us end up buying North American made furnishings these days.

His attachment to the furniture aside, he was not so much enamoured with the PVC vinyl that he and his old roommate used back in the day to reupholster the original seats. I suggested that we use my Spoonflower fabric Ode to the Canadian Penny to give them new life. As it turned out, I didn't have to wait too long for a sale to nab a yard of it in lightweight cotton twill, the same fabric that I used to make cushions with for our shinto stools.

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Reupholstering chairs is probably one of the easiest home decor DIY projects. The most difficult part might be cutting the fabric required for each seat, especially if you don't have sufficient fabric to accommodate the entire piece, which was my issue with only a one yard cut. 

My first step was to use an old bedsheet to cut a muslin, so I could use it as a basic template. That was when I got my confirmation that four of these wouldn't fit onto my single yard of fabric, even though it was 58" wide and had a generous white border around it.

 

Three pieces cut out; each with up to an inch and a half seamed section at the back...

I had wrongly assumed that one yard would be sufficient for the job, not having taken the time to remove the seats and actually measure them beforehand. (Yes, apparently sometimes I like not to measure before doing... don't do that.)

Not to be deterred, however, I was determined to make it work.

The PVC vinyl that was used to recover the original seats three decades ago...

In the end, I made use of the white border and incorporated a small seamed section towards the back of the seat. Not only was it then possible to create pieces to recover all four "regular" chairs, I was also able to piece together a fifth cover to redo the one lone armchair. (I will add, however, that I had to use a tiny bit of leftover fabric from my hand quilted storage pod project to complete that one.)

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The boys had never redone the armchair with the vinyl, so this would be the first time that all five chairs will actually match.

Tape works well in securing the fabric temporarily...

To keep things simple, I opted not to remove any of the old material and merely installed the new fabric right over top of the vinyl. Surprisingly, regular tape works well at keeping the cover in place before taking a staple gun to it.

We decided not to remove the old vinyl...

As you can see, I was a lot more frugal with my material than the guys were with the vinyl!

The unavoidable seam on each cover...

Happily, none of the seamed sections that I was forced to add were visible unless one looked for them.

...is hidden at the back of the chair...

In retrospect, I am happy with the fact that I had to be a bit creative in my solution. The "best" alternative — to have a single piece of fabric for each seat — not only would have required me to purchase more fabric, but would also have resulted in leftover fabric given the way it needed to be cut. 

This way, I was just left with small scraps and felt like I made the most efficient use of the material.

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Spoonflower offers a varied selection of home decor weight fabrics to choose from; I just happen to like this one. (It's my "go to" choice for a robust cotton that doesn't need to be interfaced.) From previous experience with the shinto stools — which we have been sitting on every day for over two and a half years — it wears well.

Armchair reupholstered to match for the first time...

For a brief moment, I considered getting some Heat n Bond Liquid Vinyl to transform the material into something waterproof and perhaps longer wearing. However, I could only find the product online and the cheapest place charged $15 to ship it (two bucks less than the item was worth). After a discussion with hubby, we decided that we didn't need the added expense.

Now to think about renewing the wood...?

Instead, for extra protection, we sprayed the seats with Scotchguard. Water beads up and rolls off nicely, which is more than adequate for the fact that these chairs aren't going to be used on any sort of regular basis.

For about $25 in materials, re-upholstering chairs is a quick win home decor project that's easy to pull off. And if you measure first, you won't have to do any sewing!

The eagle-eyed among you may have noticed that I've put up a new image link on my sidebar, for that unscrupulous, copyright infringing, intellectual property stealing site called Dyaneeo.

It leads to a page where I have summarized (the tip of the iceberg in terms of) their stolen content and how we all can do our parts to fight such companies. I'll be using it to log my ongoing campaign against them, so future updates about this matter will automatically be posted there, for anyone interested in following along on this.

I will make another plea to spread the word about them if you care anything about the rights of independent designers. We small folk have limited means to go against such entities when they come from countries that do not respect copyright law. However, I didn't major in Economics for nothing and I know that if we can make it hard for them to conduct their (scam of a) business, we may get some satisfaction. They are in it for the money and if they can't get that money, they will back off. (If you recall the end of my post last week, I hinted about coming back with tips on how to be a crafty online shopper. I've included that topic on this page.)

But holy man, is this ever a prevalent problem, as I've found out over the past week. Tip of the iceberg is an apt descriptor of what's going on.

'Til next...