How to re-upholster your Dining room chairs for under a fiver….

Remember last week when I told you all last week about my new dining room table and how it inspired me to finally reupholster my dining room chairs.  I told you that it had cost me less than a fiver to do all four chairs and promised you that I’d let you in on my secret to keeping the cost down this week…

I searched all over for some reasonably priced upholstery fabric that matched the vision that I had in my head for the four chairs that needed reupholstering and I couldn’t find the ‘perfect’ fabric anywhere!  I really wanted the chairs to be co-ordinated but different if you know what I mean and I just couldn’t find what I was looking for which is why it took me so long to get around to doing them. I’ve also looked on numerous websites for chair covers uk and was spoilt for choice but even then I knew I wanted something a bit different.

The arrival of the new table set me off on my search again but I still came home empty-handed!  I gave up for the day and popped into town to get some bits for a BBQ we were going to that afternoon and right there in the middle of Morrisons, I found exactly what I wanted.

The only problem was that the perfect coordinating fabrics that were exactly the same as the picture I had in my head were tea-towels and not upholstery fabric.

They were only £3 a pack so I bought them to see if there was a way that I could use them for recovering the chairs and sure enough, a quick look on Pinterest and I was reassured that I could indeed use the tea towels for upholstery fabric.

I’m not sure that they’ll last as long as upholstery fabric would but we’ve never had any major spillages or accidents on the covers we have now so as long as that continues then we’re all good with these.  And I have two spares that match the theme so I can replace them easily enough if I need to – I might even buy another pack of three just in case I need more.

It was really easy to actually reupholster the chairs – so easy in fact that Master Frugal did most of it for me. First of all, I took off the old fabric from the seat cover which was just a case of pulling at it to loosen the staples that it was attached with.  Underneath that, there was an even older (and uglier) fabric which I decided not to take off for fear of what was under it.  I laid the tea towel flat on the table and positioned the chair seat on top of that…

Next, I pulled the fabric as tight as possible and stapled each corner down to keep it in place.  I then folded the edges over as if I was wrapping a present and let Master Frugal go wild with the staple gun (which was bought from B&Q a while ago for about £8 and has been used loads).

My general rule of thumb when it comes to staples is ‘the more the merrier’ and I’m pretty sure we used more than necessary but we stapled right around the edges so there was no chance of the fabric coming loose. After that, it was just a case of slotting the chair seat back on to the chair…

I love the finished look….

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