Shortly after we moved into this house in October 2011, I started scouring Kijiji (the Craigslist alternative that’s more popular around these parts) for a pedestal table. Well… I was actually scouring it for any furniture at all, since we were moving from a 680 square foot condo into a 2,200 square foot house, and had plenty of rooms to fill. But I had been lusting over a pedestal table for the condo for months before that, so it was my initial focus.
I eventually came across a great pedestal table (solid wood, 1 leaf) that included 6 chairs for – get this – $200. I know – great deal, right? We obviously high-tailed it over to the sellers house with $200 buckaroos in hand to bring our new dining set home.
From the get-go I knew that the table and chairs were going to need some work, and was up for the challenge. I had intended to paint the table and chairs, and re-upholster the seat bottoms. Orange-y oak and a 1980s floral fabric print just isn’t my bag.
So – in my typical Virgo fashion – I jumped in with both feet, and started immersing myself in paint chips and fabric stores. Unfortunately, I came up empty handed all around. I just couldn’t find fabric that struck my fancy, and fabric was going to be my jumping off point for selecting paint.
Until I found this.
But wait, you say – that’s a shower curtain! Why yes, yes it is!
On one of our many cross-border shopping trips, we stopped in at Target, as we normally do. (No Target in Canada at that time!) I came across this shower curtain while mindlessly wandering the aisles, and it caught my eye. After touching it and realizing it was a nice heavy weight fabric, perfect for re-upholstering a chair seat, I started to get excited. What sealed the deal? The fact that it was also on clearance for $13! Two of these puppies came home with me that day.
Fast forward 18 months. I had yet to touch the table or chairs! Please tell me I’m not the only one who does stuff like this?
But – I’m on a ‘DIY vacation’ at the moment! Home projects are the name of the game. So last week I pulled out the handy dandy staple gun that my husband got me for Christmas, and went to town on the chairs. I don’t know why I waited 18 months to do this – it was simple!
Each seat took me about 20 – 30 minutes to do, and I spread the work of all six chairs out over a couple of days. I re-upholstered right over the old fabric – the foam / batting in each one was in great shape, and didn’t need replacing, so it wasn’t worth pulling up the old fabric first. And I ended up with a ton of fabric left over – had I been more strategic about how I used it, I could have probably gotten away with only needing 1 shower curtain to do the job.
Not too shabby, right? I’m pretty happy with them, especially given that this is my first ever re-upholstering project!
I love when projects are much easier than you anticipated, and end up turning out much better than you could have imagined!
Now that the fabric is in place, I’m thinking about paint again. Currently, I’m thinking red. Specifically, this red:
Now if only the weather would get it’s act together, so spray painting season could officially begin!
