Making an Old Chair New Again - Life at Cloverhill

Back in February 2008, when I first moved into my apartment, I scored a set of faux leather chairs for $30 each. (You can see them here in my Living Room Before & After). I use one as my desk chair and the other at the kitchen table, and they have been great…..but something inevitably happened…

3 years of constant use + A dog who lives to jump on chairs + Cheap-o faux leather =

Seats that did not last 🙁

However, I was determined to salvage them. I love these chairs and couldn’t picture parting with them, so I made a trip to a fabric store on Queen Street. I found a gigantic aisle of upholstery fabric and a black and beige print on sale for $15 a yard.

When I got home, I got right to work tackling the first chair. I ripped off the liner on the bottom of the chair and pulled out all the staples that attached the seat to the chair. It took plenty of arm strength and determination to get it done, but I did it! Then I used one half of the yard of fabric to cover the top of the seat. I held the fabric taut and using a friend’s staple gun I tightly secured it to the seat. Then it was just a matter of re-stapling the seat to the chair and replacing the bottom seat liner with some black felt I had lying around.

Here is what the first new and improved chair looked like against the one still waiting to be recovered. Its hard to see in this picture but the new black and beige fabric matched perfectly to the old existing fabric and the chair legs. Score!

It felt good to take my old cheap chairs and make them new again for only $15 (and a batch of shortbread cookies for the staple gun owner!) Its given me the itch to tackle on more house projects over the hibernation months of winter. I’ll keep you guys posted on whats next!

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