Dining Chairs

Well, the Portland Mid-Century Modern League is having the monthly meeting at our house. While it's kinda daunting to be faced with a deadline where tens of critical eyed MCM savvy folks will be moseying around our place, it's sure lit a fire under our collective cabooses.

During the last three weeks we've made a list, divided it into three categories:

1- Would be nice to have finished

2- Really should have this finished

3- Absolutely MUST be finished

One thing in category #3 was refresh the finish on and recover the seats on the dining room chairs.

We like the chairs. They're Heywood Wakefield and they match the table and hutch. But what's the deal with those covers? Ack!

Luckily, this seems to be a fairly straightforward project and between Haley, DD and me, we managed to get the chairs looking presentable in one evenings time. If you're in a similar situation, buck up... it's easy.

Step #1, remove the seat bottoms. (Ours required the removal of three screws per chair.)

Step #2, cut the new fabric to approximate size. You can trim things after the stapling. The padding was still pretty good, so we didn't take off the old fabric.

This is a perfect time to break out the #0000 steel wool, Murphy's Oil Soap and a little Restore-A-Finish for the scratches.

DD folded the new fabric around the edges, stretched things out fairly tight and went to town with the stapler. (Because I'm a tool junkie, we have an air stapler/brad nailer. A regular hand powered stapler will do just fine, but doesn't make that cool "Pa-choonck!" noise.)

I screwed the seats back onto the chairs and.....

...Ta-Da! They turned out quite nice! A quick, immensely satisfying job!

Now... what's next on the list....