Dining room chair makeover

For months now, I have been staring at my dining room chairs and wishing I could recover them. Children, a cat and white/cream upholstered dining room chairs just don't go together. See how nasty they were? Yuck!  I was embarrassed for anyone to come over and sit in these nasty things! I tried cleaning them before, but nothing really worked as well as I thought it should have.

I'd looked for fabric to recover them before, but the decorator weight fabric that I needed was pretty expensive, and with 6 chairs to cover, I just couldn't spend the money.  So, after reading tons of home decorating blogs and seeing slipcovers being made out inexpensive drop cloths, I had an idea.  If they can make slip covers out of drop cloths, then I'm sure I can re-cover my chairs with one!  So, off to Home Depot I went. (They have the best drop cloths, since theirs don't have seams and are already hemmed on all 4 sides)  I bought a $10 drop cloth, a staple gun, and some staples and got to work. 

First I took the seats off the chairs and measured them to see how big of a piece I would need for each chair seat.

Luckily one 6ft x 9ft drop cloth was enough to cover all 6 of my chairs.  I got to working measuring and cutting out the pieces.  I was able to get 8 pieces out of the drop cloth, so I had 2 extras that I saved in case I need them later. The cutting wasn't too bad, and I folded over the fabric to make it double layered, so I could cut down on the number of cuts I had to make.

After all the cutting was done, I took each piece of fabric, and "wrapped" each seat with it. I used the staple gun to staple the fabric to the back of the seat. Sorry I didn't take a picture of this part.  I was on a roll, and totally forgot. 

Once they were all wrapped and stapled, I took each seat and screwed it back onto the frame. 

 Ta da! 

I am so pleased with how they turned out, and can't believe I hadn't thought of this idea sooner.  What a cheap, quick and easy fix! It took me about 2 hours from start to finish. Now I just need to figure out how to decorate my un-decorated dining room. Anyone have any suggestions for the big empty wall behind the table? The one with the light switch right in the middle of it? ha!

Stayed tuned!  More home decorating projects coming this week!