Dining Room Makeover!

When we bought our house the owner asked us if we wanted the dining set. He didn't need it anymore and none of his kids or grandkids wanted it. We agreed because the chairs to our set were falling apart, literally. We've twice now had a chair collapse under someone.

This is what the chairs to our new-to-us set look like.

Darling, right? Butterflies on blue. It's retro, vintage, whatever you want to call it, which I normally love. The house's vintage vibe is a big part of what sold me on it. However, this little bit of vintage charm isn't exactly my taste.

And we've got rolls and rolls of the material downstairs. A couple weeks ago we noticed that a few of the chairs were getting rips in the material and we'd already known that the material was N-A-S-T-Y. The kids spill and drop their food on the chairs every day. They are gross. I'm constantly having to wash off every part of the chairs after they eat.

I decided now was the time to recover the cushions. I was given two gift cards to a local craft store for Christmas and decided to use one of them to buy the needed materials.

So now, two of my chairs look like this.

Here's a close up of the material.
I also bought some plastic to cover the material so it will actually stay nice.

I've been trying to get one chair done a night, but I'm thinking I'd like it all done before New Years. It's been interesting trying to learn how to recover a chair. All those lovely ehow.com video people make it look so easy. I hate them.

Anyway, I love my new chairs. With the neutral color and the dark wood, they will work in whatever kind of dining room we choose for our next house when we move away from Cleveland, as far away as possible. J/K. Kind of.