I wasn’t worried about taking all the paint off so just scuffed up the paint job using 180 sandpaper.

I take my inspiration from the very-similar-looking chairs that are being refinished in heaven:

First, you pop off the seat (ours were secured by four screws) and flip it over to work on its underside.

Then you take all the old fabric off (including the black dustcover) by pulling out the staples. I found it easiest to use an upholstery staple remover tool to loosen them, and then use pliers to pull them out since the upholstery tool kept breaking the staple in two.

Underneath the fabric was a piece of plywood that serves as the base of the seat, and in our case, a 2-inch piece of foam that sits on top of it when the chair is right side up. The foam was in great condition, so I didn’t bother replacing that.

Next, I used the old fabric I had just removed as a pattern for the new fabric.

Re. that new fabric, I bought four meters of upholstery ends at the fabric store in four different-but-matching materials for the low price of $10/meter, and there’s enough of each kind to do two seat covers, which works out to $5 of fabric per chair. I figured that if one material doesn’t wear well for whatever reason, I can pop another cover on.

I didn’t worry too much about doing an exact fabric cutting job because I knew I was going to staple the edges underneath the seat where no one would see them.

Then I placed my foam and plywood on top of the new fabric and put one staple in the center of each of the four sides to hold the fabric in place. And then I stapled each side, putting staples in every inch and a half or so and pulling the fabric tight as I went along.

Like I said, easy.

To refresh your memory, here’s the before of the old fabric:

And here’s the after, in the four new fabrics. Don’t they look fresh and beautiful?

Next step: sanding the chair frames.

The before, with just the bare hardwood (it does need something, and the new rug is there at the top, still rolled up):

And the after (the photo is a bit overexposed; you can hardly make out Red’s sheepskin at the top of the picture):

Red is sold on it, anyway:

It’s a shaggy tri-color brown, taupe and cream rug, which is going to be perfect with a little boy around (no pure cream rugs this time), but it’s either retro-chic and OK, or it’s just shy of that and not.

We’ll live with it for a couple of days and see.

Refinishing kitchen chairs is a project of many steps, and with a baby, you do what you can in the few moments when you can grab a tool and use it before having to put it back down again. That means this project might take longer than usual.

First step: document the initial ugliness. Voila.

The chairs as is (they came from an old restaurant apparently), are painted blue, and the seats are covered with a striped yellow, orange and blue fabric that’s tough enough to last forever and a day. (This photo doesn’t quite do them justice because they look sort of OK in the picture, and they’re really not.)

But! Do not judge a chair by its seat cover. These are beautifully solid, will probably never squeak or require regluing like the Ikea chairs do, and cost a grand total of $20 each. That’s right, including tax. Since all the chairs we were looking at as possibilities were $200-300 each, this was a steal of a deal and worth trying to salvage.

Like I said, we bought six, but only have room around the table for four, so I’m going to start by redoing four. Each chair is going to have a different seat cover too, for a mix and match effect that with any luck, will look eclectic and fun. Or mismatched and odd. However it turns out.

Let the games begin!