Guest Post: Chair-ity Work

** Today's guest post comes from my friend, Meredith, who I got to know during our years in Virginia. Meredith is a former Spanish teacher turned stay-at-home mom who loves the Spanish-speaking world, education, and running.  She blogs intermittently at The White Pages but always has grand plans to write more often.  Self-proclaimed as "not crafty," she wrote this post for us as the 101 version of crafting projects. **


Hello Scrappy Love-rs!

Meredith here - thanks for letting me drop in for a quick post.  Cindi and I go way back (well, four years) to when we bonded over our same-age puppies.  Cindi soon became my Quilting Mother (meaning she taught me how to make a quilt), which was no small feat, since I'd hardly sewn a stitch in my life.  She's always been crafty and creative, so it was no surprise to me that she's got this adorable Etsy shop up and running. 

When my mom heard that Cindi and her family visited us last week, she immediately asked me, "So, what project did you girls tackle?"  Scrappy Love don't take no holidays, y'all.  And apparently, she's famous for her work, since my mom knew immediately that we would be doing some type of project.  Since I am always up for a good DIY job but tend to need some... vision to get going, Cindi's visit was the prime opportunity to attack these yucky, dreary chair seats, which have been on my list for quite a while:

See the cute banner in the background?  Also Cindi's brainchild - she helped me get started on those last time we were together.  I bet she'd make ya one if you asked nicely!

Note: This post is a nice and tame dip in the shallow end of DIY projects.  Truly, anyone can recover a chair.  Here's all you need:

1.  Fun fabric.  Take a coupon - or don't, since fabric's always on sale at JoAnn's and you can't use the coupon anyway.  We went with a mix-and-match but not-too-matchy combination of three different green-based fabrics to tie into the living room rug (which is open to the dining room where the chairs reside).  Make sure you measure properly and have plenty to pull up underneath (we skimped a bit and it made it harder on the larger-surfaced arm chairs).

2.  Staple gun.  Bonus cool-points if yours is as old as mine was!!

3.  Incredible Hulk hands.  Not really, but my hands did get tired stapling!  Maybe I should look into one of those grip-exercisers.  Remember those??

source

That's it!  Simply remove the seat from your chair frame (mine were super easy to screw out) and cut your fabric,

stretch it as tight as possible; staple, staple, staple, replace seat and voila!!  What a transformation!

 

Even a kid can do it! 

 

No, not really.  Don't let a kid use a staple gun.

Isn't the fabric combination both subtle and surprising?

We likey.
 

Inspired by this simple project and Cindi's vision (see? I always need it), the next step will be to paint the table (seen in the background completely covered in kid stuff in case you missed it), perhaps a bright pop of yellow like the one in the flowery pattern. 

Got any sad chairs that could use some chair-ity?  At $15 total, this easy facelift made a big difference.  And if you're a more frequent crafter than I, you may already have enough fabric at home, which would bring the total cost to like, zero dollars.  That would be the spirit of $crappy Love at its finest, my thrifty friends.

Go forth and re-cover!