New Kitchen Table

Yes, that's right!  We have a new kitchen table, but maybe I shouldn't call it new.  The previous owner's had a glass table that we liked because it allowed the light to shine through the room.  We were using a small table that Rachael had in her apartment, and it was really small and uncomfortable to sit at when we had friends over.  We found this table on Craigslist, and after driving an hour to take a look at it, I just couldn't say no, although Greg had his reservations.  But like most of our projects, Greg doesn't have the vision that I do of what it will look like at the end.  Greg was checking out the quality of the chairs, and I was trying to imagine how it would look in the room.  The hardware was all different on the chairs and they weren't level.  All things that could be fixed!  This is why we work well together...

Visually, the table looked good from the beginning, but there was still a lot of work to be done.

I've always wanted to recover the seat cushion of a chair because it looks so easy, but let me tell you, it's not that simple...

We picked up the table on our way to Columbia on Saturday, and we arrived back at home around 11 PM.  Immediately, we started disassembling the chairs, and I started wiping them down.  I should have taken some pictures of the dirty paper towels.  They were disgusting!

The chairs had a black fabric cover over the seat, which wasn't done well, but I could see why they recovered the original chair.  Again... DISGUSTING!  We called it a night at 2 AM.  The next morning, we made a list of new hardware to buy at Lowe's, and we were going to stop by JoAnn's to pick up new foam for the cushioning and fabric to recover it in. After getting back from running errands on Saturday, Greg started switching out the hardware, and I tackled taking out all of the staples.  There were so many!

These staples were all from just 1 chair!

There were stains everywhere!

Meanwhile, Chase is jumping over everything, so excited from all the choas in the house.  Anything new that is brought in to our house, Chase is all over it making sure it's okay to stay.  I tried keeping him off all the dirty cushions so he wouldn't catch some sort of disease, but that is what ultimately made him happy, so I couldn't resist.  Please don't report me for animal cruelty. 

Next, we cut the new foam to match the shape of the chairs.  We used the old form as a pattern.  Greg kept telling me to keep Chase off of the foam because he didn't want him to scratch it up since he was running around like a maniac.  Sure enough, we took a break, and Miss Abby found a spot to make herself comfortable.  Chase said it wasn't fair.

We cut the fabric around the seat, placed the foam on top of it, and then Greg stood on top of the wood to weigh down the foam and pulled the fabric around it as I stapled. I thought I would put in less staples, but I don't know if that is possible in order to have a nice look from the front.  We then finished up by stapling in a black fabric to give the bottom a finished look. 

 And here is the final product! So, covering chair cushions was probably the easiest project that we had taking us only 3 days to finish.  It was still a little hard on us (my hands were sore from stapling and Greg's legs hurt from the constant squatting position of weighing down the foam and pulling the fabric).

There is a lot of brown now.  I wanted to eventually change the basksplash above the countertops to add in some color and make it more modern, but everything matches so well now, so that may have to wait for our next house.  I will eventually replace the curtains.