restoration hardware dining room chairs

ever find yourself flipping through the pages of house & home and drooling over the beautiful statement chairs that we show? i do too but believe me, these can cost a fortune. but you know what, you can do this yourself and get the look for a lot less. here i've got a pair of great shield back chairs that i found on queen street west. they're are $95 each which may sound like a lot but trust me, the designer occasional chairs can be 3, 4, 5 times more than that, and it's not going to take too much money to transform them. the fabric, unquestionably, is horrible, we have to get rid of it. the wood is okay but it's got sort of a cherry tone that i don't really love,

and i'd love to do a more dramatic black lacquered finish so we're going to do that with paint. right here i've got a whole bunch of different fabrics that i was considering for reupholstering these chairs. i'd like to sort of go for a more sophisticated look, something with muted tones and some neutrals in there, because diy projects, let's face it, can look kind of flashy. we want to go more sophisticated and that's what you want to do to get a chair or a diy project to look like it came from a store and you didn't do it in your garage. so i've got this fabric that's got sort of a lyrical criss-cross line on it, it'll look beautiful, but this one's kind of pricey. but this one is the greatest find ever. for under$30/yard, i found this beautiful charcoal grey and cream ikat at designer fabric outlet. you can see that once you center that motif on there, it's going to make such a statement and with the painted lacquer finish,

it's going to look so cool. but first i have to paint the chair so forget about the fabric. the seat just pops off with a couple screws and then you're ready to wash down your chair. i've already gone ahead and scuffed it up with some sandpaper so that the paint will stick. and now i'm using my solution of natura safe prep and water to get rid of the dust and clean up any dirt and grease that might be there. and for a beautiful piano lacquer finish, i'm going to use this black beauti-tone rust coat enamel based paint. now all you wood furniture lovers, look away. going black and dramatic. the brush is great for getting into all the grooves.

now this is going to take me a while so ryan, grab a brush help me out. "okay, here to help." then you're going to want to do a couple thin coats to get it covered better than one thick coat. so you feel like you've got the hang of it? "yeah, i think so." great, here you go. "oh gosh, one for each hand." different day, different clothes. what, did you think i could paint that whole chair by myself in one day?

ryan helped me out and he did a pretty good job. he used about 3 coats of black paint and left about 1 hr in between to let each coat dry and it looks pretty good for his first try. and now we've just got to move on to the seat, which is the last step in the transformation of this beautiful occasional chair. in order to make the fabric with its very best on the seat, i wanted to use the central motif of the ikat fabric on the center of the seat. so i've used my template and i'm placing it down on the central medallion section, and that will mean that i'll get that pattern dead in the center of my chair. so i'm just going to place that down roughly, you can adjust after, and cut the fabric out,

leaving about 4" around the perimeter of the whole seat so you have got lots of fabric to pull up and staple to the seat. so obviously you have to turn the fabric over. you don't want to staple it on upside down, that would be a disaster. you can kind of still see the pattern coming through so that you can get that central motif where you want it. and then place down your seat and then we're going to use a staple gun. i'll fold the fabric over, which helps because i can tell this is the center and it's roughly in the center of my seat. and i'm going to pull it as tight as i can and drive the first staple in. it's a little loud. and you see it just holds it right in there.

instead of stapling around this first side like this, you want to go ahead and staple the opposite side. when you're starting, you do the first 4 staples that way, and that means that you've got the fabric pulled tightly across and you don't end up making it all askew by just doing one side at a time. and then you can turn it over bravely and see your work. and so now you know that you've got it kind of centered and it will look great on the chair. now you just add the rest of the staples. so now i've worked my way up to the first corner and this is where you'll have to fiddle a little bit. depending on the thickness of your fabric, you just got to try to fold it on an angle in a way that makes it as neat as possible. the last staple, yes!

okay so now what we need to do is trim off some extra fabric. no droopy drawers chair here. so i'm cutting it but i'm making sure not to go too close to all my staples because i don't want the fabric to fray and fall apart. and we're rounding the corner, getting to the end. now with all the excess trimmed away, it looks great and we can attach it back to the chair. time for a dry run, i'm very excited. ikat and lacquer... oh, it looks so good! and let's test it out.

just as i suspected, stylish and comfortable. wait a minute, hang on. you can go from this grannyish freak... to house & home chic!

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