Cara Wilkerson’s Easy Holiday Furniture Redo

Posted on 14 December 2010

If you ask us, Cara Wilkerson is the local queen of furniture makeovers (check out her blog, Live the Home Life, for a taste of her fab projects and fun humor). And we were just delighted that Cara made over a set of chairs just for us! Come to find out, it’s really quite simple! Have a look, then get to work making over a couple of chairs of your own, just in time for Christmas dinner.

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When my friends at At Home in Arkansas asked me to whip up a special Furniture Flip for their holiday guest blogger series, not only was I honored to have been asked but also super excited to haul out holiday decorations from the depths of my attic and get down to serious rehabbing business.

If you are anything like my crew of friends and family, you too tend to cram as many folks around a dining table as possible. Extra seating is never turned away from one of our holiday gatherings, so a couple of arm chairs was a no-brainer choice for this round of rehabbing. Let’s kick off this experiment with a few before shots of our guinea pigs…

In this neck of the woods, I tend to stick to a lime green & cherry red color scheme for holiday decorations. Since these chairs were in need of just a smidge of reupholstery, no better way to keep this furniture flip in the spirit of the season than to choose a fabric along the same lines.

First up, removing the seat of the chair from the frame. Most dining chairs have just a few screws anchoring the seat to the frame, so with the twist of a screwdriver, the seat popped right off.

Next up, the always enjoyable task of plucking the old staples to release the fabric and batting. A pair of needle nose pliers can help knock out this job in no time.

A few layers of batting give your seat a fuller look and adds a little cushion. When measuring batting, leave a few inches of overhang for stapling. Gently tug the batting over the underside of the seat and use a staple gun to secure all the way around.

Measure and cut fabric just as the batting—leave a few inches overhang. Staple to secure the fabric around the entire perimeter of the seat.

Once the fabric is secure, just reattach the seat to the frame using the original screws. That’s it! A super simple way to add additional seating (and a little extra spice) to holiday entertaining.