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The Busy Budgeter

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DIY Project – Kid Proofing Your Dining Chairs in 30 min, for $4.00

By The Busy Budgeter | Leave a comment | This post may contain affiliate links

reupholster chair DIY

Recently, while visiting friends, we noticed that they had an immaculate house despite having 3 kids under the age of 4. How is that even possible? We had long given in to the idea of not having nice things until our youngest is about 7.

One of the dirtiest parts of the house is our kitchen chairs. At 2, our little Squishy is old enough to sit on his own and eat, but man does he make a mess! (Okay, part of this is our fault for having dining chairs with white cloth bottoms). Our friends have absolutely beautiful dining chairs that they covered the bottoms of in clear vinyl. When the kids are old enough, just remove the vinyl.
This project took us about 20 minutes for 4 chairs and cost about $8.00 (you shouldn’t spend more than $4 though!) buy your clear vinyl from either the walmart fabric department or at Joanne’s using the 50% off coupon they send out every month. This was a last minute idea for us and we rushed out to get the vinyl without price checking.
The vinyl wipes off so easily! Even if you forget to wipe the chair right after the meal and the food dries.

If your fabric chairs are already gross, remove the fabric and wash. Then cover with vinyl. Worst case scenario is that the fabric won’t come clean in which case you spend another $4.00 on new fabric.

Needed Items:
 
Screwdriver
Vinyl – about 1 yard for 4 chairs
Staple Gun – not absolutely necessary but it will make this really easy.
 

This is so easy, it barely needs a tutorial. Just flip your chair upside down and see how the fabric seat is attached. In this case (and all Ikea chairs) there are 4 screws that connect the seat to the chair. Unscrew those and remove the seat. The fabric is attached by an elastic string. If you want to wash it, peel it off and throw it in the wash. If it’s still new and clean, grab your vinyl (we didn’t even measure, just eyeballed it- 1 yard of vinyl did 4 chairs with quite a bit extra left over) and fold it around the seat, stapling the edges to the wooden back of the seat.

reupholster chair DIY
Then screw the seat back onto the chair and you’re all set! It was super easy. It took us less than 30 minutes to do all 4 chairs (most of that was time was trying to hunt down the staple gun). They look great and stains wipe right off. Now if only there was a way to protect the wooden chair back from Squishy’s maple syrup covered hands.
reupholster chair DIY
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