A simple reupholstering project: dining chairs

Umm, so it's been forever since I actually reupholstered these chairs I bought off Craigslist. I just haven't gotten around to writing about it. You may have seen glimpses of them in our dining room pictures already, so they should come as no big surprise.

The fabric and foam was disgusting and disintegrated, so I had to rip everything off. I used a 1" densified batting as an alternative to foam because it happened to be on sale at Hancock Fabrics. It is also supposed to hold up better, not disintegrate, and resist mildew. I traced around the chair board onto the dense batting and cut.

Then I laid this over my batting (I used extra loft polyester batting, also from Hancock Fabrics) leaving a border of a few inches around.

I stapled on each side to secure the batting before tackling the corners.

As for the corners I first pulled each corner down, the folded the edges in like wrapping a present.

I then finished stapling the sides, making sure to pull everything nice and tight.

(Notice my little cheap stapler in the background-nothing fancy, just the cheapest one at Lowes.)
Next I flipped the cushion over and centered it on my fabric. I took my time to make sure nothing was crooked. I centered it, flipped it over, checked, then shot one staple into each side, then checked again before proceeding. It's a minor pain to unpick staples!

Then I wrapped the cushion just like with the batting.

Finally I Scotch-guarded the seats since they were going to be used in the dining room (I tested it first to make sure nothing funky happened to the fabric the night before).

And here is one finished.

And here they are in the dining room.

I used a coordinating print for the arm chairs. Better?