Tables, Chairs, and Runners (Oh My!)

In my last post, I mentioned that we recently purchased a dining set from Craigslist for only $300. I can't emphasize enough how great of a deal that was. The dining chairs we've been eying were minimum $100 each, and we would have most likely spent $500 or so (if we got lucky and found one on clearance) for a dining table. That would have been a grand total of easily $1300 on a dining set. We just don't have that kind of budget around here so it was amaze balls that we saved so much. The furniture wasn't perfect when we bought it though. The lady selling it had a toddler and it was apparent when we took a look. Seeing what kind of damage that small human can do to furniture almost makes me second guess having children. (Just kidding mom/MIL....) They're little animals. We loved the overall quality of the table and chairs though and knew it would be hard to come across another set like this in our style and budget so we bought it.

Here's the damage from said toddler:

 It's hard to tell in this picture but there were stains everywhere. Grody.

Luckily, I was already planning on reupholstering the chairs since the fabric was blah, so I didn't care as much about the stains.

The worst damage was to the table. There were scratches and nicks all over the place. Being someone that sells wood furniture for a living, there was horror in my eyes. They might as well  have just put a jungle gym on top of the table for the kid to plan on.

 

And do they not know what a coaster is? I mean COME ON.

You're probably thinking right about now that we're nuts to have bought this furniture. Maybe we are, but we could see the potential.

The first thing we did was wipe down all the wood. I don't think they cleaned the furniture once since they bought it. Cleaning it also helped us get an idea of what we were really working with. Some of the marks that we thought were scratches were actually dried on food or dust build up (nasty I know) that just wiped off. We bought a wood re-touch kit at Joann's Fabric and went to town. It comes with a waxy crayon-like filler stick to fill in any deep scratches, as well as a marker to touch up color and hide any smaller imperfections. It was really easy to use and the walnut colored marker blended perfectly with our table.

This is the same spot where the water rings were. You can still lightly see the damage if you look closely but it's a huge improvement from when we bought it.

We also purchased some fabric at Joanns. They have some great coupons so between the wood touch-up kit and the fabric for all 8 chairs, we only spent $37. Saweet!

Upholstering chairs is really easy. No joke. The first thing I did was flip the chairs over and unscrew the seats. Our chairs had a piping detail around the edges that I didn't want to show through so I just cut them off each seat.

Next, I cut out squares large enough to wrap around each seat. We used two different fabrics because I wanted the chairs at the heads of the table to be a little different than the rest. My main concern here was making sure I cut the squares so that the pattern on each fabric went the same direction.

After that, I simply laid the fabric around the seat and stapled away. There's not really a wrong way to do this but I stapled the straight sides first and then the corners last. The corners took a little extra time because my perfectionist side came out and I didn't want to see any folds on the edges.

 

I also made sure to pull the fabric tight as I stapled so that I wouldn't have any wrinkles on the seat.

That's all there is to it. We screwed them back on the chair and put a fork in it.

I conveniently had a long piece of the navy fabric left so I thought it would be nice to make a table runner. I sound like Suzy Homemaker don't I?? Don't kid yourself, I have no idea how to sew. I've been seeing lots of tutorials lately on how to make no-sew curtains (like this one and this one) so I figured it would be easy enough to use this technique on a runner.

 The only things I needed for this project were my fabric (obvi), Heat n Bond iron-on adhesive that I picked up at Hob Lob, and an iron.

It was seriously the easiest project ever. First, I laid out my piece of fabric on the table to gauge what width I wanted and cut accordingly.

I unrolled the tape along the edge, folded the fabric over it, and ironed away. The trickiest part was making sure I was creating a straight line along the edge, but since my fabric had a big graphic print, it was easy to line everything up.

 I left a little space at the end since I knew I'd have to iron the edges there too.

 The directions on the Heat n Bond tell you to iron one last time on the other side to make sure everything sets.

That's it! The whole project took me maybe an hour.

I typically don't like things so matchy matchy but I love how it turned out. The best complement I got was from my best friend who asked if I bought the table runner from Target. I was doing a happy dance when she asked. Now that I know how easy it is, I'll probably be making more. I see Christmas, Thanksgiving, Valentines and Easter table runners in my future. Just kidding. Maybe. 

Have you tried any no-sew projects? Or am I the only one that doesn't know how to sew?

By the way, I'm linking up to the Best of the Nest , The Shabby Nest, and Thrifty Decor Chick !

Katy