My husband has the dining room set that belonged to his grandmother – table, chairs, buffet, and china cabinet.  These pieces are all lovely – except for the dated green vinyl of the seats.  (Never mind the color.  It was still gross, just from feeling “crunchy.”)

So I set out to fix this by re-covering the seats.  If you have a staple gun, this is really, really easy.  Unscrew the seat from the chair’s frame (and don’t lose the screws!).  Then stretch your fabric around the seat, stapling it to the bottom.  Screw the seat back on.  Easy-peasy.  (It will probably be tighter after you’ve done one or two, though, as you sort of get a “feel” for stretching the fabric.)

I used canvas drop cloths for my seat covers.  Then, since my children are little and non-wipeable seats would pretty much be a disaster, I added another layer of clear vinyl.  That way the fabric of the seats shows through, but we can wipe them off.

They look sooo much better!  I was afraid, beforehand, that the seats wouldn’t have enough contrast with the wood and they’d just look overall washed-out, but they turned out better than I expected.  And if they ever get really messed up, I can just re-re-cover them. 😉

(Excuse the stuff in the background.  I was still mid-project here, with the staple gun, extension cord, etc. all out.)