Luke's Dining Set

My dad bought me this dining set about 8 years ago from Wal-Mart. It's served its purpose pretty well to this point, but now we're in need of something a little bigger... something that can accommodate more than just the people in our little family.

Before buying our new dining set (which I'll post pictures of later, because that is still a work in progress), I decided it would probably be a good idea to re-upholster the chairs... the fabric is a little worn and stained (especially since a certain member of this family started eating at the table and not in his booster seat). We were originally planning on selling our old set on craigslist once we replaced it, but then a friend of ours (Luke) decided to get his first apartment and we thought we could donate the set to him instead. Since I had already bought the fabric, my husband and I both agreed that he would appreciate the gift more if I went ahead with recovering the seats instead of giving him the stained chairs as-is. (The picture above shows them to be deceptively white... trust me, they're filthy.)

Mistake #41 I did not take apart the chair FIRST to measure the size of the fabric I would need to cover the seats... I made an estimate and bought the fabric... and then took a chair apart, and found out the fabric wasn't quite large enough. I underestimated the depth of the cushion...

With a little creative cutting and sewing, I made it stretch and the chairs with patch work mirror each other, so I think it worked out okay.
The fabric is indoor/outdoor upholstery fabric, and I found it for 50% off! Thanks to Kathryn for chasing my little guy around the store so I could treasure hunt.

My tools:

My $11 staple gun from Michael's... which says "heavy duty" and yet couldn't push the staples all the way through even at the highest tension. It was a pretty easy fix, though. I just gently tapped down all the staples with a hammer (they were almost all the way in) once I finished stapling each seat all the way around.
(for actually fully dismantling the "pattern" chair, I used a screwdriver to pull up the staples and then pliers to yank them out completely)

Here, I've centered the seat over top of the fabric and I'm getting ready to staple it down. Because I'm not having to replace the actual cushions, I left the other seats intact which made it a LOT easier to get the new fabric on.

Staple opposite sides first, then tuck the corners in like a present, reattach to the chair frame and voila!

and you can barely tell where the seams from my patch job are (in my opinion)

Hopefully, Luke likes it as much as I do. Either way, it was good practice for reupholstering the new dining set... which I haven't even come close to starting yet. Note to self: buy at least half a yard of extra fabric for the next project...