How to Recover Dining Chair Seat Covers

Unscrew and remove the seats from the chair frames. Number each seat and each frame, so that you can put all of the seats back on their original frames.

Lay one of the seats face down on your kraft paper and trace around it, leaving 6 to 8 inches extra all the way around. Cut out this shape.

Lay your fabric out, printed side down. Use the paper pattern to cut out as many chair seats as needed.

Use the screwdriver to pry up any staples holding the original fabric to the chair seats. Spray the foam found underneath the fabric with adhesive and attach the batting. If you are going to leave the original fabric, spray that with adhesive and attach the batting to it.

Spray the batting with adhesive, and lay a piece of the cut fabric on top. Work quickly; you have about 30 seconds to make sure the pattern is straight before the spray adhesive bonds.

Recover chairs with arms by laying the seat on the wrong side of the fabric, as you did the others. Mark on the fabric where the notches for the arms are. Cut a small "V" pointing into each corner of the arm-space, so that the fabric will fold flat around the space.

Turn the seat face down and pull the fabric taut around it, stapling it carefully as you go. Don't cover up the screw holes. For rounded corners, pleat the fabric as you staple it. To make square corners, either cut off the extra fabric or fold it as you do to make hospital corners on a bed. (See Resources for illustrations of how to do this.)

Repeat this process until all of the chairs are done. Trim away any excess fabric and reattach the seats to their frames, matching them by the numbers you marked earlier.