The Dining Room: The Chairs

The furniture that is going in my newly painted dining room comes with history.  It belonged to my grandparents for about 37 years, and now it is mine.  I know that I’m lucky to be able to keep it and keep a part of my grandparents, but at the same time I’m still very emotional about the reason it is now in my house.  My grandpa passed away in 1991, so over the years I've come to think about the furniture as my Grandma's.  Only now, do I remind myself that it was theirs together.  I know it was something they worked hard to save up the money to buy. 

My grandmother passed away in December and I’m still battling the feelings of how it should be in her house with her there, rather than my house.  I can’t change that, so what I did decide to do is give her furniture an elegant room to reside in.

In the blank slate post I had posted the picture of the gorgeous fabric that I had bought for the curtains, valance and to cover the chairs with.  Thank goodness for half off sales, because it wasn’t the cheapest fabric they had, but it was the one I kept going back too.  Sunday while my mom was sewing the curtains, with as much non experienced help as I could give her, she said that my grandma would be proud of the work I’ve done on the dining room.  That means alot.

Ah, but this post isn’t about the curtains, it is about the chairs.  Meet the dining room chairs.

Grandma had many grand kids and great grand kids to help dirty up the chairs over the years.  I figured the best thing to do would be to recover them.

As with many projects it isn’t until you get started that you realize that there is more work to be done than you had thought there was.  At some point over the last 37 years two of the boards that the seat cushions were made to were cracked.  Out best guess is that someone stood in the chairs or something.  I am so very fortunate that my daddy is handy and comes with tools.  He cut out and fixed up me some new wooden bottoms for those two chairs.

When we were removing the blue covers on these chairs, this is what we found under them.  

Isn’t that just the loveliest color?  We had some debate on it, momma calls it gold, but me, I think it is more of a yellow green color.  While the blue was removed, we did leave the original, umm color on there.  Maybe when someone else decides they don’t like the covering I have on there, they will also get a kick of the lovely color hiding underneath.

Now for the finished product, the lovely chair with it’s pretty brown, blue and gold striped material…

I love them!  I also think grandma would love them as well.

I can’t express how lucky I have to have parents that would give up their Sunday afternoon to help their home improvement challenged daughter recover seat cushions.

Now I’m off to talk to my brother about another projects I want to work on…

I'm linking this up over at Delightful Order.

I've also linked up at Thrifty Decor Chick's Before and After Party 

and Elements Interiors - Whassup Wednesdays.