How To Recover Kitchen Stools

white painted kitchen stool with vintage cover

Before the plague hit our family, I recovered two kitchen stools that my sister gave me, I kept meaning to buy some for the kids to sit up at our island, but never found ones that were right for the price. Seeing as how these were free, the price was perfect and I brought them home.

However, the cute red plaid my sister had did not match my kitchen in the slightest. I had, because I am such a packrat, leftover material from the curtains I sewed for the kitchen when we moved in. Four years ago. I had this *whoa* moment when I realized that we have been in our house for 4 years. That my daughter wasn’t even born when we moved in,I was pregnant with her. I also couldn’t believe I kept anything for 4 years without tossing it.

What Do You Need?

new material

staple gun

staples

arms of steel

So I ripped off the old material, and placed the stool onto my new material.

Then I started stapling, Now, I have no idea if this is how you do it, but I didn’t screw them up, so how wrong could it be? I took one side, stapled it, then pulled the other side taut and stapled it.

stapling the new seat cover to old stool seat

Then I started working my way around the edges, folding it in and placing a staple. The one thing I did realize is that you need to smooth the fabric on the front so that the fold is on the back, and the front then is entirely smooth. Where my finger (desperately in need of a manicure, cripes) is, you can see how the fold starts at the edge of the back side. You might have to smooth the front out and pull the fold over.

close up of the seat cover edges in the stool seat

Stapled!

When it was done, I then trimmed the edges, put in some more staples for the heck of it, and it was done. Martha Stewart is probably screaming in her grave. Oh wait..she’s not dead yet. But I am sure she’s screaming anyways.

finished seat cover with more staples and trimmed edges

Then of course, they have to go back onto the chair. And voila, done! It was probably just a fluke that I managed to do this, or it was the fever talking, I usually don’t know what I am talking about. But I like to pretend.

And to be honest, the job I did was better than my sister’s recovering effort, so that’s all that matters in the end.