My dining room chairs are fifteen years old. The stained seat cushions were full of cat hair in all the tiny crevices, not an appetizing place to sit and eat.

My back-up plan was to get some seat covers from the store and tie them on. If I carried out that plan, the thought at the back of my mind would be “ewww”.  I knew what would be under them. I had to replace. It sounded like such a gigantic project. There were so many reasons not to do it. And so many reasons to do it, many of those having to do with cat hair.

So I began disassembling the chair pad/seat from the frame. If you have metal chairs with padded seats, yours won’t be much different to take apart. This would be true for a lot of types of dining room chair, not only the metal ones. Unscrew the pads from the chair base.

Turn the pads over and tear off the pretty lining that hides all the ugly bits.The staples that hold the material to the board will need to be pried off in case they interfere with the addition of new staples. This chair had buttons and these need to be snipped from beneath and pulled through. Oh! Gack! Matted balls of fur!

I cut the material in a square. I don’t have a sewing machine so I’m not going to do the tailored covers that were original. I place the board with the padding face down.

With a staple gun I begin stapling the material, careful at the corners to fold the material so it pleats around the edges of the corners. Yes, it’s ugly. I am not going to make it pretty with a lining because no one but the cat sees the underside of the chairs.

Use the screws to attach the chair seats.

Voila! New chairs!