Dining Room Chairs and Swatches

Rugs have been pushed aside, ladies and gentlemen - and been replaced by Craigslist.  I hinted towards this last week, however, it has gotten much, much worse in the last few days.  It has come to a point where I now have over 45 alerts set for different search terms, and in addition to that, I have nine different Craigslist search tabs open on my Chrome browser.  I have been stalking that site at least once per hour, and have been finding some amazing things.

This weekend, Dylan and I went to visit my grandparents, and on our way down, stopped to take a look at some chairs, which we ended up buying.  These two chairs, the IKEA Borje chairs, are on my shopping list for our dining room, so I was so excited to see that these were the color that I wanted.

The seller said that they had only been used two or three times, and they are in excellent condition, so I totally believe her.  We bought them for $40 combined, tucked them away in the backseat of my car, and left her home with a smile on our faces! I mean, how can you not smile after getting such perfect chairs at a great price?! Each chair new from IKEA is $49, so getting two for less than the price of one was incredible!!

So, getting these chairs brings me to the next part of the plan - recovering the seats. I mentioned last week when I talked about the Klobo Loveseat that I wanted to recover both in a patterned fabric so that it ties the living and dining areas in together.  However, I was kind of worried that some of the patterns of fabric would clash and be too busy with the pattern on the rug - and boy was I right.  I didn't realize how busy some of those swatches ended up being, so I am very glad that I ordered them.

I laid all of the swatches out on the Klobo Loveseat, which is already in the living/dining room so using the natural light from the large picture window in that space, I was immediately able to eliminate some of the fabrics because they weren't the right color I was looking for.  You can kind of see the difference in the color of the fabrics compared to the paint swatch, which is the one that I have bordered in black, but trust me when I say that some of the colors that look like they match in this picture were totally off, like the one right above the paint swatch. Wow, was that an awful clash!

On the Arms: Premier Prints Small Dandelion Turquoise/White and Premier Prints Circles True Turquoise (Discontinued) 

On the Seat Back - Top Row: Premier Prints Solid Turquoise, Premier Prints Cameron Slub Aquarius, Richloom Sensu Mallard Teal

On the Seat Back - Bottom Row: Premier Prints Indoor/Outdoor Sticks Pacific

On the Seat - Top Row: Premier Prints Linked Jade, Premier Prints Indoor/Outdoor Towers Pacific, Premier Prints Jiri Stripe Jade, Premier Prints Linked Macon Apache Blue

On the Seat - Bottom Row: Premier Prints Lulu Stripe True Turquoise, Covington Majestic Velour Peacock, Premier Prints Dandelion White/True Turquoise, Premier Prints Nicole Slub Aquarius, Premier Prints Canopy Stripe Slub Aquarius

I wasn't able to test these out with the rug that I bought, because I actually exchanged the 8'x10' for the 9'x12', and haven't removed the new one from the packaging.  As you can see, there is just too much stuff in the room right now to be able to open it up, so I used my iPad to show the rug pattern with the fabric.  Turns out that the rug is a lot busier than I thought it would be, so we have actually decided to do two different fabrics.  And surprisingly, even though we chose a pattern and a solid, we will be using the pattern on the seats of the chairs!  

I love the chevron pattern above, and even though Dylan is not a big fan, he said he could deal with it in small quantities. Plus, this Premier Prints fabric isn't in-your-face chevron, like some of the other ones are, so I think that worked in my favor with getting him to agree to it!  The second fabric swatch is to die for. Seriously.  It's a turquoise velour, made by Covington, and it is the softest fabric I have ever felt. It's even softer than the Minky fabric that is so popular for baby blankets.  As soon as I touched this fabric, I wanted to lay on it, and knew that I had to have it.  Luckily for me, the color in the velour and the chevron is almost exactly the same, so Dylan suggested that we do the print on the chairs, since the angle in the chevron pattern matches slightly with the rug, and then we use the velour on the Klobo Loveseat.

Sold!

So, that's the plan. I have purchased the fabric and I am waiting for it to arrive.  I can't wait to get to work in recovering the chairs and the loveseat - and don't worry, I'll be posting a DIY so that you too can recover your IKEA furniture!

Have you ever recovered a piece of IKEA furniture? What problems did you come across in your process?  

Rugs have been pushed aside, ladies and gentlemen - and been replaced by Craigslist.  I hinted towards this last week, however, it has gotten much, much worse in the last few days.  It has come to a point where I now have over 45 alerts set for different search terms, and in addition to that, I have nine different Craigslist search tabs open on my Chrome browser.  I have been stalking that site at least once per hour, and have been finding some amazing things.

This weekend, Dylan and I went to visit my grandparents, and on our way down, stopped to take a look at some chairs, which we ended up buying.  These two chairs, the IKEA Borje chairs, are on my shopping list for our dining room, so I was so excited to see that these were the color that I wanted.

The seller said that they had only been used two or three times, and they are in excellent condition, so I totally believe her.  We bought them for $40 combined, tucked them away in the backseat of my car, and left her home with a smile on our faces! I mean, how can you not smile after getting such perfect chairs at a great price?! Each chair new from IKEA is $49, so getting two for less than the price of one was incredible!!

So, getting these chairs brings me to the next part of the plan - recovering the seats. I mentioned last week when I talked about the Klobo Loveseat that I wanted to recover both in a patterned fabric so that it ties the living and dining areas in together.  However, I was kind of worried that some of the patterns of fabric would clash and be too busy with the pattern on the rug - and boy was I right.  I didn't realize how busy some of those swatches ended up being, so I am very glad that I ordered them.

I laid all of the swatches out on the Klobo Loveseat, which is already in the living/dining room so using the natural light from the large picture window in that space, I was immediately able to eliminate some of the fabrics because they weren't the right color I was looking for.  You can kind of see the difference in the color of the fabrics compared to the paint swatch, which is the one that I have bordered in black, but trust me when I say that some of the colors that look like they match in this picture were totally off, like the one right above the paint swatch. Wow, was that an awful clash!

On the Arms: Premier Prints Small Dandelion Turquoise/White and Premier Prints Circles True Turquoise (Discontinued) 

On the Seat Back - Top Row: Premier Prints Solid Turquoise, Premier Prints Cameron Slub Aquarius, Richloom Sensu Mallard Teal

On the Seat Back - Bottom Row: Premier Prints Indoor/Outdoor Sticks Pacific

On the Seat - Top Row: Premier Prints Linked Jade, Premier Prints Indoor/Outdoor Towers Pacific, Premier Prints Jiri Stripe Jade, Premier Prints Linked Macon Apache Blue

On the Seat - Bottom Row: Premier Prints Lulu Stripe True Turquoise, Covington Majestic Velour Peacock, Premier Prints Dandelion White/True Turquoise, Premier Prints Nicole Slub Aquarius, Premier Prints Canopy Stripe Slub Aquarius

I wasn't able to test these out with the rug that I bought, because I actually exchanged the 8'x10' for the 9'x12', and haven't removed the new one from the packaging.  As you can see, there is just too much stuff in the room right now to be able to open it up, so I used my iPad to show the rug pattern with the fabric.  Turns out that the rug is a lot busier than I thought it would be, so we have actually decided to do two different fabrics.  And surprisingly, even though we chose a pattern and a solid, we will be using the pattern on the seats of the chairs!  

I love the chevron pattern above, and even though Dylan is not a big fan, he said he could deal with it in small quantities. Plus, this Premier Prints fabric isn't in-your-face chevron, like some of the other ones are, so I think that worked in my favor with getting him to agree to it!  The second fabric swatch is to die for. Seriously.  It's a turquoise velour, made by Covington, and it is the softest fabric I have ever felt. It's even softer than the Minky fabric that is so popular for baby blankets.  As soon as I touched this fabric, I wanted to lay on it, and knew that I had to have it.  Luckily for me, the color in the velour and the chevron is almost exactly the same, so Dylan suggested that we do the print on the chairs, since the angle in the chevron pattern matches slightly with the rug, and then we use the velour on the Klobo Loveseat.

Sold!

So, that's the plan. I have purchased the fabric and I am waiting for it to arrive.  I can't wait to get to work in recovering the chairs and the loveseat - and don't worry, I'll be posting a DIY so that you too can recover your IKEA furniture!

Have you ever recovered a piece of IKEA furniture? What problems did you come across in your process?