How to Recover a Folding Table and Chairs

Learn how to update and recover an old folding table and chairs. 

updated 10/20

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Can you believe that Thanksgiving is next week?  I'm in full on preparation mode!  While I love hosting our family for this Holiday, we always need extra seating! As I pulled our hand-me-down table and chairs out of storage, I decided to give the set a makeover.

How to update an old Folding Table and Chairs

Pull out your old card table and chairs and clean them really well.  I just use a clorox wipe (or you could use warm soapy water and a rag) to clean all of the surfaces.

Remove the seat and the table top.  I did this by turning them upside down and unscrewing the screws.  They kind of were stuck because of the age, but I eventually removed them all.

I spray painted the frames of the table and chairs with black spray paint.  I used several light coats to keep the paint from running.  I used almost 2 cans of this spray paint.  

While I was waiting for the paint to dry, I recovered the chairs and table top.  I somehow missed taking pictures of this step, but here's the process.

• Buy Fabric.  I bought about 3 yards of flannel backed plastic topped oil cloth fabric from Walmart.  You could also use a table cloth made from oil cloth.
• Lay the fabric out and put the table top upside down on top of it.  
• Staple the fabric to the backer board of the chairs and table.  Unfortunately I did this at my kitchen table and used staples that were too long.  (Can you see where this is going?)  Yes, I stapled the table top to my beautiful kitchen table.  (cue tears!!) I dug the staples out (sniff, sniff), bought shorter staples and tried again.  
• I pulled the fabric taught, and stapled as I went around the table top.  

Once I was done stapling the fabric, I put the recovered table top back into the table frame and screwed it back in.  Then I repeated with each of the chairs.  

And that's how easy it is to Recover a Folding Table and Chairs.  Now we have not new, but improved extra seating for Thanksgiving!  

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