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The History of Dining Furniture

These days we take for granted many common conveniences that make our lives easier to live, and don’t pay mind to the process of how they came to be such an essential part of our lives. Take for instance, dining room furniture. We use dining chairs and dining tables that are made from the finest oak, or other materials, but don’t realize who invented these tools and what prompted someone to think that they might need an appliance to eat from. 

Originally, people ate from the ground but found the dissatisfying taste of dirt spoiled a meal quickly. Then the use of a table-like flat rock was used to avoid the food from rolling back to the dirt to spoil. As people evolved, they invented various tools to ease their lives and take some of the burden of harsh living off their backs.

Why would they evolve into such fancy works of art we encounter today? After inventing the essential tools needed to ease life for everyone, the overall quality of life improved to the point that someone created a better product that was more fancy, higher quality, and they could make money from their efforts. People made big businesses from these inventions and formed large companies that exist today.

Although oak may not have been the primary source of materials for use, it has become the most desired type of furniture used today. Oak furniture has stood the test of time. It’s endurance has outlasted most other materials and it’s beauty is cannot be compared to any other wood available. It is solid, beautiful, and warm to sight, and touch. Even though stone was most likely first used, it is not easily portable and requires a team to move.

In the Middle Ages, upper class Britons and other European nobility dined in the Great Hall which was a very large room that seated the population of the entire castle. The family sat at the head of the table raised up higher than everyone else to set themselves apart from more common people, and filtered down the table as the status diminished toward the end. This called for a very, large, long table that could accommodate such large gatherings. As times progressed, the dining room became one of a formal dining area for special occasions and having the family room being an area that most other non formal meals served.

Comfort and style has significantly improved also. If the original chairs had no back rests on them, the successors soon did, with comfort and style that improved with the abilities of the woodworkers improving. One of the main reasons that Oak is used in these furnishings is because it can be easily manipulated into a fancy design, which can include family emblems, and is also readily available. With all the trees that are cut to make furniture, more are planted to replace the needed supplies in the world. It may take a few years, but …

How to Reupholster a Dining Chair

If your dining room chairs are worn and have seen better days, you may be considering replacing them. If this is in your budget and you can find chairs in a style that you like and fits your decor, that is wonderful. One option that gets overlooked is to reupholster the chairs you currently have. This is a project that you can do yourself, is very affordable, and can completely change the look of a dining room.

When you decide to replace the upholstery on your chairs the first thing you will want to do is find a new fabric to use. Large craft stores and fabric shops should have many varieties to choose from. Just make sure that you get something that is graded for upholstery or it won’t last very long on a chair. Take your time in choosing a fabric. This will be the soul of your new dining room chairs. Unless you are going to change the entire room you might want to keep in mind what your design and decor is like and choose a fabric that will work well with what is already in the room.

While you are getting the fabric you can grab any other supplies that you will need that you don’t already have. Besides the fabric, you will need a pencil, a screw driver, a fabric measuring tape, scissors, a staple gun, and staples.

To begin your project start by removing the seat from the chair. Many chairs, simply, use screws to hold the seat in place. Remove these screws and put them somewhere so you can reattach the seat when you are finished.

Next, take your fabric and lay it face down on your working surface. Take your seat and place it upside down on the fabric. You should be looking at the bottom of the seat. You can now use the fabric measuring tape to measure the size of your seat. Sometimes you can just get a good guess of the size you need by folding the fabric over the edges of the seat. Take your pencil and make some marks where you will cut the fabric. Make sure you have enough fabric to fold over the sides of the seat and around to the bottom.

You need the fabric to reach the bottom because after you cut it you will stretch it and staple it to the bottom of the chair. You can use the old fabric as a guide to know where to staple. As you stable around the perimeter of the seat, make sure you stretch the fabric over the edge so you aren’t left with a lot of loose material on the sitting surface when you are finished. The corners will be the most difficult and most important to make a quality seat cover. Take your time and staple smaller sections at a time and everything will turn out great.

When you get the fabric all stapled down …