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Mum transforms chairs with Kmart tea towels: 'Very stylish'

Living room upholstery can quickly date, especially if it's patterned.

It's not cheap to have it professionally reupholstered, but one mum has an ingenious hack - using Kmart tea towels!

"Not really a hack, but we bought some bar stools off marketplace and I didn’t like the material on the seats," Lynn shared with the Kmart Hacks & Decor Facebook group.

Before during and after photos of reupholstering a kitchen stool with a Kmart tea towel. The image on the left shows a metal framed chair in a beige toned fabric, and o the right it has been covered with a romantic black, pink and white print.
An Aussie mum has transformed stools using Kmart tea towels. Photo: Facebook

"Ages ago, I had bought Kmart black floral tea towels with the thought of covering some kitchen chairs, but never got around to it," Lynn told the group.

"Yesterday, I hunted out the tea towels, and hubby and I set to work.

"This is the before and after ... I love them!"

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So did her fellow group members, with 280 likes in two days.

"Wow! You would never know that was a tea towel! Very stylish!," one wrote.

"Love the new pattern, it’s so romantic," another added.

"Big improvement," a third said.

Lynn had seen the idea before on Facebook and thought of it when she saw the stools. "I’d seen the idea of using the Kmart tea towels as cushion covers and other home decor items, as well as to re-cover chairs and thought that I would like to try it for myself," she told Yahoo Lifestyle.

"Everyone that has seen them so far loves them," she added.

How she did it

She also helped other fans of her hack by explaining the process and showing them how she'd done it.

"I got my husband to staple the sides while I held it, then I started on two of the corners on one end, and worked the material around while he stapled it in place, then we did the other two corners and finally the remaining ends," Lynn said.

"Then I just cut the extra material off.

"It has a ply bottom covering what we did."

Lynn is not the only person to use the tea towel to reupholster furniture.

"I used the same ones on my dining room chairs," Adelaide mum Denise revealed.

A white chair that has been reupholstered with a Kmart tea towel and the chair around the dining table
Adelaide mum Denise also used the tea towels to update her dining chairs. Photo: Supplied

"I've recovered them before with other material," Denise told Yahoo Lifestyle.

"I had seen people using the tea towels for girls' dresses and thought the tea towels might fit my chair bases, with less wastage and cheaper.

"I liked the look and can change it fairly easily."

Another mum who tried this hack back in 2019 was Jodi Fray, who used the same printed tea towel on her dining chairs.

She said the whole job took her "five minutes, tops".

While the tea towel the mums used isn't currently in stock in Kmart, there are plenty of beautifully patterned tea towels to choose from, for as little as $1.50 each.

With prices that low, if you get bored, the print is cheap and easy to replace.

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