The chairs we bought for our breakfast table came with these hideous striped cushions. We decided to re-cover them.

We bought some nice green fabric at Old-Time Pottery, unscrewed the seats (four screws each), and got to work. The fabric is simply pulled tight over the cushion and stapled under the seat board. It looks like these chairs had already been re-covered at least once. The original material was yellow.

We attached the new fabric over the old. It’s best to start with the corners, at least when you have this kind of corner, which is notched for the structure of the chair. The fabric should be stretched tight so there are no wrinkles.

The opposite corner is next, to ensure fabric is pulled tight over the cushion.

The sides are last. If you pull the fabric tight by the corners, wrinkling and puckering is minimized. The result looks quite elegant, especially compared to the ghastly blue stripes of the previous covering. This one had a lump on the front edge from the original upholstery. We undid that corner and tightened up the old fabric so that it ended up smooth and straight.

Quite an improvement, I’d say. The chair looks much more elegant.

My wife will probably be upset that I’ve let you see our ugly kitchen floor with all the paint drips. Don’t worry, it will soon be torn out and replaced with ceramic tile.

This morning when I got in my new car, I turned up the volume on the radio to look for a station, and discovered that it was playing the music I have stored on my phone, in random order. So I listened to that instead of the radio. This is what is on my phone:

Alicia Isabel Santacruz: A mis amigos (My wife! Her first album, produced in 1983)

Alicia Isabel Santacruz: Migas de silencio (Her second album, from about 1988. The weird thing is that the title song is about her. The songwriter had a crush on her for years and finally realized nothing would come of it, so he wrote a goodbye song I translated here on my Xanga site a couple of years ago. He’s 30-some years older than she is.)

Carlos Vives: miscellaneous songs (Great music from Colombia’s north coast, mostly modernized vallenato)

Chris Rea: The Best of Chris Rea (Fool If You Think It’s Over is on this one, but the ones I really like are The Road To Hell, Auberge, and Going Fishing)

Crosby, Stills & Nash: CSN

Juan Fernando Fonseca: Ilusión (More lively modernized vallenato music)

José Luis Perales: 30 grandes éxitos (If I could be a singer, I’d be this guy. Lovely ballads)

Los Loney Boys: Los Lonely Boys (Texican rock and roll)

The Monkees: The Birds, the Bees, and the Monkees (Mostly obscure songs and alternate takes)

Coco Montoya: The Essential Coco Montoya (Bluesy rock)

The Moody Blues: Seventh Sojourn (One of the great albums of all time. No flaws)

Willie Nelson: Willie and Family Live