dining chair slipcovers

these are the dining room chairs that captain fantastic got when he bought the house in which we now live, which used to be the house in which he and some roommates lived, before we even met (paint and rug also pre-me):


the legs are neat, but the seats are a crusty old faux-leathery upholstery, the backs are boring and the finish is chipping all over. recovering the cushions and refinishing or painting the chairs would be an option, but then we'd still be stuck with the boring backs.

enter one of my new favorite blogs, cote de texas. super duper love it. lengthy, informative and interesting posts. fabulous style. a recent feature on the blog was "small houses." which are actually like twice the size of my house. but whatevs. everything's bigger in texas, no? two of the featured houses have similar dining chairs, and i looove them:


monogrammed slipcovers!!! in the words of stacey london, SHUT UP! gimme. but methinks maybe instead of to-the-floor length like above, i would like the precious (and by precious i mean manly and definitely not too girly, no) pleats below:

(can't remember where i got this. let me know if you recognize!)

and you know what i'm thinking? perfect first slipcover project for the budding upholstress! i can sew, and i've recently mastered the art of the pleat. this is like a step up from the ever present seat recover, yet not as monstrous as the club chair and couch slipcovers/reupholstery of my dreams. yes? anyone done this before? any tips? and answer me this: the top and bottom chairs appear upholstered underneath, but those in the middle look like they've got wooden frames in there...so do we think i need to rig up some padding, or would the covers look good just over the nekkid wood?