Mission Seating Complete!

Well hello blog land. It has been a while, and I've honestly been a little torn on whether I miss blogging on not. I miss the community, but I feel like I'm still connected to a lot of those people on other social media networks. I don't miss the pressure I used to feel to constantly be putting together quality, inspirational content. It's not always easy to come up with something that is worth blogging about these days. I am sure a lot of you can relate to that! Honestly, today I was supposed to be taking part in a really awesome Canadian Bloggers Christmas Home Tour, but we just weren't in a place to share anything really fabulous and inspirational from around here, and now I feel like I've let down a bunch of really awesome bloggers. For that I feel awful.

Today though, I FINALLY have something worth sharing and there is more coming soon! We're finally crossing some big projects off of our list, which is great because we are adding some more big projects to our list for the new year. For now, I'm excited to share our completed church pew in our dining room!

Back in May we picked up this 11 foot church pew off of Craigslist for $100...

We spent a lot of time in the spring and summer just trying to strip and sand all of that glossy black paint off. It was truly a labour of love...

It was SO MUCH work, but we both agree now that it was totally worth it. All of that stripping and sanding revealed some gorgeous cedar on the seat back. The wood of the seat wasn't quite as nice, but still had a neat grain to it that we really liked. After some discussion we decided to clear coat the back and seat. There is still some paint stuck between the boards, and a lot of variation in the colour of the cedar since some spots needed more sanding than others, but it looks so great.

Since these wood tones differ from our dining table, we decided to break up the colour a bit and paint the arms and legs of the pew. I picked out a variety of warm white paint chips from the Home Depot and we started by comparing the chips to our head chairs in the dining room. We were able to narrow it down to 4 colours, and once we had all of the cedar stained on the bench we compared our colours again. Our final choice was called "Clean Canvas" from the Home Decorators collection and it is perfect!

B finished it last week and a friend came by on Friday to help him move it into the house (and up the stairs... a little awkward, but they were troopers). We'll be using it this Thursday to host our annual Thanksgiving dinner, just as we had hoped!

I honestly cannot believe this is the same piece of furniture that we brought home. It adds so much to our space, though we are far from finished in the dining room. At least for now we are ready to host our friends on Thursday!

At Halle's request we ate our pancakes at the table on Saturday morning, and all agreed that this room is exactly how we imagined it! Such a great space for a large table for gathering family and friends... or just enjoying a yummy Saturday breakfast together!