It's Coming Along

Okay, so I finally have a little update on our garage sale chair... which still isn't done, but we are so close I can taste it! It's become one of those projects where I desperately want to finish it, but can't be bothered to finish it all at the same time. We all have them... right? Please tell someone else out there does this?

But yes, back to the chair. It's been sitting in our sunroom (which is once again leaking as our west coast rain has returned full force), mostly painted with the fabric cut and draped over the seats for quite a few weeks now. Back when my parents were visiting, I recruited my incredibly talented Mother to help me cut out the fabric pieces, and she was a saviour. What I am about to share with you was 100% her idea. I am sure other's would have done it this way, but I am not one of them. So here is what we did...

If you remember from my last post, I spent an insane amount of time pulling upholstery tacks from this chair, to carefully remove the old red fabric. I'm glad I took my time because each old piece of fabric came off perfectly, and I was left with great templates for my new fabric pieces. 

First, we took our brand new fabric and folded it in half. Then, we took the red fabric from the seat of the chair and folded it perfectly in half as well. We then lined up the two folded edges of both pieces of fabric like so...

Next we cut just outside the edge of the red fabric in order to get our perfect new piece of fabric.

It was really that simple - for the seat anyway. We started with that piece, as it was the largest. This left us with very little waste, and also helped us figure out how to line up the checks for the next two pieces we would be cutting. Since our new fabric was folded in half, we already had it worked out so the checks should line up perfectly once all of our pieces were cut and stapled to the chair. This would have been perfect - but of course the two pieces for the back rest were a little more tricky.

Our original plan was to continue matching up our folded edges. Unfortunately, if we did it that way for the two smaller pieces, it would've resulted in a considerable amount of wasted fabric. Instead, we played around with our two (smaller) pieces of fabric and how we folded the new fabric. It turned out, we could fold the new fabric in two spots and end up with the same repeat of the checks, running in the same direction so that our back and seat would line up nicely.

I don't know why, but I'm finding it a little hard to articulate our process in this post. I hope I have been clear enough, but if not, please feel free to ask any questions. I would happy to answer any specific questions, or to clarify on a certain point if anyone would like to know more. 

In the end, all of our new fabric fit perfectly and the lines matched up well. We have a problem with the checks on the back not being the same colour where they meet, but in the end, the lines match up so it still looks good. Here's our almost finished chair...

We are SO CLOSE! Seriously, so incredibly close and maybe this will be the weekend that we finally finish it up and put it to use in the house. 

Have you had any projects that just sit idle for way too long, even though you are dying to finish them? Anyone else having a lack of motivation on projects and blogging recently? Please tell me I am not the only one falling off the blogging radar. I do miss it... I just don't have anything worth writing about recently.

Getting On Top of Things

Fall is quickly approaching, and before I know it, this sunshine that we have been enjoying out here will disappear and giveaway to the grey rainy days of fall and winter. With that in mind, I've started to think about how we can make our home feel more cozy. A haven, and nest that we can enjoy when the cools days return. One thing in particular I would like to do is make it more comfortable, and more full without feeling cluttered. So, the first thing I wanted to do, was to tackle a project that has been sitting neglected for far too long.

Over two years ago now, I picked up this chair at a garage sale for only $22. I pretty much had to bargain with B to let me buy it, and now I understand his hesitation. It's just taken up space in our garage, and now our sunroom, waiting for me to do something with it for the last 2.5 years...

Well, inspiration finally struck and I have been working away on my transformation on this lovely piece. Just after B's parents returned home from their visit, I popped into IKEA to pick up a few things we needed. While I was there, I stopped into the fabric section to see what they had kicking around. When I saw the BERTA RUTE big check in beige, I knew it was perfect. 

It has pattern, but is still neutral enough to work with anything else I'd like to add to the space. Plus, it will make finding a complimentary fabric for our sofa that much easier. So, I brought home 4 metres for around $40, and was instantly motivated to get moving on the chair, which was looking like this...

Last Sunday, while B and my brother were making dinner, I popped into the sunroom and started the process of removing the upholstery tacks from the chair. I had to be careful to not rip the fabric (too much), since the pieces I removed will be used as a template for my new fabric. I started with a knife, but many of the tacks were rusted, so I moved onto pliers, but they couldn't get under the tack heads. Eventually, I ended up using one of B's chisels, and it worked wonders. (I may owe him a new chisel though).

Removing the red fabric revealed another equally as dirty fabric underneath, with a layer of batting placed over top. By that point, my hands were sore from removing tacks and I decided to stop there - after all, I had the templates I needed, so it was time to get down to business.

Seeing the chair like this had me feeling excited and anxious all at the same time. I was excited to see it looking bare and ready for a new look, but felt a little anxious when it came down to what I was going to do to that wood. I spent quite a bit of time bouncing back and forth between staining and painting it. In the end, my laziness won out, and I decided to paint it. I had already spent a great deal of time trying to sand out the stain in those carvings and it wasn't getting me anywhere fast. On top of that, I already had white paint left over from when I painted our headboard, which meant not having to put out anymore money for this project.

So, I'm now in the midst of getting the final coats of paint onto the wood, and then I'll be able to start the actual upholstering project. Hopefully, I can share it with you next week and have our new chair sitting in our living room (for the time being). 

I'm still keeping my eyes out for other pieces we can use around here to help furnish and organize our place, and essentially just get our home feeling more cozy for the cold months ahead. 

What have you been doing to prepare for the fall? Any big projects on the go?

The Switch is Done...

You may remember that back at the start of June, I had posted about how I wanted to make the switch in our kitchen and replace my Grandmother's old dining table, with a nice round table. At the time that I posted that, B had actually already picked up a round table that I had found on Craigslist, for $40, and stashed it away in our garage. So, last month while B's parents were visiting this was one of the project's that his wonderful father started working on for us. 


Seriously - B's Dad was so quick, I didn't even realize the man was getting around to sanding the table until he had already started - so there are no before pictures of this bad boy for you - but check out how beautiful it looked when he was was done sanding...

I've pretty much always known I wanted to go white with our kitchen table, so the same day that B went out to buy the stain for our coffee table, he picked up a white stain for the kitchen table as well...

Since we wanted the table to be more white, and B didn't want to paint it, it took numerous coats to get the table looking exactly as we wanted it. So after many, many coats of stain and a bunch of coats of clear coat, the table was looking fabulous and in our kitchen (finally!).

The leaf is in, which of course doesn't give a true representation of how the round table fits into the space. It's also a hard area to photograph because we don't get much light with the big tree in our yard. 

Right now, we're both just happy to have a kitchen table again. Keep your eyes out... hopefully I'll be able to get some updated kitchen photos soon!

The Garage Sale Table

Good Monday Morning! I hope you all had some fun and enjoyed this past weekend!


Back in early June, I shared a few things that we had picked up at a local garage sale for a total of $17. We, of course, adore the little light fixture that hangs in our baby girl's nursery (which was a $2 score), but what I was really looking forward to, was transforming the round wood coffee table that we had snagged for $7!

It wasn't in the best of shape (someone did an awful job trying to stain it), but we saw past that and I knew it was exactly what I wanted for our otherwise very square living room. So, home it came, and it spent a great deal of time sitting around in the garage, before B took it upon himself to try and strip off some of that stain...

After this, it was once again left on it's own in our garage. Come mid-July, B's parents came to stay with us while we all anxiously awaited the arrival of Halle. While B was off at work one day, and his Mom and I were inside keeping cool, his Dad headed outside and started sanding this rough looking table (this was only the beginning of the projects B parents worked away on while they came to stay! Honestly, they were SO HELPFUL, I could barely stay caught up on what they were helping us accomplish from our to do list!)...

Of course, as soon as it was all sanded I realized I needed to decide quickly on what I wanted to do with this table. B was insistent that it would not be painted, as the table was far too nice, so I had to make a decision on a stain. After an evening walking around IKEA (back when we were still waiting on Halle to arrive), I spotted some furniture that had a greyish colour to the wood. I let B know it was what I wanted, and after our little girl arrived, I gave him the "Ok" to head out and pick out the stain. Him and his Dad spent a day working on it, and just last week he finished it up.

It's not as grey as I had initially envisioned but I am happy with it... especially happy to have a nice round table in our living room to break up all of the hard angles, and get rid of the old IKEA table that we've had since we moved into our first apartment in February of 2009. Here's a look at it all finished...

(Keeping it real here people... there was little to no effort on the cleaning / styling front for this photo... now you know why there are no living room photos in our home tour...)

Parker and Halle approve...

It's great how much less space it takes up! Makes our room look a tad larger and will be really great come Christmas when our tree is up! There will definitely be more walking space (Thank God!). I also realize that our living room needs a lot of TLC. We're not ready for a full on renovation, so for the time being I will be making small changes that spruce the space up. Next on my list - I'd like a new slipcover for our Ektorp couch and chair, and some better curtains for our windows (the ones right now are not long OR wide enough... they came with the house). So the hunt is on for both... and for a decent price! 

Are there any rooms in your house that you're just itching to change up, or a room that is evolving ever so slowly? 

Out Bathroom Vanity Weekend Adventure

So... it's Sunday afternoon (2:30 to be exact) and I'm feeling that I was a little over ambitious about our bathroom vanity project this weekend. I mean, we've been pretty productive... but I can guarantee we won't be using our upstairs bathroom to brush our teeth or wash our faces tonight or tomorrow!

Thursday evening I sanded and primed our medicine cabinet to begin the whole process, but left our vanity in place as I wanted to be able to get ready for work upstairs on Friday rather than have to venture all the way down to the basement early in the morning. So, Friday evening I got the first coat of white on the inside of our medicine cabinet (B wasn't able to pick up our mirror yet...). We emptied the vanity drawers, got the sink out and moved the vanity out to the garage where we started the process of stripping it. Aside from the drawers, stripping it is definitely what took the longest! Our vanity wasn't completely stripped until early yesterday evening!

Yesterday was less productive than we liked as we were out picking out pumpkins in the morning. On the way there we stopped by a different ReStore than we tried earlier in the week and lucked out. We found the perfect white sink for only $20! They also had some great paintbrushes there for $2 each so we grabbed 4 - we can never have enough paint brushes around here!!

This morning I had other plans, but B was nice enough to fill all the holes and burn marks in the vanity (seriously... it was so rough) and get it primed. I got home around 1:30 and finished priming our drawers. We have something else to do this afternoon and won't be home until after dinner I am sure. Tonight I hope to get the first coat of white on, and hope that by Tuesday or Wednesday I can share the big reveal with everyone!

At this point, I realize that the "before" pictures of my vanity were a little too small in my last post. So I will share them again. Take a peak, and I hope to be sharing our new bathroom vanity with you all very soon!