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.

A Thrifting Score

Over the long weekend at the beginning of the month, the three of us got out to do some thrifting. We hit up a few places and the first two were an absolute bust. When we arrived at the final store, I knew right away that we were going to find something good. There was all kinds of furniture and great pieces, but we didn't find our special piece until we headed up to their loft known affectionately as "Discount Alley". Discount Alley in a Thrift Store? That is right up my alley! 

As soon as I saw this couch marked $20, I knew it would be coming home with us for the sunroom. The space has a tendency to leak when there is a big rain storm, and our landlords have no sense of urgency to fix it. At least if part of this piece gets a little water damaged, it won't be the end of the world.

I'm hoping for a relatively quick turn around on this project, after all, I think we'd both like to use this space before the cooler weather returns - possibly even during our month of visitors. Thankfully, the wood is in fantastic condition which means I have no plans of doing anything to it.

The only thing we need to do is recover those cushions. I have some plans up my sleeves to hopefully use the fabric we had originally purchased, from Tonic Living, for the seating bench in our basement in Toronto, and never used. We have some measuring to do, but if we can make it work we may even switch up the seat cushion a little.

The other item that needs to be addressed, is the canvas bottom of the sofa. It looks like the previous owner made a little haphazard "repair" that we should do something about - though that may come after we recover our cushions - we'll see how this all plays out. 

For me, this really signifies the start of making our sunroom a usable space. Let's just hope that that roof is addressed and the leaking can stop so that I can feel a little more secure about adding nicer pieces to this space.

Is there a room in your house that needs some sprucing up on a dime? Where do you shop and look for great deals when you are trying to revitalize your space for less?