It used to be pink…

I acquired this bench from one of the guest rooms at my Nana’s lake home:

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Yep.  That’s a pink cushion.

And you all know how I feel about pink…

Here’s how the acquisition came to be:

We went down to the house on Lake of the Ozarks back in November to do the leaves.

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(Me my baby brother with our mad leaf blowing skills)

I decided to bring the bench home.  We put it in our entryway and there it sat.  Pink and all.  A holiday party (in my home) came and went.  Christmas came and went.  New Year’s came and went.  All the while the bench maintained its glorious pink hue.  Obviously I wasn’t in that big of a hurry to get rid of the pink.  That or I’m just lazy.  We’ll go with not in that big of a hurry, okay?  Well, today the bench changed its clothes!  My parents came to spend the holiday weekend with us and my mom recovered ‘ole pinky with some really dandy fabric that I actually found today.

480385_10151258118510894_1535183106_n Yep.  I love it.

Isn’t my mom the best?  Yep.  I love her!

Total cost:  $11.19

Oh and the new fabric even has a bit of pink in it *wink*

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Have a dandy week!

{DIY} From The Blue Chair

I’m so excited for this next guest posting, because I actually know her personally and she’s awesome!  I know that you are going to find her to be just dandy!  She crafts, she quilts, she photographs, she blogs…  I told you she is awesome!  This particular guest posting doesn’t pertain to her quilting, but I LOVE her quilts.  In fact she is entered right now in a Halloween quilting contest and you can vote for her fabulous Spooky Wonky Log Cabin HERE.  It’s quilt #1 so get voting!  :)   And here is my friend and former roomie, Kati…

Hi! I’m Kati from the blue chair. Thanks so much to Tara for letting me do a guest post today about my blue chair. Tara and I were roommates in college. I certainly have some good stories, but we’ll stick to refurnishing chairs today.

I have a thing for chairs. I like to get them from Goodwill for around $5 and paint them. It’s become a bit of a problem. My husband even asked me recently to stop. I guess no more Goodwill chairs for a while, but at least I have my favorite chair to use every day while I sew. This is the chair that inspired my blog name—from the blue chair. This was a pretty sad little Goodwill find, but sturdy. He definitely had some potential, but needed a lot of love.

 

When scouring for chairs I look for a few things—sturdy, solid wood, relatively good condition, and character (you don’t want just a plain old kitchen chair). Sit in it. Wiggle the back. Flip it upside down and make sure those legs are well attached. Once you have your chair, get it ready to paint.

Painting prep:

This guy needed some work, but it wasn’t too bad. I filled the deep scratches with wood filler then sanded the edges a bit to smooth things over. I cleaned it and wiped all surfaces down with an everyday kitchen cleaner. Then I wiped it with a clean, damp cloth.

 

Replacing the seat:

I removed the original seat by flipping it over and unscrewing it from the bottom. Then I cut a piece of high density foam using the seat base as my template. My foam was 2” which is pretty thick but I sit in this guy while sewing. I wanted it to be comfortable. I used a little hot glue to adhere it to the seat base.

The seat fabric is Tufted Tweets in Grass by Laurie Wisburn. I chose the fabric for the seat cover because I adore it, but it’s quilting weight fabric and not available in décor weight. To strengthen the fabric, I fused it to heavy twill using Ultra Heat and Bond. This made it a bit more difficult to work with than normal décor weight fabric, but it made it durable for long-term use. After getting the fabric ready, I started stapling it on using a craft staple gun. I did the sides first and then the front and back, pulling the fabric as tightly as I could.

Painting:

To paint this guy I used Pacific Sea Teal in gloss by Bear from Home Depot. I chose to brush on the paint rather than spray painting because I was a bit particular about the color and there aren’t a lot of color options in spray paint. I used their Ultra paint with primer in it, making painting one easy step.

Finishing:

After allowing the paint to cure for a couple days, I attached the seat using the original hardware. After a little work, some new paint and fabric, I have a funky new sewing chair that I love!

Painted chairs make a fun accent in any room or a fabulous photography prop. For a super funky look, collect an assortment of chairs and paint them each a different color for your dining room table. My next chair project might be a pink one. My three-year-old has requested a pink chair for the dinner table. I just might indulge her.

Keep your eyes peeled!

Be on the look out to see some greatness in contemporary coffee tables from CSN.  What will you see?  Probably something like this:

Now that’s a closeup!  What is it?  Well, you will just have to wait and see.  :) 

Definitely sometime next week.

{DIY} Have a Seat, Right There on My (Garbage) Bench

I’ve been in organizing, rearranging mode lately and a few weeks ago I was telling the hubs that I wanted to get a bench for our front entryway.  Until now, it’s been just a place where you kick your shoes, race hotwheels around and thow the pug’s leash.  But I wanted a place to sit and put on your shoes, and perhaps hide said mountain of shoes a little. 

So I browsed around Craigslist, but didn’t really find anything I liked.  Two days (trash day) I was driving down my street and my neighbors were tossing this baby.  I reversed, drove past again to see if my eyes were playing tricks on me — after all, who would throw away a perfectly good bench?  Never mind the fact that it was covered in cobwebs, stained, warped and U-G-L-Y.  But I had the vision, so I hopped out, loaded it up in the van and went on my way. 

Here she is before.  Nasty, huh?  Never fear — she got the makeover she  deserved.

{1} Sand, sand, sand.  Power sanders are your friend.  Don’t have one?  Well then congrats on all the calories you’ll burn sanding.

{2} Prime.  I always use KILZ.  And it’s almost always the spray.  It’s the best and the easiest to use… but this time I didn’t have any, so I used the bucket.

{3} Paint.  A few coats of Rustoleum’s Semi-Gloss black spray paint.

{4} Sand again.  After painting, I decided to rough her up a little (looks like she’d been through a lot, thought I’d keep it real).

{5} I considered finishing here, but I’ve been seeing cute number projects all over the place, so I thought I’d try here, nothing to lose if it didn’t turn out how I wanted.

{6} To do my numbers, I printed out my numbers and eyeballed where I wanted it on my bench.  The font I used is called Greer, and I got it from these guys. 

{7} Then to transfer it to my bench, I colored the back of each number with yellow sidewalk chalk.  Then I turned it over, lined it up on my bench and outlined the numbers using a sharp mechanical pencil.  The chalk transferred the numbers and I knew I could just wipe it off when I was done.  I filled in my outline with craft paint that I had laying around and a small brush. 

{8} Then I let it dry for a bit — probably not long enough, because I’m impatient — and then sprayed a quick polyurethane top coat.  Perhaps not totally necessary, but I figured it was in a high-traffic area, so it couldn’t hurt.

And here she is, all done — Whatcha think?

By the way, when I was telling this to my friend – she was appalled.  “I’m all for your projects Lan, but this is yuck, even for you!” Ha!  Could not believe that anyone in this world would just take someone else’s trash… who’s laughing now?  (She has since retracted her scorn.)

And I’m linking up I’m linking here, here, here, here  here and here.