Upcycled Chair

My town has two clean up days a year. You would not believe what people put out for trash on those clean up days! My neighbors last year went garbage picking, and I was envious! This year I joined the adventure. We spent HOURS driving around our town checking out the ridiculous amount of things people had thrown away. Frankly it's just an opportunity to get things out of your house for free and not have to deal with trying to sell them. So there's usually a great deal of items that can be re-purposed by someone else. Some items need a little clean up and are ready to go, others you have to have vision to see their potential. Most of my items were ready to go, but this chair, as you can see needed some vision. I liked the era/style of the chair and figured if I could spruce it up, it might be awesome. And let's face it, if I couldn't spruce it up, I could pop it back in the trash.

The first step was taking the chair apart, and cleaning up the frame. Then I removed all of the gross plasticky upholstery and the OLD cushions. I cleaned up the wood bases, cut the proper shape of the cushions. I sprayed on some spray adhesive and stuck those babies in place. Looking good already! (or so I say myself, I like to give myself positive reinforcement while I'm working on a project).

Acquiring the upholstery was really the hardest part of this adventure. I went to Joann's Fabric and found this awesome pattern, but of course is was a special order fabric. I tried to order it once but was told it could only be done on a week night because the distribution center isn't open on a  weekend, blah blah blah. Ugh, super annoying. I went again, on a weeknight, and the manager just popped in the numbers to the computer ordered my upholstery and we were making progress. I asked the manager why that couldn't be done on a weekend, and he seemed a little perplexed at what I was told. NICE! That lovely experience only set me back two weeks!

 I wanted to paint the frame a deep navy blue, but the spray paint with that color top, comes out cobalt, really.bright.cobalt. I changed my mind and went with black, looks good even if it weren't my first choice. After I had the backing of the top piece put together with upholstery nails, I screwed it all back together.

Oh note on the screws: They were old and yucky looking, which wouldn't go well with my nice new shiny chair. I poked the screws through a cardboard egg carton so they would stand up and I spray painted them black also. worked great!

So now the chair resides in my kitchen, looking fabulous. The steps fold in and out, love it! The girls think it's the best place to go read books now.

Kitchen Renovations

Here starts the renovation posts. I'm slowly going to work on getting the renovation posts up room by room. This may also encourage me to start getting things hung on the walls. I'm starting with the kitchen because it's frankly our most used space and it just came out so nice.

To start the kitchen was a big selling point with the house. After a year of looking we had really gotten accustomed to seeing a house for its potential and not the flashy good or bad things that hit you in the face. We knew kitchen remodels are wicked expensive, this kitchen was nicely remodelled and we were really happy with that and it's size, it was within the range we wanted it to be but didn't have gas. Frankly finding a house with gas was really difficult in this area, oh well, I'm learning to deal with electric :(

Again with the two tone and shadow boxes, and excessive molding. This project really began at the beginning of the house with the wall removal and arch install. Oscar and my father put the Arch in, which we got online. Seriously if you ever want to put in an arch this was the best way to go, you give them your measurements and in a few days your arch pieces arrive at your door. It went really well. So after some molding removal and my parents trip to VA we were able to start on wall removal. After the arch went in the kitchen was functional enough for us to move on to other projects and move into the house.

After we finished the priority move in projects we

started to focus on the kitchen again. We were originally going to keep the thin crown molding and paint it white and up to the top white so it appeared to be a continuous crown molding. Upon more consideration we just decided to remove it, and we're glad we did. After spackling, sanding, covering everything and priming we were ready to get our color on the wall, "moon mist." We also found that remodelling while living there and with the kids was easier at night for the most part. Once the kitchen was covered in plastic we were certainly motivated to move the project along in order to have the space in working order again.Of course ducking under plastic to make sandwiches was a good time.

First we painted the ceiling because it was ridiculously disgusting. And in the wisdom of John Sperry you always paint the ceiling. Frankly this wisdom had me cursing a few times but like all of his wisdom, he's right, it's a world of difference in all the rooms! We then primed the whole room and did two coats of "moon mist." The paint color really changed the whole room and it was amazing what just that did for the light there. It was amazing how much brighter and cleaner it felt. It's really nice to know that the only grime and mess in the house was made by you and not some stranger (or 20 as we've learned from neighbors). After we finished the color we uncovered the room and got it back in working order. I worked on the trim and crown molding in white while the girls took naps. I have the curtains, as you can see the rod in the corner of the picture, I'm just encouraging someone to hang them ;) And I'm trying to figure out placement of some other decor. I'm still really in love with this room and stare at it regularly remembering what it used to look like!

Kitchen

I plan to do an individual post about each room but I just posted the pics of the kitchen