Cane Chair Makeover - Part Two

Now that we've finished painting the chairs, it's time to get down to the dirty business of upholstery.  If you've never recovered anything before, we urge you to start with something easier like a chair seat.  
We decided to go with a neutral fabric as we weren't sure where the chairs would end up in our house and if we'd keep both of them or sell one.  Let me tell you, it was super hard to walk into a fabric store and buy the most boring fabric.  But we really didn't want a printed fabric to compete with the tufting detail (which ended up being the right choice).

Anyways, the first thing we did, was use the old chair fabrics as a template to cut the new fabric.  

Then we proceeded to staple the seat bottoms.  We ended up purchasing a Pneumatic Staple gun and we are sooooo in love with it!  It made the job super easy. 

 We figured it was okay for the purchase since we have other things to reupholster around the house ;)

Anyways, after the seat bottoms were done, we started on the buttons.  Now there are all sorts of fabric covering button kits out there that would have made this step easy.  However, we didn't want to have to sew the buttons on.  Since we couldn't find kits that used the same buttons we had, we decided to reuse the ones that we already had.  We simply cut a piece of fabric out and glued it onto the button with hot glue.

 

 

 We put a little fabric glue on the exposed fabric edges so that it didn't fray later on.  

Next we worked on the piping.  Luckily, Mom was in town to help out with this as our sewing skills are pretty limited right now.  (Oh and by 'helping out' we mean she sewed it for us ;)

 When the buttons were dry, we started the tufting.  We were able to reuse the foam as it was still in pretty good condition.  All we did was center the fabric over the foam and push the buttons through the fabric, and out the cardboard that's behind the fabric and pulled them through.

We don't know a lot about tufting. But we do know that you want the fabric to be folded in a diamond pattern.

After the tufting was complete, we were able to started stapling the fabric to the chair.

After that was complete, we had to hide the staples with the piping.  All we did was hot glue it on.

 Then we just put the chair together and we were done!

Here is a reminder of what they looked like before:

Here they are now!

Aren't they so cute? We just love em :)

  

    

  ~Bri & Adam~

Cane Chair Makeover - Part One

We came across these two chairs on Kijiji. The blue one was $5 and the pink one was $30.  We knew with a bit of paint and some new fabric, they could look fabulous. 

The pink chair had a bunch of scratches on it, but otherwise was in good shape.  The blue chair was pretty gross. I guess it was a cats chair because the fabric was ripped to shreds and it was covered in cat hair... ewww.  

Anyways, we started by taking them apart which meant removing A LOT of staples.

Then we mixed our go to version of chalk paint.  Which is: Dissolve 1/3 cup of Plaster of Paris with 1/3 cup of HOT water, then add 1/2 cup of paint.  
We wanted to try something new, so first we painted the chairs in a pretty blue green.

Then, we painted an antique white over top of the blue.

We let that dry overnight. We sanded it down with 100 grit sandpaper to 'distress it'.

Not done yet :) Then, we mixed a bit of Behr's Espresso Beans paint with some Satin finish Varathane.  We brushed that on, and wiped it off with a damp towel. We epecially wanted it to get into all the nooks an crannies so it would look 'antiqued'.

We're pretty happy with the finish it gave. When we brushed the varnish on, all of the 'flaws' were highlighted which made the chairs look lovely. It also really brought out the blue tones.

You'll have to stay tuned for the upholstery and after photos!

~Bri & Adam~

Cheap Fireplace Makeover

We just  purchased our home in June and have wanted to do a bunch of renos already :).  One project  in particular is attacking our outdated fireplace. 

Here is the before shot.

It was stained pretty bad, so we had to scrub the soot off with an organic cleaner. The brown brick totally made the whole basement look dark & dingy.  We could also do without the brass surround. 

While we'd love to do this....

Currently, our budget has us saving for other things... sigh. Oh well. Someday.

We painted the brass with a High heat paint. Simple enough.

Then, we decided to try 'white washing' the brick. Which is basically watered down paint.  We were going for a greyish brick look but it ended up looking HORRIBLE. So we painted another full layer of the white latex on the brick and are happy with the result.

It will have to do until we can totally get rid of the brick. But we feel that we accomplished our goal of brightening up the space :) And all for the cost of a can and bucket of paint!

Bri & Adam

  

Rustic Crate

We are all about cozy blankets and throws in our house, but it bugs me that there isn't a place for them.  They're usually just thrown about in an unruly manner on the couch.  In the spirit of being organized and getting more use of our power tools, I decided to build a rustic looking crate to contain this messy dilemma.  I loved House of Smith's version here: Vintage Crates, but I changed mine up just a bit.  I wanted to keep it pretty cheap so I just went to Lowe's and purchased the cheapest wood I could find. Which ended up being 4 1" x 4" x 8' pieces of Furring strips and 1 2" x 2" x 8'.

I started by figuring out a basic size that I wanted and cut a few pieces that were 24" long. Then I put them together to see if I liked the size... which I didn't, so I modified it to what I wanted. I just wanted the crate to fit a couple pillows, blankets, and a few magazines.  I ended up liking the size 13" x 22".

After the Hubs gave me a quick lesson on the nail gun (don't point it at the dog!), I started nailing away (at which point the pup ran out of the room).  Not really hard at this point, just nail the side pieces to the 2" x 2". I didn't want to see the top of the 2" x 2" so I cut it a but shorter than the 3 1" x 4"s.

Here is your bottomless crate.

I placed the crate on a piece of plywood for the bottom and just traced it. Then, since I'm still a bit scared of the circular saw, the Hubs cut the bottom piece for me.  After which I just nailed it to the crate.  

I loved the rope handles HOUSE OF SMITH's did for her crate so I drilled some holes for ours and then sanded everything.

I chose a miniwax stain but it would look super cute with a distressed paint job as well.  I don't have a photo of the staining, but all I did was brush it on and used a cloth to wipe of any drips.  I did two coats of staining.

Our rope was too thick to knot on the inside, so we just added some gear clamps to the end and covered it in electrical tape so that the sharp edges are covered.   

I decided that I wanted a more vintage look to it so I got a print out of some French Topography from the The Graphics Fairy.  I printed it on wax paper (a reversed image).  Then I dampened the wood with a cloth and laid the paper on the wood and pressed it on with a credit card. NOTE that once you lay the wax paper on, it can't move or your image will smudge.  In hindsight, I should've done this before I stained as it would have transferred better to the untreated wood. But I don't mind if it smudges off as that makes it look even more vintage. 

Here it is!

Total cost is around  $15 plus $10 for the stain.  Love it! 

~Bri~