The Chair Project

I had wanted to put a chair over the cold air return for the furnace at Wyndson Cottage.  It's a big grate in the floor, and Jake is sure that there is a monster living down in there somewhere.  We don't have a furnace here, so it took him a while to get used to the roar of the furnace.

I had a style of chair in mind, but never seem to find anything on Craigslist that fit the bill.  At the end of January we wandered around the MCC (Mennonite Central Committee) Furniture and More store when they had their end of the month sale.  So we saw this chair.  I think we paid $37.  Not a grab it and run kind of bargain, but good enough for me, and it makes you feel good to know the money you pay is going to help an unfortunate someone, somewhere in the world.  I wanted to paint the chair and recover it, to take it from dark and dour to light and refreshing.  Did I really write that?  Anyway, I wanted to change it up.  Besides, the blue didn't go with the colours there.

The first thing was to take the seat and the back off.  The seat was easy, just four big screws that were holding the seat to the frame.

I pulled out the million many staples that were holding the seat fabric down, added some more padding, and stapled the new fabric on.

The back was harder.  There was no removable frame.  The back was stapled into a groove in the chair frame.  Then piping was pushed into the groove and stapled in there too.  The stapler I had wasn't capable of doing that.  It took what seemed like forever to pull all the staples out.  I did count some of the staples, and figured I pulled out somewhere between four and five hundred of the little buggers beasts.

Oops, forgot to mention that before I did any upholstery, I did paint the chair with some homemade chalk paint, distressed it a bit, and waxed it.

Since I added padding to the seat, I thought I should add some to the back as well.  I wanted to replicate the button tufting.  It was interesting to see how it was done.  That piece of foam with the holes cut out, and then the button thingies pulling the fabric down into those holes in the foam, and then through a heavy piece of cardboard at the back and the the two wings were opened out to keep the button in place.

 Of course me adding a couple of extra layers made things a bit more difficult.  I covered the buttons with a neutral fabric.

 We went through my fabric stash and found one that we thought coordinate sort of with the furniture in the living room.  There wasn't a lot of the fabric, but plenty for the chair, and enough left over to make some cushion covers.  I used the old piece of fabric as a pattern for the new one, and marked where the buttons went through on it.  I used the foam as a pattern for the extra stuffing.

Pushing the buttons through the fabric and then through the first layer of extra padding.

Actually it's kind of neat how the fabric pleats itself as the buttons are pulled through and tightened up, which I neglected to take a picture of.  I struggled to staple the back padding onto the chair frame.  Wasn't pretty, but figured I could glue some trim, called gimp, to cover the staples.  The sides weren't too bad, but across the top of the back was kind of a mess, and the mess was wide and I didn't think the gimp was going to cover it all.  I didn't know quite what to do, so the chair sat unfinished for a week or two.  A few days ago I was mentally ready to tackle it.  I took out all the staples I had put in across the top of the back.  I cut a long narrow strip of some stiff plastic stuff. Thin cardboard would have worked too.  I put it behind the fabric and pulled the fabric tight over and behind it, and then tacked it to the chair with upholstery tacks.  I was much happier with that, and there was less mess to hide.  Screwed the the seat on tight, hot glued on the gimp, and it was done.

The chair is a lot more upbeat looking now don't you think?

To save more of the patterned fabric, I just put the unbleached cotton on the back.

I'm pretty pleased with how it turned out.  The chair is very comfortable.  In fact at the sale at the end of February we bought a chair almost exactly the same for $25.  The legs are a little different, and it is green instead of blue, and it's for our living room here at Wyndson Farm.  It will be painted and reupholstered also:)

Projects

I'm up to my neck in projects.  Mostly fun projects.  My new passion, making over furniture.  I'm also slowly getting some more important projects done too.  All the garden areas used for the farmers markets got rototilled by Monday.  Then it started raining Monday night, and hasn't stopped yet.  Those same gardens are now quagmires, but I'm glad I got it done because the weeds were springing to life, and if I don't beat (repeatedly) those buttercups back early in the game, it'll be a losing game for me.  There'll be more on the projects later, but here's a bit of a preview.

The greenhouse, which, I'm embarrassed to say, didn't get used last year, is now all cleaned out and organized and I have some seeds started.

The halloween desk, a project I regret taking on, but have put so much time into now that I'm determined to see it through, is closer to being all orange rather than thick black.  Did I tell you that black velvet was glued over the entire interior of the drawers?

This rough, primitive little magazine table is painted.

And so is this chair.

This chair is heading for Wyndson cottage.  It's been painted and reupholstered.

The sewing room is under review.  This is the good side.  I've been sorting out fabric and getting rid of a lot that I'm trying to be realistic about, and accept that I really WON'T do anything with that particular piece. At least 8 large bags or boxes have gone to the thrift store so far.  I'll have to make sure I don't buy it back.

And we've actually bought some parts to tackle a plumbing project that has been ignored for far too long.

Stay tuned for updates.

Full Moon

Lately I've been fascinated with all the wonderful makeovers you can give to old furniture.  There's a whole blogosphere out there that is all about people taking an old piece of furniture and giving it a new lease on life by painting it and being creative.  I'm taking baby steps into the crazy, exciting world.  Check out some of the links at the bottom of this blog post http://missmustardseed.com/2013/02/furniture-feature-friday-a-link-party-7/

A few weeks ago I bought this little end table for $4.99 at the Sally Ann.  It was in rough shape and a bit wobbly.  The wobbly part was easy to fix, I just had to tighten up the three bolts underneath the top.  Now I was so excited about it that I started sanding it right away before taking a photo.  Try to imagine the top darker with lots of water marks.

I loved the grain on the top.  It is a veneer, a very, very thin veneer.  There were some chunks out of it along the edges, which I patched up. Some sections were lifting, along a join.  I glued them back down.  Then more sanding.  I didn't get it perfect, but I had to stop, or else I would have sanded the veneer away.   Even though it doesn't appear so in the pictures, each of the three lobes were the same size.  I guess I never had the camera directly over the center.

Here it is stained and a top coat of a few layers of water based poly.

The legs were painted with a homemade chalk paint, and then a dark glaze brushed over it.  Most of it I rubbed off, just left a bit around the junction of different pieces of wood.  It didn't have a lot of edges, but I did sand them off a little bit.  Both the glaze and the sanding help to give the impression of age, not that this picture really shows up either technique very well.

This picture shows the colour of the top most accurately.  

Larry looked at it and said well he guessed it was supposed to be a shamrock.  He said though, that to him the left and right lobes looked like two cheeks, and not the kind on your face.  He said he didn't know what the third lobe was though.  I said it was the sun rising over a full moon.

The Great Furniture Project

A long time ago, well less than two years, but more than a year and a half ago, we bought a sheet of plywood.  It was to finish off this project here.  We were going to use it to make shelves in what had been our old closet, before we put in a whole wall of IKEA closets.  We were in Rona looking for something, and came across this pile of quite nice, but cheap, plywood, and I said that it would be great for those shelves.  So we took it home, and it went into the garage.  Because there was so much junk useful stuff piled in the middle of the garage, we had to lean it against the work bench.  And then the urge to actually make those shelves seemed to disappear.  After a while that 4x8 sheet of plywood leaning against the work bench that ran down one side of the garage hindered us getting at the junk useful stuff piled there.  So we moved the plywood across the door opening.  It is a single car garage with a 9' door, so we pushed the plywood to one side to leave enough room to walk past the end of it to get out of that door.  Didn't need a big enough opening to drive in, as there was no room in there to park a car.  A few months ago some cleaning up was done in the garage, and the plywood got moved again.  Now it was in the family room leaning against the piano.  No problem, as no-one had played that piano in about 12 years.  But it was kind of long and  did cramp our style a bit.  And then I had a vision.....

I told Larry what I wanted to do with that plywood.  I planned it all out, and made sure that all the pieces I needed would be able to be cut out of the one sheet.  We carried the plywood out of the family room, through the garage, and out by the barn.  Set out a couple of saw horses, I checked my plan, and started measuring and drawing lines.  Over the years, the many projects that we have done, I think it has always been me that has done the measuring.  And you know who gets blamed if the piece of wood is cut to the wrong size....

Anyway, this time it was my project and of course it was me doing the measuring.  Larry helped me control that piece of plywood.  We don't have a table saw, so I used a skill saw and this clamp on guide thingy.  It involved a lot of measuring, and I have to admit that some of the pieces that were supposed to be identical to others, weren't quite.  Oh well.  (Just now, I came across this great idea for making a jig. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2_2hypJNYRQ )

Everywhere became my workshop.  The garage, the spare bedroom, the dining room.  I did manage to do the major sanding outside.  I had help from my friends.

I rounded some of the edges with a rasp, the same one that we use to rasp Pride's feet.

Then the project needed some legs.  I like furniture that is raised off the ground a bit.  Since this piece only needed short legs, we can call them feet.  I had a couple of options.  We had some pieces of nice sanded 4x4's.  They had started out as being part of stair railing corner posts. (Another project waiting to be done)  Giant spindles.  We were adding short legs (feet) to a kitchen island we had got off Craigslist, to put next to the stove at Wyndson Cottage.  I wanted it the same height as the stove. We had cut the unnecessary extra lengths off the big spindles.  I had sanded them by hand.  We had fastened them to the underside of the island with two brackets per leg, four screws per bracket, 32 screws total.  We then had to undo all those screws to pack the island in the truck, because it was too tall to fit in the canopy, and it wasn't going to work with it laid on it's side.  We put the legs back on when we got to Oliver, fastened all 32 screws again.  Then we decided we didn't like how it looked, it seemed too tall.  So we flipped it over and undid those 32 screws again, and played around to figure out what seemed the right height.  We brought those four legs back here with us, and I cut them off, much much shorter.  You just read all that to understand how we ended up with those four 5" 4x4 blocks.  As if you really care.  Those blocks though, they just looked too...well, blocky...under my furniture project.  So I had this brilliant (I thought it was!) idea.  I set the mitre saw at 8 degrees, and went around and cut a thin wedge off each side, slipping a wedge underneath the block on the last cut, to hold it level.  I was really pleased with how they turned out!

The plain plywood was a bit boring, so I wanted to add a bit of character to my vision.  I went to our local lumberyard, which has a clearance section out front where they have a bin of mouldings for a dollar a piece.  It was kind of disappointing, the selection was just about nil.  I came home with one 7' piece.  Wasn't quite sure how I was going to use it, but eventually came up with a plan.

Last weekend we went to Habitat for Humanity's ReStore.  I needed hinges.  So we ended up down on the floor with a big bin of hinges, taking them all out, trying to find six hinges that matched.  We found the perfect ones.  25 cents each.  This was furniture on a budget, so it just went against the grain to pay full price for moulding or hinges or paint.

And here it is.  Do you know what it is?

How about now? Parlez vous francais?  (hopefully Google Translate got it right)

I think this will give it away.

Yep, it's a laundry hamper.  One space for the really dirty clothes (think dirty jeans and other stuff that gets really grubby when we are working outside).  One space for the medium sort of stuff, and the other one for lights and whites.

There were a few things I had wanted to try with this project.  First was to make some chalk paint. Chalk paint is all the rage with the furniture make-over people.  If you want to know more, just google 'homemade chalk paint'.  I'll try it again, although mine came out quite streaky, and then I added a second coat.  That didn't fix it, and it was lumpy too, so I did a really quick sand between coats.  I watered the paint down and put a third wash coat on, and I liked that.  I wanted to distress the piece a bit, to make it look sort of old.  I had a hard time with that, because I'd worked so hard to get a good coat of paint on it.  I did a little bit, sanded the paint off some edges, and forgot to do the edges of the lids. Then I wanted to put a dark glaze on.  I painted it on, and left it, didn't manipulate it or wipe most of it off like you usually do.  I liked that result.  I wanted to add some script.  I played around with Google Translate.  This is supposed to mean 'laundry to be washed'.  French just seemed more interesting that English.

This is what it replaces.  We had three of these.  I got these after the IKEA project was finished. They replaced two mismatched hampers we had.  One for me, one for Larry.  I really like the idea of using different hampers for different types of wash loads.  Makes sense.  When that particular hamper is full, it's time to get it in the washer.

A huge improvement don't you think?

Hope you don't think I'm bragging, I'm just so really really happy with how this turned out, I just have to share:)) And look at those cute little feet!

And look, it coordinates nicely with the duvet cover.  Which was bought because the fabric was cheap and I said how well it would hide any dirty marks Luna might leave if she just happened to jump up on it.



I was hoping for a nice bright day to take the finished pictures, but it wasn't happening, and I was too excited to wait.  (They aren't as crisp and clear as I would have liked.)

Some Days It Just All Works Out

I've got to admit, I'm still a Craigaholic.  I can't wean myself away from reading the furniture section on Craigslist.  There's not a whole lot that I'm still looking for, but it's just so fascinating seeing what's for sale and what's for free.  You could decorate a whole house with some wonderful, quality furniture for nothing, if you had all the time in the world and were lucky enough to be the first to respond to some of those ads.  So yeah, I still look, because...well...you just don't know what you might find.

I got really excited about something I found last Saturday morning.  So excited that I just phoned right away and said I wanted it.  Usually I think about if for a bit, then call Larry down to the computer to have a look and ask him what he thinks.  He has yet to say,  'oh, that's wonderful or just perfect or is just what we need, quick, you'd better reply right now', so I'm not sure why I bother.  I guess I just want to forewarn him of what we might be going to pick up:)

This was one of the pictures in the ad.

And the other one looked something like this.  It's made in Germany.

(Just to clarify, it did not come with a sewing machine, that is mine that I put in there). 

The price was $45.  And I was the first one to call!  The ad said it was made of solid oak, but I think it is probably oak veneer.  It has all these cool little compartments that swing out.

And some of them lift out

On the other side there is a lid that lifts up, and has a mirror on it.  Another storage area for spools and bobbins that also lifts out.

There are three drawers.  The top one is fake and the bottom one is a double depth drawer.

The platform that the sewing machine is on is easily raised by pushing a lever.  It will come up level

with the rest of the table, or stop just below so that the bed of the sewing machine is level with the table top.  There is a plastic frame that goes around the sewing machine to fill in the gap.  And I love the tape measure along the front, so handy!

And then it all folds away again to look like this, a decent looking, compact piece of furniture.

  I love it!  And of course I love it even more when I check out the website and see what the most recent version of that same sewing cabinet is selling for ....

https://www.hornofamerica.com/products.cfm?func=productdetails&productID=87

'On sale' for $1134.00!!!  I'm still grinning about it:)

But that wasn't the only good part of the day.  I had also found a bunch of free ink cartridges for our printer on Craigslist that morning.  And low and behold I'd managed to coordinate the pick-up of them for right after the sewing cabinet, just 5 or 10 minutes further away.  So now I also have 6 brand new, still sealed 'knock off' ink cartridges off E-Bay.  

Since we had had to head out to Chilliwack (40 minutes from home) for these deals, I said lets take the dogs along and go for a walk on the dyke out there.  So that was what we did next.  It was a beautiful day, there was no wind, and we had the dyke to ourselves.

The dogs had a great walk, well except for Calli.  On the way back she was just done in, so we had to give her a lot of help.   In reality, she still hasn't recovered from the exercise she got at Oliver, as well as two pretty long walks we had taken her on since then.  It's going to take her a while to get over it, and a lesson learned for us.  What happens is that when we are away, she gets more exercise than she would at home.  She handles it okay for the first few days, and then all of a sudden it catches up with her, and her back legs just get very weak.  We need to remember that we can't take her on a long walk every day.  It is taking her a while to recover, she's still pretty weak and is not getting the walks that she would like to be getting.  She's going to be 13 in a week, so as she ages the recovery time is longer.

After that we stopped for something to eat, and then hit the library and the grocery store on the way home.    A good day, some good deals, a nice walk and all done it one trip.  Just the way I like it!

Decorating on Shoestring

Remember this?

And this old dresser?  I sanded the top of the dresser down to the bare wood by hand, before I got the random orbit sander

Add to it this $20 bookcase off Craigslist

The bookshelf was held together with a lot of glue, and some nails and screws.  With some hammer and chisel work, and some quick heavy blows to the bottom part, we ended up with this.  Damage was minimal, thank goodness.

I'd picked a few cans of paint up from the mistint shelf at Home Depot.  What's not to love about a full can of paint that is both paint and primer, and only $3.  The green paint was a mis-tint also.  It's too hard to decide from a full spectrum of paint chips.  Limit my choices, and I'm much happier.  Kind of how I like to pick library books.  I'm happy if there is a cart or two of books waiting to be reshelved.  Looking over those titles gives me enough choice, and in a few minutes I can usually pick out a half dozen or so books to read.

So the shelf and the dresser were painted with the beige primer/flat paint.  Then one of my other cheap cans was used to paint over it.

Green on the back of the shelf, and the drawer fronts.  Some of the $3 can of dark brown gloss was thinned down by about half with water and brushed over the rest of the beige.  I wasn't really happy how that turned out, so I mixed a bit of red in to change the colour up.  Say it like that and it sounds so simple. Actually, I spent a long time fiddling around adding a bit of this and that to get a colour I liked, and brushed another layer of watered down paint over what I had already done.

The top of the dresser was stained.  I used a water based Minwax stain.  I picked the darkest one.  It didn't turn out anywhere near as dark as it looked in the bottle.  I bought an oil base walnut stain and tried to darken it up.  I thought it had worked, but was reminded that oil and water don't mix.  The oil stain wouldn't dry, well I guess it couldn't soak in, so in the end I had to wipe it off.

Add in some 50 cent pulls from Habitat for Humanity, and we can open the drawers with one hand.  Small things like that make me happy:)

The bookshelf will now be a tv cabinet.  When we get a tv for it, I'll put that shelf, leaning against the bottom right, in the cabinet above the tv.   This is at Wyndson Cottage in Oliver.  We've just come back from a week there.  We did quite a bit of painting.  The walls, none of which are drywall, but are three different patterns of hardboard stuff, were a very blue colour.  They are now Parisian White (cream).  Our furniture is browns, greens and golds.  We are decorating on a tight budget.

Here's looking at the opposite wall from the tv cabinet before we painted.  (The walls were much bluer than they appear here.)

Between hand-me-downs, garage sales, thrift stores, Craigslist and repurposing, not counting the paint, we've spent $75 on our sort of retro-ish, 70-ish living room.  

Those chairs are darn comfy. (Thanks K and N!)

And over looking it all, as she should, is Larry's mum, a hundred and two years younger.  

After all, her legacy helped to make it all possible.