My New Blue Dining Chair (soon to be chairs I hope!)

This week I tackled my dining room chair project. You might remember the chairs I bought at a consignment shop that I wrote about here.  I decided to try the light blue "Enamelware" Martha Stewart paint I had used on my magazine rack on the chairs.  The color is a very, very light blue that I thought would work well with our bright green dining room, and also bring more blue into the room to go along with the shelf paper stripes in our corner cabinet.

Here's a reminder of what the chairs looked like before.  I really love the lattice backs!

I decided to work on one chair at first to make sure I liked my color choices.  I removed the seat from the chair by removing the three screws that held it on from the underside of the chair.  Then as usual I primed the surface of the chair and then got to work on the painting.  I ended up putting on a couple of coats because although the paint had pretty good coverage there was still a bit of streaking.  So after letting the two coats of paint dry I did a bit of paint distressing around the edges and other areas that would most likely have been worn naturally.  I figured it would be better to distress it myself rather than worry about paint chips and such later down the road.  Now any mishaps would be welcome additions to the character of the chair :o)

And a bit closer to see some of the distressing details (haha, sounds funny, but you know what I mean!)  Here's a lovely leg:

And then the cross bar, I love how the center detailing looks!

I next set to work re-covering the seat.  I first removed the fabric by prying up the staples on the underside of the seat with a screwdriver.

When I finished with that, guess what I found, another layer of fabric.

So back I went removing more staples.  And when all those were removed I found the original fabric .......... okay, I was done removing staples, that layer would stay!

I decided to recover the seat in some drop cloth canvas fabric I bought a while back at Home Depot.  I really liked the texture, it was cheap, and I have a lot left over, so if I have to recover them again later because of a spill or something I would have more fabric at the ready.  I cut the fabric to size, pulled it tight around the seat, and stapled it into place on the underside of the chair seat.  For the corners I just worked with it, folding the edges kind of like a present until the fabric was pretty smooth and stapled it into place.

 

I reattached the seat to the chair frame and voila, I had a blue chair.

BUT!  ....... the story doesn't end there.  The light blue with the canvas combination was too light for me and especially with our bright green dining room, things just weren't working together.  I was bummed.  All that work and I didn't have a finished project I loved.  I thought about trying a brighter and patterned fabric on the seat but my trip to JoAnn's did not yield any results.  

........ So, I thought this would be a perfect time to try one of Annie Sloan's paints that everyone in blogville has been raving about.  My failure was working out perfectly, now I had an excuse!  This past Saturday I ordered some paint in Duck Egg Blue from the House of Anne and it arrived on Wednesday.

I was so excited to see that package, I tore into it like it was Christmas!

And here's my color, Duck Egg Blue:

It's another light blue but a bit darker than the previous I tried, with hints of green and grey.  And guess what?!  With this paint there is no need for sanding or priming, so I just jumped right in to the painting.  This paint is fantastic!  It goes on so smooth and the coverage is really nice.  I did do two coats but that was mainly because I went really thin to prevent any drips in the paint.

Then I got to the distressing.  Unlike latex paint that rubs/peels off with sanding, the chalk paint actually comes off as a dust similar to sanding wood.  This paint was made for distressing!   For the sanding stage I decided to move outside as it can get pretty dusty.

I then wiped the chair down to remove the paint dust and applied a layer of wax.  The wax darkened up the color slightly as you can see from this photo (wax on the the left side):

The wax absorbed unevenly, I'm not sure if this was because of my sanding or my wax application/buffing skills, but it did make the finish a bit streaky.  I guess it adds a bit more to the worn appearance.  I also used Minwax that I bought at Home Depot, so maybe if you bought the Annie Sloan wax it would work differently.  It still looks nice, just trying to be as descriptive as I can for this post :o)

Here are a few views of the chair after the waxing.  A pretty leg:

 

And don't forget that back!

Then I got to work re-covering the chair seat in my drop cloth fabric, and here is chair numero dos:

 

I know, not an incredible difference to the first blue, but it is darker which I think works better with the canvas seat, more of a contrast.  And here just to prove that it is a different blue (the Duck Egg Blue is the center chair):

 

You can kind of see the green of the dining room with the chairs and I think the new blue looks a lot better ..... it could just be me.

And another view:

See, it is quite different, right?  So now I know how I will spend my weekend.  But at least with the Annie Sloan chalk paint I can get right down to business and get painting!  

Linking up with:

Creations by Kara

A DIY display stand

After seeing this domed display stand on the Thrifty Décor Chick blog I just had to make one for myself!

 from Thrifty Decor Chick

It was made by gluing a cheese dome onto a candlestick, what a clever idea! I always see these cheese domes at the thrift stores I frequent, but don’t you know, once I wanted to buy one I couldn’t find one! After a couple weeks of searching I finally found one but couldn’t find a wooden candlestick. So after a week or so of searching for the perfect candlestick I finally found one and could begin my project!

Here we have my cheese dome and candlestick (I could only find a metal candlestick the size and style I wanted). The total cost for both was about $4, so not too bad.

The first thing I had to do was to attach the candlestick to the wooden cheese dome base.  I used a ruler to find the approximate center and traced an outline of the candlestick top onto the bottom of the wooden base.

In the “Thrifty Décor Chick” post she used gorilla glue to attach the pieces but I didn’t have any on hand so Brian suggested using JB Weld. Supposedly this is some pretty tough stuff, it has a strength of 3,000 psi or something like that and can be used on a variety of surfaces ……… I just know my dad has used it for car stuff before. The key to the JB Weld is it has two components that when mixed has super bonding strength.
Here I squeezed out two somewhat even lines of the components (I should have put them closer together for easier mixing).

And then I mixed like crazy with a toothpick:

I then used the toothpick to apply the “weld” to the outline on the bottom of the wooden base.

Then I attached the candlestick, weighted it down, and let it set for a few hours.

After it was set I got to the fun part, the painting! I decided to use my brand new Annie Sloan paint in Duck Egg Blue that I bought to paint my dining chairs with!!! (I am loving this paint but will talk about that in a later post.)  After giving the clandlestick/wooden base (now display stand) a couple of coats of paint I used some fine grit sand paper to add a bit of distressing.

Didn’t it turn out fantastic! Now to fill it with something worthy of display :o)

On my way home from work today I made a slight detour to Michael’s to get a couple of things to fill it with. I found some really pretty moss and a nest in a flower part arrangement that I deconstructed to make a little nature scene in my new domed display stand.

Here it is open and a bit closer:

I’m loving it! Bringing a little bit of “nature” indoors :o)

Linking up with:

Creations by Kara

The Key to Our Heart

I've been working on getting some pictures together for a gallery wall and thought it would be fun to add in some other items besides photos. A while back I found an old rusty key in the dirt in our side yard that I thought would be neat to frame. It seemed to fit the old door locks  around the house so I'm not sure if it was the original key or one of the two antique replacement keys we had bought and accidentally dropped in the yard.  I'm going to go with it was the original house key that had been lost in the yard for decades until I happened upon it while cleaning :o)

All the interior door knobs are original to the house. Here you can see the door to the bathroom with the replacement antique key we bought.  No modern locking mechanisms on these doors.  Aren't the old glass knobs beautiful?

And here's a picture of the rusty old key I found in the yard, it looks like it's seen better days .......... but I would remedy that!

I got out my steel wool and got to work removing the rust layer.  A steel brush would have probably worked better and been a little quicker but alas all I had was steel wool.  But it did the trick and I got most of the rust off.

It's not perfectly clean but that's part of the character, right.  It shows it's age.

I had recently bought a book of scrapbooking paper from Micheal's on sale.  I cut the paper to the size of my frame and then tried to use double-sided tape to tape the key to the paper.  The tape held up for a few hours but wouldn't be a permanent solution so I got out my trusty glue gun and glued the key to the paper.  That should hold it.  I tried to put the key in the frame with the glass covering but it would not fit so I just removed the glass and here you go:

 

A little memento to hang on our wall to commemorate our first home together :o)

Once I get all the pictures together and things arranged I'll be sure to post some of those photos of our gallery wall.

Painting a rug

Lately I've seen a lot of people blogging about painting rugs so I thought I'd give it a try.  I was still a bit skeptical about the results so I decided to buy a cheap rug and see what I could do.  I found an indoor/outdoor rug on Home Depot's website for around $15 so I wasn't worried about wasting too much money if I ruined it.  It for sure is nothing fancy, I think I read somewhere that it was made from recycled plastic!

Here you can see it a bit closer.  It has a slight hobnail texture:

When I first thought about painting a rug I thought a stenciled pattern would be neat but I had second thoughts so I settled on a simple stripe pattern.  We have a small dining room and I thought an intricate pattern might make the room look too busy ......... and stripes would be much easier to paint!  I laid out the rug in our living room (my work space) and got ready to measure and tape out my stripes.  Well, since my rug had a felt like texture the tape would not stick!  So I decided to use a cardboard edge as my guide and move it along as I went.  The rug had a somewhat striped texture so I would just follow the texture for painting my stripe.  I quickly found out that painting the stripes by hand would take FOREVER so I gave up that technique and thought I would try spray paint.  As I said before it was a cheap rug so I was willing to try anything.

So this time I moved to the backyard, I refrain from spray painting in the house :o)  I used some long paper to mark out my stripes and then got to work painting.  It was still somewhat slow going as I would measure one stripe at a time, paint, then move on to the next stripe.  After about an hour of work I got through a bit over half the rug. It was starting to get a bit windy so I called it a day.

Things were looking pretty good so I was optimistic.  In some spots along the stripes there was a tiny amount of over-spray  but nothing super noticeable.  Brian helped me the next evening and the painting went much quicker having some one to help me measure and readjust the paper guide.  After letting it dry for a bit we moved it into the dining room and we both thought it looked pretty good.  Brian admitted he was skeptical when I first mentioned my rug painting plans but was impressed by how it turned out.  See, he should trust my instincts more .................. or maybe he's seen my instincts in action before and that's why he was skeptical :o)

The stripes are not too drastic but enough to provide some interest.  Here's a few more pictures of the rug from different angles:

Not bad, huh?

Overall I think it turned out quite well.  The painting might have worked a bit better on a something like a sisal rug where the weave is tight with longer fibers.  But for a $15 rug and a few cans of spray paint it looks pretty good.

The rug we had in the dining room was moved to the living room to replace our dark blue braided rug to lighten things up.  It seems like our goal in every room is to lighten things up a bit.  I guess that comes with having a small house and painting a lot of rooms with bright colors :o)

So I'm here to confirm what I've read on other blogs, it is possible to paint a rug!

Linked to:




Blue Cricket Design


Creations by Kara

The bookcases are FINALLY finished!

It took a bit of time but the bookcases are finally finished and I'm really happy about the results!  The lighter color and the new placement made all the difference for the room.  Even though it is a small room it now feels more open and bright. 

So here's what it looked like before we moved in:

Here is a picture taken soon after we moved in and painted the walls.  You can also see the bookcases when they were painted dark chocolate brown:

And here is a picture of how it looks now with the bookcases I painted here flanking the window:

Much better don't you think?

Here's a picture looking back towards the door:

Above the desk you can see the yard sale mirror I painted here and my seashell prints from here. Here's another angle of the seashell prints:

And a bit closer:

On the opposite wall from the seashell prints is another window.  This area of the room is still a work in progress.  I plan on getting rid of the small red bookcase and the white cabinet and replacing them with another piece of furniture that will fit the space a bit better.  Maybe something long and narrow?  We will see what I can find.

 

So that's how things are looking in the front/guest bedroom.  We are slowly making progress.  For now I really like how things turned out.  One day I wish we can do something like this around the window:

from houzz

That's how I envisioned things until we moved the bookcases to the window wall and I realized they were shorter than the window :o(  Maybe one day we will get around to building new shelves, and if we do my mom has already claimed my ticking stripe bookcases :o)