Side Chair Makeover

In the last few posts I mentioned we moved.  This was a big deal.  It had been 7 years since I moved last and that move didn't really count. I was a carefree single girl finally moving in with my fiancé with my handful of kitchen items and a futon. Puh-leeeze. I could do that in my sleep now.  This was a real move.  Complete with two kids, and their stuff, and 7 years of stuff my husband and I had collected, and more stuff on top of that stuff. We were leaving the house we came home to on our wedding night and the house we brought both of our babies home to. It was a stressful week to say the least.


On top of the move, we showed up to our new house with a U-haul full of furniture only to find the previous occupant left the house a complete disaster.  Mess and smell on top of garbage and furniture all left for us to deal with.  There were points that day that I wanted to cry. What does this have to do with a chair makeover?  This chair was left amid the piles of garbage. Pretty much the highlight of that day... even in this state.

After we got semi settled, I made a trip to Home Depot for a few supplies and JoAnn's for the fabric.


Here's what I used:
• Light grit sandpaper
• Elmer's Wood Glue
• Elmer's Wood Filler Max
• 1 can of Kilz Spray Primer
• 2 cans of Rust-Oleum Painter's Touch Spray Paint
• Staple Gun and staples
• About 1/2 yard of fabric


Step 1: Remove the seat. (4 screws right under the seat)


Step 2: Fix any large repairs. I repaired the broken arm with wood glue and clamped that over night.

On top of a broken arm, there was a lot more damage to this chair (this is where the wood filler will come into play).  I thought about refinishing the wood first, but decided against it once I realized how damaged the wood was.  No stain is going to cover this up.

 

Step 3: Lightly sand the entire chair and wipe the dust off with a damp rag.

Step 4: Give the chair a light coat of spray primer.

It won't be completely white. That's fine.  Better to go light than to have drips.


Step 5: Fill in any missing chunks with wood filler. I'm guessing I could have done this before the primer but I still had some sanding to go so it didn't really matter.

Step 5 and a half: Not really step 6 since not everyone will have to do this, but my chair needed a lot of sanding. The finish was in bad shape and the wood filler was bumpy. So I went back and forth between sanding and priming sanding and priming... until I had a smooth finish. (The spray paint I used is in that picture)

Step 6: Reupholster the seat.  While the final coat of primer dried, I went inside and reupholstered the seat. Lay the seat face down on the wrong side of your new fabric and staple away! I just went right over the old fabric, stapling on opposite sides while making sure it was pulled tight.  This seriously takes like 10 minutes. : )


That's the old fabric... held on by tiny little nails.  Yup... not pulling those out.

I got my new fabric at JoAnn Fabrics.  It was $50/yard which is crazy! However, I had a 50% off coupon and I only got 3/4 yard.  So it came to about $18. Much better than $50 and I love it!

Staple, staple, staple. I made sure to line up my pattern so one of the circles fell right in the center of the chair. Optional, but something to keep in mind.

Step 7: Paint! In my experience many light coats gets the best results. Here's what coat 1 looked like.

Better to have missed spots than drips.  You can always spray it some more.

Here is my chair mocking me from the yard.  I wanted to bring it in so bad but I knew it had more drying time to go. I think I did 4-5 coats over several hours. All very light.

Step 8: Reattach your new seat and admire your work. Done!

So what do you think? Inspired to try it?

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DIY Moroccan-Style Wall Stencil Tutorial

**UPDATE!  If you have any trouble making your walls snazzy, visit my FAQ post on this tutorial.  I got lots of questions, so there're all here for you should you need some help.**

I jazzed up my wall with a DIY Moroccan-style pattern. And, the best part about this project?... it was completely free.  One Pampers box and some leftover paint later and I really like my wall :)

Here's what you do.

1. Find a Moroccan-ish shape you like online and print it out whatever size you want (Google images is a good place to go).  The larger you go... the less work it is.  I had to tile mine onto 4 sheets of paper, then tape them together.  Don't worry about the design being all blurry if it is, you can fix that in a minute.  Once it's all taped, fold the paper in quarters and cut out your shape.  When you unfold it, you will have a symmetrical pattern even if it started off blurry.  Here is the shape I used if you want to do the same.

Originally I was going to add that center shape as well until I started tracing, and realized I was insane.

2. Trace your shape onto cardboard and cut it out.  This is where my Pampers box (and assistant) came into play.

3. Step 3 is an important one, and I think the reason I had no wonky pattern happening.  I taped a level to my stencil.  This way, I traced it onto the wall perfectly straight every time.  Worked out awesome.

4.  Pick a spot on your wall to start tracing lightly with a pencil.  I eyeballed where my stencil would end up on each end of the wall and made sure I started in a place that would have me end in a half pattern on each side.  Did that make sense?  It really doesn't matter.  I just preferred no tiny slivers on the sides.

(In these pictures I already went over some of my pencil lines with the paint)

5. Once you traced everything with a pencil, (took me a few nights while they snoozed) grab a small brush and go over the lines with paint.  That's it!

My lines are not perfect but no one is going to look that closely. :)

I'm sad to say that just a few weeks after I finished my wall... we sold our house and moved!  (Which explains the lack of posts in a while... and the crappy iPhone picture of the "after")  Oh well.  It was good practice and I will definitely be doing this again in our next house. I love how it turned out.

If you're in to easy and inexpensive DIYs, here's a few more I've done around my house.

  

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DIY Screen Printing from Zip Screens™

Check out my rocker chick! We DIY screen printed her shirt with the help of Zip Screens which were sent to me thanks to my friend Katherine at Sew Woodsy.  She introduced me to FashionArtProjects.com and they sent me some cool stuff.  Check it out.

Can you imagine the size of a 4-year-old girl's eyes when packages full of sparkle glitter paint arrive in the mail? And then, I tell her "this is to paint your clothes".  Bad idea.  We had to paint immediately for I feared she might explode with excitement. Lucky for us, kid #2 was sleeping and the back porch wasn't too full of toys.  Time to craft.  My assistant is ready.

First step was to raid her drawers for some clothes to jazz up.  We found two T-shirts ripe for something funky. One pink, one green.

Next I cut up the Cheerios box to slide inside the shirts so the paint didn't bleed through.

Then, she picked her design.  The packages I got came with several to choose from. She picked "rocker chick"... oh yeah. It's pretty much like a huge sticker and the design is cut out but with a mesh or "screen" holding everything together. Peel off the sticker from it's clear backing.

Stick it on your shirt (or whatever you're painting). The directions recommend adding tape around the outsides of the screen/sticker, but we didn't and had no problems.

Choose your paint.  I gently nudged her into using white since it would show up the best on the green shirt.

Smush and drag the paint across the screen using the attached scraper card thingy. :)

Once that was done a very whiney convincing voice asked (over and over and over again) if we could add pink and purple on top.

We did, and I think this was our one mistake.  Since we took the time to open two more paints after the white paint was already applied, and then smush those paints around, the white had dried quite a bit.  When we went to take the screen/sticker off the shirt, some of the paint came with it.  Good thing for us the shirt was supposed to look worn and edgy.  

It just looks a little more worn and edgy now : ) She loves it and tells everyone, "I made this shirt!".

Here's shirt #2 in the making. With this one we did the white first and took the sticker off immediately.  Then, once it was fairly dry, she used a paint brush to add sparkle purple on top. Worked much better.

Sparkle-tastic.

I would definitely use Zip Screens again.  Kaley absolutely loved doing this project and thinks it's so cool she can wear her artwork. This would be a good project for a kid birthday party too... nice take home gift for the kiddies. You can buy Zip Screens at Walmart. Happy crafting.

Disclaimer: I was provided Zip Screens and the paint free of charge however, I was not compensated to write this post and my opinions are my own. :)

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Hooded Towels {and some kid-free hangout time}

So I have a BFF, a "bestie" if you will, Jess.  We met in college when we were the wise old age of 19 and since then have acquired college degrees, husbands, careers, a few kids, mortgages, responsibilities I didn't even know existed, and all the other crap that goes along with becoming an adult. Needless to say, our care-free days of getting a Starbucks, doing a little shopping, and bar hopping most nights of the week are long gone. Now we have to plan... WAY in advance... to get any sort of kid-free/husband-free girl-time fit into our lives. (Can I get an amen?) One such Saturday we decided to use our rare hangout time to sew. (Yes, I would have balked at this in the college days and called us lame... it's still a little lame... but we had a good time, don't judge.)


Jess wanted to make some hooded towels since her little man was in the too big for infant towels, a little to small for big people towels phase. I loaded up the car with all my sewing crap and headed over.  This is the tutorial we followed. To make one hooded towel you need a bath towel, half of a hand towel, and an hour or so.  Any embellishing or lining is up to you.


First step... gather supplies... for us, this included coffee. The addition of Kahlua is optional. (Note: The estimation that this towel can be completed in an hour or so assumes you are sober).

Next, read tutorial and bitch about work.

I worked on my Summer Beach Quilt (yep, still working) and bitched about work.  I think this is the 3rd time I've re-mentioned that quilt in a blog post since I started it.  There may be some rule about procrastination posting I am breaking. Maybe I should just finish it already.

Jess' son is "the third"... you know, the one after junior.  So she added a Roman numeral "3" to his towel by cutting out strips of coordinating fabric, ironing under, and sewing on.

One fun afternoon while the husbands took all 3 kids to the mall (why the mall?) we got one towel done. Well, Jess got one towel done. I was there for support and coffee. With less gossip, you could easily finish a few towels.

When the crazies got back, we made the kid try it on... and walk across the yard.

Until he tried to rip it off.

And then make a break for the lake.

Enjoy your "hangout" time!

Let's be friends!

Quilt Update

In the world of blogging, I'm small peanuts. After all, this is not my job, just a hobby and I do it because I like doing it.  "It" meaning both sewing (a little crafting) and blogging.  I enjoy reading other sewing blogs and getting ideas from them, so I thought maybe somebody might like to get some ideas from me... the point of blogging, right? I don't know why it still surprises me when I find that people are using my blog to make their own creations. But it does!

Reading the comments on Pinterest about things I've sewn could eat up several hours for me. Seriously addicting.  My husband says, isn't it weird that you and our kids are all over the internet for people to comment on? Maybe. But so far it's been a positive and encouraging experience. Could my kid's image be on a billboard in some foreign country selling something sleazy? Maybe. However, 99.9% of the feedback I've seen has been positive and seemingly helpful to fellow at-home sewers. Which brings me to the point of this post...


Remember the quilt I made for my nephew Levi?

Apparently it was pretty popular in blog-land and inspired a few to try it. Awesomeness!


I found Kelly on QuiltingBoard.com.  Check out her blocks!  Love these fabrics and everything looks so crisp. Last I asked, she was 22 blocks in. Can't wait to see the final product.

And then Michele emailed me her finished quilt.  She made this for her aunt's 80th birthday and hand quilted the whole thing! Love green and pink together and the green binding. Perfect meaningful gift for a person who has everything.

Thanks ladies for showing me your stuff and great job!  You actually inspired me to get going on my Summer Beach Quilt.  Yep, that one.  It's still in the works (and taking up a good chunk of my dining room table). Maybe it will inspire a few more.

Let's be friends!