DIY Chairs

Hi  What have you been up to lately?   I’ve been busy painting DIY chairs and finding fabric bargains to cover them.  The latest one is the two chairs at the ends of our dining room table.  Several years ago I covered them in  a check pattern I made with shirts from Goodwill.  They were beginning to get a little worn looking.  So when I found some red and blue toile regular $13 a yard for $4 a yard I couldn’t resist buying it.  I unscrewed the seats.

 And took off the fabric.  This is what I had before the blue.  I just used  scissors to cut the fabric bigger than the seat, then folded it over and used a staple gun to staple it.

 Here they are finished.  But they didn’t  look right in the dining room anymore, so  I wandered around the house looking for where I could put them and they ended up here in our front entry.  I really like them there, so what if you trip over them when you come in the front door? Just a minor inconvenience.

I got this fabric on sale too, reg. $29 a yard for $12, and I only needed 3/4 yard.  I am always picking up odd chairs here and there.  This was an orphan chair that I picked up by the side of the road.  I always seem to be doing DIY chairs projects.  Maybe I should be “the chair whisperer”.  Anyhow, there were 2 like this and one with arms.  Chalk paint from Walmart , staple the fabric to the seat, and another project is done.  Color is “Nautical”.  (I should have taken a close up photo so you can see the distressing.  I’ll do that another day).

 Remember I showed you these chairs that I painted with the Walmart chalk paint?  I decided they looked better at either end of the table than the blue ones I had before.  The blue orphans are in the middle.

Here is how the dining rom looks now.  Did I already tell you about the brass chandelier I got for only $15?  Out came the red spray paint and we have a new chandelier.  My new red color scheme is falling into place. To be continued…

Rhondi xo

Chalk Paint Chair DIY

So I am continuing to add some red to our living and dining rooms. Here is the next addition to the new red color story going on in our house. I bought a pair of these chairs about 15 years ago when we lived in Philadelphia.  They have just been collecting dust in our basement for the last few years.  They used to be black.

 I covered the black paint with Annie Sloan Chalk Paint pure white.

 Second coat was chalk paint from Walmart ($7.98).  The color is Imperial. If you’ve purchased chalk paint before you’ll know what a great deal that is!

 I did it very quickly, not worrying about getting a smooth even coat.

 Then I took some sandpaper and “distressed” it.  Distressing is just sanding off parts where it would have naturally worn off over time. I used 100 sandpaper which is a medium grit. If you don’t like this sloppy look , just make sure that your top coat of paint is even strokes.  

 The arms are a place that would get a lot of wear over the years, so I sanded there too.  Annie Sloan suggests using a coat of paste wax before you distress, but I think it distresses easier if you sand before you wax it.

 I sanded the legs and also the rugs and any other place I thought would get natural wear over the years.  The idea is to make the areas that you distress not look deliberate, but look like it happened naturally over time.  When I was finished I gave it a coat of paste wax. 

 The final step was to recover the chair seat.  Sorry I didn’t think to take any photos of how to do it.  Just google it, if you need some instructions. All you need is a staple gun, screwdriver to remove the seat, and fabric to cover it.

Right now the walls in our dining room are a pale yellow. The red chairs are going in there and I have a red chandelier that will replace the white one. I’m thinking of painting the top half of the walls navy blue. If I don’t like it, it’s only paint…  

I didn’t mention this to my husband yet.  I wonder what he’ll think when he reads this post!

Thanks for stopping by. Got time for a cup of tea?  I’ve got my red and white tea set all ready!

Rhondi xo

I Missed You

Good morning sweet blogging friends

I have missed you!  I miss hearing from you.  I miss visiting you in your homes/blogs.  I miss sharing with you when I have done something new.  So I am posting something today.  Don’t know if I will be posting a lot or not, just have to wait and see!

You remember my blue and white living room?

 Some spray paint on an old lamp.

 A coffee table found on craigslist painted with white chalk paint.  Don’t you love Chalk paint?  Haven’t tried it yet?  You are missing out on some fun and easy painting!

 New slipcovers on our 46 year old chairs.  Oops, just noticed I took the pictures before I hemmed the skirt on the chairs!

 Steal a lamp and some books from another room.  (Shop the house)

                               Add a quilt I made a few yeas ago.  I named it Wow in Red.

 Steal another lamp from the TV room. ( more shopping the house)

 Take a mirror and antique washstand from another room, more shopping the house.  What is so fun about shopping the house is the price!

 And we have a new living room!  I spent less than $200.

Still have a bit more to do, but I was excited to show it to you now.

Awhile back I said that I wanted to have my home be more calm.  That’s when I painted the living room walls white.  Then awhile ago I started thinking about a red check fabric that I’d seen on Tina’s blog, Cherry Hill Cottage , ( oh my goodness, that was in 2011!) and I decided just to go for it.

I’m working on the dining room next.  It used to have red walls, but when we decided to sell our house a few years ago, I painted it in the pale yellow so it was more neutral color.  So glad we decided not to move after all.

Imagine how great it is going to look at Christmas!

Hope you are having a very good day and the sun is shining on you.  Rhondi xo

Where Has The Time Gone?

My goodness, I can't believe it's been two months since I last posted!  It has been a busy summer!  The best thing that happened is that we have a  precious new grandbaby, Sophie Elizabeth, born in July.  We did lots of driving too: trips to Cape Cod  and Texas to spend time with our kids and grandkids.

It has been such a hot summer here, day after day above 90 degrees.  I am so ready to be done with the heat! This morning it was finally a little cooler and I could open the windows for a little while.  What a relief!

Do you remember when I showed you these chairs I got at a yard sale? 

Well I FINALLY finished making the slipcovers!

I need to get a bigger table to go between them. 

Did you notice I put a tray out for tea?  Hope you have time to stay for a visit.  We have so much catching up to do!

Another thing we did this summer is put our house up for sale.   We have decided we'd like to get something smaller with less yard to keep up with .  There's just the two of us and we don't need so much house anymore.  It is a charming home but doesn't have all the granite and upgrades that everyone wants these days, so it may not sell at the price we want. Some of you will notice we painted the dining room yellow.  I miss the red , but thought it was better for resale.  Here is the virtual tour.

If you know anyone in Charlotte who wants to buy a home, let me know. 

Glad to be back!

Rhondi xo

Bargains Make Me Happy

On our way to have breakfast out on Saturday morning we came across these chairs at a yard sale, $75 for both chairs and ottomans.  A great deal right?  But we don't really need any chairs.  So we passed them up.

 As we were eating, I kept thinking about what a great deal they were.   So since we had to drive almost right by there on our way home I talked my hubby into just taking a look.  I didn't expect them to still be there at that price, but  they were and they had reduced them to $40 for all. Well I couldn't say no to that, so we loaded them into the back of our car and home they came.  Bargains make me happy!

These chairs are nostalgic for me because they are the exact same style as the pair of chairs my parents gave us when we got married. They are called Lawson chairs. A Lawson chair/sofa has plump cushions, a low back and even lower arms. It is named after a Boston billionaire named Lawson who it was originally designed for.
I found a great deal on some white matelasse bedspreads at Kmart.com which I'll use to make covers for them and they'll probably replace some worn out chairs in our TV room.

I'll show them to you whenever they're finished.
Bye for now!
Rhondi