Tag Archives: bedroom

November 14, 2011 · 11:21 am

Chair Redo

Happy Monday everyone! We’ve got a few bigger projects in the works for later this week, but I wanted to write about this little chair makeover I did for our nephew.  He finally moved into his “big boy” room, and needed a desk chair.  All his mom said is that she wanted the chair to be red, so I thought I’d take care of it for her.

I found this beauty at Goodwill for around $3.00:

Yeah. I don’t have many words for this one.  Between the torn faux leather seat cushion…

…and the honey-colored wood (definitely not my style), it was due for a little revamp. Luckily, I am an expert in chair makeovers (see the one other time I’ve redone a chair in this blog post), so this was a piece of cake.

I unscrewed the seat cushion and set it aside so I could give the whole chair a quick pass with some sandpaper:

Then gave it three coats of a fun bright red spray paint:

In between coats of paint, I tackled the seat cushion. This process seems to be about the same for every chair. First, you remove the old covering by prying up all the staples (I like to use a combination of a flat-head screw driver and needle-nose pliers):

After removing all the staples (tedious but not too difficult), I removed the nasty old pleather.  As a replacement, I found this fun striped sheet at Goodwill for $1.99.  The pattern matched the red but still tied in to the other colors in his room:

I cut a piece that would roughly fit the cushion (with ~3 inches extra on all sides to allow enough fabric to staple), and positioned it so the stripes would be uniform and straight. From there, it’s just a matter of stapling it and keeping everything lined up and even.  The method that works for me is to start with my first staple in the middle of one side, and then put a staple on the opposite side to even things out.

The corners can be done however you want.  For this chair, I tried to fold the fabric into pleats and then staple it in place on the front corners.  In the back, the corners were a little weird:

So I just did one side of the cut-out at a time and made it fit:

(Alright, that was just a gratuitous ring shot. Sue me.)

Before attaching the cushion, I gave the entire chair a coat of clear enamel.  I’m not sure if it was necessary or not, but it gave it a nice shiny finish.

Then the only thing to do was reattach the cushion:

And deliver it to it’s new home!

AHH he’s so cute…love.

xox,

katie

About these ads

2 Comments

Filed under DIY, Life

Tagged as , , , , , , ,

September 6, 2011 · 10:23 am

fall touch-ups

That title is definitely deceiving, being that I did this project last week when we were still suffering through 95+ degree temperatures here in lovely Indiana. But, I am happy to report that as I write this, it is a chilly and wonderful 53 degrees outside, with similar weather to follow for the rest of this week.  Perfect weather for…

PUMPKIN SPICE LATTES!! It’s like the weather guy knew that Starbucks was going to start serving PSLs today and adjusted the weather accordingly.  I love these things, but I don’t know if I could have ordered one still wearing shorts and tank tops – it’s a fall drink, and requires fall weather.  That being said, you know where I’ll be stopping when I go out later today! Yumm.

Anyways, on to the topic of this post…touch-ups.  These aren’t the most exciting projects to talk about because there’s no amazing before/after shot…it’s more like a before and a “wait, is something different?” shot.  However, I kind of feel like these small changes – the kind that people don’t really notice – can make a big difference.  

The real impetus behind the touch-ups was a suggestion from Bryan and our combined awful painting skills.  As I’ve mentioned, the only room we’ve really painted (besides our downstairs half bath) is the guest room.  This bedroom had a previous life as a kid’s room, complete with Dr. Seuss paintings on the wall:

�

So those obviously had to go.  We chose to paint the room a darker blue with a little bit of gray, which turned out leaving walls like this:

But, our rookie mistakes also left us with trim like this:

and this…

and this…

Alright, so not the worst thing ever, but it was ALL over the room and there were more obvious spots that I didn’t even document with pictures. Plus it was just super annoying.

So, one morning when Bryan asked what I would be doing that day while he was at work and I said “nothing” (the exciting life of a post-grad, pre-licensed law student), he suggested that I touch-up the paint in the guest room.  Excellent! Another use for the gallon of white semi-gloss paint that I originally purchased for painting the striped bathroom.  I swear, that paint can will never be empty…I’ve used it a ton and it’s still half full (not half empty…I’m an optimist).

I’m still not great at documenting everything I do, so I don’t really have any pictures of the process of painting the trim.  Let’s just say, what started out as spot-fixing turned into repainting ALL the trim and baseboard in the room.  Besides the new white paint not 100% matching the previous trim color, the new spots made the old look dingy and gross.  It didn’t take long at all – I just used a small angled brush which makes it pretty easy.  I didn’t even use tape (much to Bryan’s dismay – but don’t worry, I hardly made any mistakes!)

Anyways, the “after” pictures wouldn’t show much so I didn’t even take any.  Suffice it to say, it looks much nicer than before in a very non-obvious way. As I was finishing in the guest room and walking downstairs, I realized there was another touch-up project I should tackle while I had all my supplies out; the risers on our staircase.

At first glance they don’t look horrible, but there were all kinds of scuff marks and gross spots all over the place.  The worst was towards the bottom:


Grosssss.  Being that this is the first thing people see when they walk in our front door, I thought we could do better.  After dusting the heck out of the steps (they seem to be a gathering place for dust and cat hair), I just worked my way from top to bottom using the same paint and same brush from the guest room (and same lack of tape…which is why I had to do this project while Bryan was at work).  This was SUPER easy! I took my time to make sure I didn’t get any paint on the wood part of the steps, but the beauty of latex paint is that you can just wipe up any drips or mistakes and no permanent damage is done (not that I had any mistakes…none…really…).

Here are the stairs now. Like I said, don’t be expecting some major revelation…

I know what you’re thinking…”ok, that looks the same”…but wait!  Here’s that yucky bottom step:

See? Much nicer first impression, in my humble opinion :)

xox, katie

Leave a Comment

Filed under DIY

Tagged as , , , ,

August 17, 2011 · 11:15 am

Dresser Makeover

While Bryan is venturing into the world of furniture building, I’ve been stepping into the world of furniture beautifying. I’d much prefer to take an old piece of furniture and make it pretty (I’m green like that I guess).  I have a couple projects I’m working on, but this was a quick fix that I wanted to share.

This dresser is one that had been at my parent’s house for pretty much as long as I can remember. It was my furniture when I was younger, was passed to my siblings, and then I took it with me when I moved to my apartment. I always wanted to give it a fresh coat of paint, but never had the outdoor space until now.

Here’s the before pic:

Notice that it’s a little beat up from 3 moves over the past 2 years. The knobs also aren’t really our style, although they definitely worked when this was a child’s dresser. As you can see, our thought process when we moved in back in April was “well, why carry it upstairs? We’re going to repaint it any day now.” 

Yeah…that was four months ago and the dresser was still in our dining room until last week.  It was functioning as a quasi-buffet, and also served as at least SOME furniture in our previously empty dining room.

So after we built our dining room table, we moved the dresser out to the garage and I got to work. After taking the drawers out, I used the random orbital sander to try to remove some of the (several) layers of white paint from the top.  

(Note: Don’t sand the top of a dresser then later use it as a stand to paint some picture frames like I did. If you look closely at the picture above, you can see faint rectangle outlines from where I did another project, necessitating even more sanding. This picture is from Sanding: Round 2).

Next, I removed the knobs from the drawers and did a quick sanding over the drawer fronts as well.

I certainly didn’t remove ALL the white paint (pointless unless I had been planning on staining the dresser, which I wasn’t), but some of it definitely came off.

There were a few rough spots where I dabbed on some wood filler, let it dry, and then sanded it smooth…but for the most part it was in pretty good shape.  I moved all the pieces out to the driveway to paint them.

I used more of the same white trim paint that I bought for the bathroom stripes project (obviously it’s been getting a lot of love, as evidenced below).

I also thought I was being really smart and avoiding messy cleanup by just using a paper plate to hold the paint. Don’t do this. Clean-up was certainly easier than cleaning out a paint tray, but there was no way to get the extra paint off the roller, and it was hard to ensure there was a thin, even layer of paint on the dresser. The plate under the paint can worked well to catch drips though!

I gave it about 3 coats of paint, and we moved it upstairs to the guest bedroom. We also wanted to replace the hardware to something that didn’t scream “KIDS FURNITURE”, so I picked up 6 knobs at Lowes for about $2.50 each.

Here’s everything set up and ready for new hardware in the guest room (plus Wrigley lounging in the sun).

I slapped those knobs on and viola! Grown-up dresser!

We still need to do something with the legs…the bright gold tips don’t really go with the new hardware. Maybe paint them all white? Paint them an oil-rubbed bronze color to match? Replace the legs entirely? So many choices…recommendations welcome!

xox, katie

2 Comments

Filed under DIY

Tagged as , , , , ,