Goldilock's Favourite Chair

Almost.

In May, I had my family and Matt's parents over for Mother's Day brunch. It was a lovely day :) It wasn't until about 5 minutes before they all came in that I realized I didn't have enough chairs. There were 7 people and I had 4 dining room chairs. What was even more awkward was that I only had one couch in the living room. It was the first time that my parents were meeting Matt's parents, and they were going to have to be VERY close. To solve the problem that day, I moved all of the kitchen chairs around the living room so that we could all awkwardly eat on our laps sit together. It was a temporary fix, but it worked. Since then I've been looking for accent chairs for the living room. I wanted something that was comfortable, not all wood, not all fabric (because the dining room chairs are mostly fabric), not too big but not too small.

After months of looking, I found these on Kijiji:

They were perfect! I loved the combination of wood and fabric and I knew the wheat/taupe/greige colour would work in the living/dining room (keep in mind this is a 650 square foot condo). It turns out it was an office furniture wholesaler who was selling them. They were originally asking $200 for both, but I got them down to $150. The owner reminded me several times that they were very expensive chairs. Very. Expensive. I believed him and was happy that I'd be getting them for $150.

The only problem with these perfect chairs was that they were 45 minutes away. And we'd have to take two cars. Because I really wanted two. Matt and I have small cars :S But it was okay because they were perfect.

When Matt and I finally got there, this is what I saw (except it was in a warehouse, not in my house).

These blue impostors were NOT my perfect chair! A part of me thought that maybe it was just the warehouse lighting and when I brought them to their home they would change to the perfect colour. That did not happen. I didn't love them. But I did love the boy who drove 45 each way to pick one up so that I could have both. So I bought them. 

The chairs are super comfortable and they're the perfect size. It's hard to find chairs that you can cross your legs in, and these ones are the perfect width for that. The only think I didn't like was the fabric.

The material is also tweed-ish and rough instead of smooth like they looked in the photo.

What do you think? I imagine it would be expensive to have them reupholstered... Maybe I could try it myself? Have any advice?

Dresser to TV Stand (part one)

I've mentioned Chelsea's blog once before because she's done some pretty amazing DIY projects. My favourite project of her's is the dresser that she turned into a TV stand. You should check it out because it's AMAZING! It's that post that inspired my current tv housing situation. I knew I didn't want anything that was black, chrome or a wall unit. It wasn't until I saw Chelsea's stand on Pinterest that I knew exactly what I wanted to do.
Instead of doing what most people do when they decide they want a new piece of furniture (going to a furniture store), I decided to check out kijiji in my pjs. It took a few weeks of scouring and inquiring before I found this baby:

I had originally taken some photos of it on my phone, but when I bought a new phone not all of them transfered properly. Here's the only one I can find (I had already primed the gold inlay and taken the pulls off). It actually looks much nicer than it was, trust me.

I scored this dresser, as well as a night stand and a smaller dresser that I'm using in the dining room (pictured below) for $125, delivery included. Not bad for solid wood, good quality dressers.

One night while I was watching tv I decided to open up a can of primer and cover all of the gold inlay. I had already decided that I wanted to paint it the same colour as the dresser, so I knew I had to do this step, even if I hadn't picked a paint colour yet. This is usually how my DIY projects start, randomly without much of a plan.

After priming the inlay, I sanded and primed all the drawer fronts. Living in a condo with just a balcony, it's hard to do big projects here, so I only did the drawers at my place.

I used a spray primer, Zinsser BIN, which is a shellac primer. The woman at Home Depot recommended it when they didn't have my favourite Zinsser primer in a spray can.

In this shot you can really see that it needed some love... I had already sloppily primed the inlay at this point.

I sanded the drawers, wiped them down, vacuumed the creases and sprayed them with a coat of primer.

It took about 45 minutes to sand and spray all 9 drawers. And look at the difference!

It was looking better already. After seeing how much better they looked, I contemplated keeping the dresser white. But then I changed my mind back to charcoal grey.

Here's a little peak into the chaos and disaster that always happens mid-project.

After doing the drawers, I took the dresser to Matt's house to sand, prime and paint the dresser. Two of the drawers didn't close properly, so Matt fixed it. You can see in this photo that the top of the dresser was in rough shape.

Here's a close-up of the grungy-ness. You can see that stickers were removed, which wasn't the case with the night table, which is sporting some pretty bad ass glow-in-the-dark dinosaurs.

We (yes, we - even though there's only photographic evidence of Matt's contribution) sanded the top with the electric sander and hand sanded the rest.

The spray primer wasn't working like I'd hoped, so I went back to Home Depot for a can of the same Zinsser primer. I figured it'd be best to keep it the same as the drawers.

There is almost ALWAYS a moment in a project where I feel like I've ruined it and that it will never turn out the way I imagined. So far, this has never turned out to be the case, but in that moment I figure it's over. I have even been known to throw my hands up and cry. Then Matt gently puts my hands back down and tells me we can fix it. This happened during this project once I had finished priming the entire piece.

The whole thing was covered in this thick, coarse, popcorn ceiling yuck!

I freaked out and felt like crying. That's when Matt came into the garage and said "Uhh were you planning on wearing those jeans again?" You see, only I would decide that I'm such a pro that I can paint in my favourite jeans without getting any on me. False.

I thought it would be a great idea to save money and buy foam rollers at the dollar store. Matt tried to dissuade me, but I wouldn't listen. They kept falling off throughout the priming stage, and I kept having to use more (good thing I got 6 for a dollar). Apparently at some point in the process I sat on one of those rollers. Sweet. He proved his love for me by saying "Let's go buy paint, then we'll come back and sand the dresser" instead of "I told you so". He's a keeper.

That's when I found I also had paint in my hair. I'm still picking little pieces of it out of my hair to this day. This primer really does stick to anything.

I chose Benjamin Moore Advance water based enamel alkyd paint (like I used for the kitchen table) in Kendall Charcoal. Turns out it wasn't as dark as I thought it would be, but I'm happy with the result.

After a quick sand job, the dresser was looking smooth. I decided not to do a second coat of primer to save my sanity.

The paint dried much darker than this.

After two coats on the dresser and drawers it was done!

Here's what it looks like now:

I'm really happy with it! Now I have to do the second step - removing the top drawers, painting inside, adding some wood shelves and cutting some holes in the back for the wires. I have a feeling it may be a while.

I'm linking up with:

 Carrie This Home 

My Turn for Us

Rain on a Tin Roof - Give Me the Goods Monday

Thrifty Decor Chick

Remodelahilic

How to Recover a Parson Chair

After I bought and refinished my kitchen table, I started looking for chairs. I knew I only needed 4 because the condo is small - only 651 square feet! When I have company for dinner, I figured I'd make it work somehow.

After visiting several stores and not finding anything I loved, I decided to search kijiji. After a few options I liked fell through, I decided on a set of four parsons chairs. They were a dark brown pleather and had little tears in them - the owner must have had a cat! She was asking $80 for all four, but when I mentioned I'd be reupholstering them she dropped the price to $60 - so $15/chair wasn't too shabby!

Here's what I used to reupholster the chairs (plus a sewing machine)

I took the chairs apart and enlisted the help of my favourite seamstress - my Mom! Here's what they looked like before (with the back already taken apart from the seat):

As you can see, they were in pretty rough shape. After discussing our options, my Mom said that it would be easiest to cover right over the pleather as opposed to taking the pleather off and completely reupholstering them. Plus, if stains get on the fabric they won't sink into the chair. Seeing as I've already spilled red wine on one, easy stain removal was important!

I bought this fabric from Designer Fabrics downtown Toronto for $12/meter.
The first thing we did was measure the width of the back of the chair. We then measured the fabric and pinned it so that we'd know where to sew. I'm using the term "we" very loosely... It was mostly my wonderful seamstress who figured all of this out. She even made sure that the pattern matched up perfectly on the seam down the sides.

The plan was to cut a long piece of fabric and fold it in half so that we could sew the fabric together like a pillow case down the sides and to slip it over the back part of the chair. This meant we had to sew it perfectly so that it was snug enough not to wrinkle, but not too snug that we couldn't slip it over the top. Luckily Because my Mom is so skilled, it was perfect on the first try, but we had extra fabric just in case. (Notice that they were sewn with the fabric inside out).

Here's what it looked like after step one of the process. I cut the extra fabric off of the bottom and the back and stapled it to the wood (just where the staples were in the pleather). You can see that it was one long piece of fabric that started at the front on the bottom, and went over the top of the chair and down the back. That way we only had to sew the sides.

See how perfectly the sides match up?! She's amazing.

Above you can see one chair that I had already finished (cut off the extra fabric and stapled) and the two beside it still need to be finished.

Here's a close up of what it looked like with the staples. It didn't have to look perfect because the bottom half of the chair would fit right in and cover all of that. Unfortunately I didn't take a photo of how I recovered the seat of the chair, but it was just like wrapping a present! I made sure the pattern was straight and then folded the sides around the bottom and stapled them.

And here's what they look like now!

Budget Breakdown

Chairs - $60 for 4

Fabric - $68

Staples and staple gun - already had them

Total: $128 - $32 per chair

This post is linking up with:
 A Blossoming Life
House of Hepworths
Remodelaholic
Give me the Goods Monday
Thrifty Decor Chick
My Uncommon Slice of Suburbia

Painted Pedestal Table

I figured my first DIY post should be the first big DIY project I ever did! I bought my condo pre-construction, so after the initial purchase, I had almost a year to plan and get everything ready.

The first purchase I made was this solid wood pedestal table. I searched kijiji for a few weeks until I found one I liked for a price I loved ($40!). It also came with two leaves which was a bonus. You can see it had a few water stains and scratches on the table surface, but it was easily fixed with sanding and wood filler.

The inspiration for this project came from Kate who is the author of the amazing blog, Centsational Girl. I followed her post Painting a Kitchen Table to a T! It was the first time I had ever refinished any piece of furniture, so I wanted to make sure I did it well. I even bought the same primer (Zinsser) and paint. Check out her step-by-step instructions if you're looking to do a similar project!

Here's what the table looked like before:

And here's what it looks like now :

Some more before photos:
(Sorry for the crappy phone shots!)

You can see from the photo above that the table top was in rough shape. I sanded the table with 100 grit sand paper and an electric palm sander. I also sanded the base and legs with a sanding block, but only found out later that Kate only sanded the top. That would have saved time, but you learn as you go, right?

I tried each step of the process on the leaves first, because I figured if I completely messed it up, it wouldn't be as big of a deal as ruining the table top. You can see them (already sanded) leaning against the wall in the above photos. Like Kate, I used a combination of rolling and spraying to get an even coverage over the table.

I rolled as much as I could on the base, and then sprayed the rest with the spray paint primer to make sure it covered every nook.

And here's what it looked like after I had finished! I left the table slightly apart so until it dried. I didn't want to close it and then chip the paint if I were to open it. I didn't go into detail about the steps I took because whatever I say, I'm sure Kate says it better!

Budget Breakdown

Table - $40

Zinsser primer (spray) - $9

Zinsser primer (quart) - $12 (half left)

Paint (Benjamin Moore Advance in Swiss Coffee) - $29 (half left)

Minwax Furniture Wax - $8 (almost all of it left)

Sandpaper - already had it

Orbital sander - borrowed from a friend

Total: $98

It may seem like a lot for a DIY, but I have lots of materials left over for the next project!

This post is linking up with Remodelaholic.