I’m recovering the bench – again! I loved it before, but it just didn’t seem to go with anything in my house.
My hubs and I made this bench awhile back, if you missed it, you can find that post here. Once it was finished, I put it up for sale. I loved the material, but it never sold. Oh, well sometimes that’s just the way it goes.
I love My Pink Chair! Seriously. I’m kind of in shock that I even have one.
My friend Shelli brought me one of her dumpster diving finds. This old, worn chair. The girl is a genius at finding good stuff! Unfortunately, when I got it the only thing good I could say about this chair was that it had great bones and it didn’t smell. The existing upholstery had to go.
Black and White chair – Again!
A few years ago I reupholstered one of my very first chairs. And I loved it!
My good friend Susan called me and asked if I wanted some furniture that her daughter left in her garage after she got married. Of course! One of the pieces was literally “in pieces”. It was a small bench that had a lot of potential. With a little glue, material, trim and spray paint it became a beautiful small gold bench!
The leg was detached and splintered. A little glue, sanding and clamping took care of that!
I removed the seat and started removing the material. Layer one: the gold and tan you see in the before photo above. Layer two: this red, and layer three the original white that covered the bench. The white was in perfect condition, so I decided to just leave it. A little more cush for the tush!
Next up? Gold spray paint of course. If you haven’t figured it out, I am obsessed with it. If anyone had told me a year ago that I would be painting anything gold I would have thought they were cray cray. I love it! I love how warm it is in a room. Not a lot of gold – just shots here and there.
I had already sanded the damaged leg area, so I cleaned the rest of the frame with some TSP, then gave it a couple of light coats of spray paint.
While this was drying I covered the seat with a black and multicolored fabric that has a few shots of gold in it to tie in the gold legs. If this fabric looks familiar – it is! I used it here. I love it so much that I have been looking for a place to use it again!
TA DA! The broken sad bench became this awesome small gold bench! It is not too big, not too small, but just right in size. It would be perfect as a vanity bench or a small piano bench.
It is also the perfect size for an entryway bench. Sit down and take off your shoes!
I love these small pieces that can make such a difference in your decor. If you are interested this piece will appear for sell soon in my shop.
Now I am off to finish up a really big project that I have been working on for awhile. I hope to share it with you later this week. Fingers crossed!!!!
Until next time….
Honestly, I just wanted to get my car washed after a trip. Instead, I ended up hitting our neighborhood garage sales. Y’all know I can’t help myself! Most women buy shoes – I buy furniture in need of a facelift. I bought two really cute small chairs, a chest of drawers and a small dresser.
I saw these two small, but sweet chairs and I knew that they would be perfect as vanity chairs. I have no idea what their original purpose was for, they are shorter and smaller than the average chair.
The first chair I painted Annie Sloan Old Violet, which is really a steel blue color. I wanted a casual glam feel, so I covered the seat with a long white mongolian lambswool material. I used this same material on my glam foot stool. I was originally worried that it wouldn’t hold up well, but so far it has been stellar on the footstool, so why not use it on the chair?
The second chair I painted in AS Graphite with a clear and dark wax finish.
I added a tiny bit of gold on the distressed edges. At first, I thought the animal print was an awesome fabric for the seat. It was cute, it just didn’t give me that “I Lurve You” feel. Ya know? I just wanted something different.
So I took off the animal print and added a drop cloth seat. Using 2 inch drop cloth strips, I made a pleated trim for the edge. Tan gimp was added to hide the stitching on the pleated trim. I had a little bit of the drop cloth material strips left over – I used them to make some flowers and glued them to the front of the chair. A little added bling and I was done. Better this time? OH, yeah. This was exactly what I was looking for!
There you have it – a before and after of two small chairs! I think that these would be awesome vanity chairs. Hopefully, I won’t change my mind about how they should be decorated before I sell them! Now…I really need to wash my car!
Until next time….
I have a secret. I can’t help myself! I buy furniture – a lot of furniture- with the intent to paint, recycle, up-cycle, or reupholster it . I intend to do it right away when I buy it, but let’s face it that almost never happens! So it gets stacked in the garage, game room, exercise room, any room that it will fit in…. I am on a mission to get all of my stash done before I buy anymore.
Sorry about these photos… It is forever raining here!!!! I know we need the rain but Puhleezzze! Anyway, I have had these sweet little chairs for awhile. They are smaller in scale and they had a ton of white paint on them, and not in a good way either. So after a lot of sanding… I gave them a couple of light coats of white spray paint.
The Hubs cut out a board that we added foam, batting and a really cool patterned material to. Once the seat was ready we just screwed it onto the chairs. I love the box pleat skirt… gives it a really fun personality. The result is a really sweet little white bench makeover!
One project down and a ton more to go! Y’all know I will be sharing them with you as soon as I get them all done.
Until next time…..
Office facelift stool makeover
So I have slowly been giving my office a facelift. You know- when you still like the room but it just seems a little tired? Well, this room was so tired it was almost asleep! I have been slowly chipping away at hundreds a lot of little projects. When I am finished I hope to have the most bee-you-tee -ful office , EVER!
My poor stool has definitely seen better days… it was still sturdy and fairly comfortable.
I am definitely a messy painter…( unfortunately my side dresser looks the same on one end! yikes!). It really needed some serious help.
I wanted to add in a little gold to the room. Rustoleum Metallic Gold spray paint to the rescue. If I haven’t told you one hundred and fifty times already, it is my all time favorite!
Like my high end tape job? I was just too lazy to tape up four legs, so I just put the legs in the trash bag and tied it really tight as close to the top of the seat as possible. HEY! Don’t judge. It worked!
Now for the seat.
I had left over material from making new curtains for my work station so I used that for the seat cover.
So easy. Just lay your seat on the back side of your material and lightly draw around your seat. Before cutting add an inch to an inch and a half to the circle you just marked. This ensures that you have enough material to wrap around to the back side and staple it. Cut your circle out.
I also wanted a little more cush for the tush, so I cut out some batting slightly smaller than the cut circle.
Make sure that your seat is in the center of the circle. Start at the top, pull the material around to the back and staple. Repeat the same process at the bottom of the circle, directly across from your first staple, making sure to pull snugly, but not too tightly. Repeat on the right side, then the left side. Keep doing this process until you have worked your way all the way around the circle.
Cut off any excess material.
Yeah, I label my scissors! You never know when some crazy person will want to use your good fabric scissors to cut wire, or gum or some wild and totally inappropriate thing! Argh! And ain’t nuthin’ worse than bad scissors.
The seat is done! Just reattach the seat to the legs.
Ta da! I am so excited. I lurve it! Again, everything that I used, I already had….. basically a free up- cycle and it only took about 30 minutes. Score!
I can check off one of the hundred items on my office facelift. I will be sharing the office with you if I ever when I finish all the tasks on my list.
Until next time….
I post a lot of projects that I have done to my house, but the fact of the matter is I DO have a business where I paint just about darn near everything! Problem is you may not know it because I don’t post all of my painting adventures. Not all clients want their furniture, walls, etc. posted on line for the world to see. I get that.
I started this blog as a way to let people know that you can hire me to paint for you AND that I have items available for sale here at the castle. I’ll bet if you polled my readers they would tell you that my blog is about home decor. And it is. But it didn’t start that way. I have been so busy working for others and working on my home that I haven’t had time to focus on sharing what I do in my painting business. My goal for this year is to share with you more of what I paint. Today I want to share with you the sweetest drop leaf table and chairs!
This is one of my first trash diving finds. It was at the curb and had a burn hole in the middle of the table about six inches around and half an inch deep! Makes you wonder how it got there, right?
Anyway after a couple of containers of wood filler, I faux finished it to look like wood and painted a leaf design around the top edge. With the leaves folded down, it worked great as a sofa table. This past year I decided to spice it up a little and painted it Miss Mustard Seed’s Tricycle. I liked it, but with new furniture in the living room, it just hasn’t worked as well as it had in the past. So I decided to sell it and find something that works a little better. I had a few chairs to pair with it, I just needed to make them match.
I am having to work inside due to weather…ugh! Here is my little table all extended, painted Annie Sloan’s Graphite over the Tricycle red. A little distressing with fine sandpaper , a coat of clear wax and two coats of dark wax, add a tiny bit of gold accent paint, a little cleaning on the brass legs, a TON of rubbing to make the wax shine and this is my final result….
She is a beauty! All that work was so worth it!
Here is another angle. Please ignore the rug. I moved the table and chairs into my kitchen dining room to get better pics. Lighting can be a challenge here at the castle! Also, for some reason the chair color looks way different from the table in this picture, but they really aren’t.
Details from the side. One of the things I like best about chalk paint is that a finished piece can look a hundred years old. Woo Hoo!
Such pretty legs. Isn’t the detail pretty on this piece?
The chairs are super comfy… I had eight of them given to me last year. The Hubs made three into a bench. I painted them black and upholstered with this material… it worked so well I decided to go with it again. It is such a happy material! Again, I painted these chairs red, then painted graphite on top. Love how the red pops through.
The details on this chair are awesome!
My sweet dog Sadie. Why is it when I am taking photos she is always trying to photo bomb?
When this table is all folded up, it would be perfect in a small breakfast nook or apartment. When the leaves are extended it is a great full size table that you could add four more chairs to. Two on each side allows you to seat six, which in my book almost makes it the perfect table! Plus, I love the mix and match look. No matchy, matchy here at the castle!
This set is for sale on my website, if you are interested take a look on my shopping page.
until next time….
There is a trend that has been around for awhile – skulls. My son Tyler LOVES them. On everything. So for his birthday, I recovered and painted a sad little chair for him. I can’t wait to show you Tyler’s chair before and after!
This is the sad little chair. Great bones. Really old and ratty upholstery. My mission: Paint the wood black, add silver accents. Reupholster the fabric part with some really cool and fun fabric. In other words: Make it Fabulous!
I took apart the upholstery and used it for a pattern for the new fabric (thank you Amazon!). I am not gonna lie, the seat cushion was a beast! This is one time that using the existing fabric for a pattern wasn’t the best idea.
The fabric had stretched out on one side of the cushion causing the pattern to be off. Really off. Problem was I didn’t realize it until it was too late. So I have a slightly “off” cushion. One side being slightly larger than the other. Honestly, unless your looking for it you might not even notice. It just drives me crazy! Sigh. Note to self: Lay out both sides together and make sure that they are the same before cutting out the new fabric!
Here is Tyler’s finished chair. I used two different fabrics for interest. The skull pattern and men’s suiting material. A party on the top and all business on the bottom!
I used an oil based metallic silver sharpie to outline the detail on the chairs legs and arms.
When I picked up this chair I really thought that reupholstering it would be a breeze. Turns out that of all of the chairs I have redone it was definitely the most challenging!
Even though the cushion is a little wonky – I think he likes it. YES! Which is all that really matters! I can’t wait to give it to him!!
Until next time…..
I am so darn excited! Giving myself a huge pat on the back right now. I bought these two channel back chairs last spring to reupholster for my newly designed office/library. Then got side tracked. Big time. After reupholstering the big red chair for my seester, I wasn’t sure I had it in me to tackle these. However, low budget and needing more room in my work shop lit a fire under me to get these babies DONE! I have to admit that I do love these cheetah print chairs!
I found these fab chairs on-line and snatched them up. I had never repurposed a channel back chair before so much research was needed. I immediately started the hunt for material to recover the chairs. A good friend of mine recently moved into a house and had these totally AWESOME wingback chairs made for her dining room. They are this absolutely gorgeous peacock / teal green velvet. So. In. Love. I had to have something like that. Except that finding a material that fit my criteria AND was in my price range proved to be impossible. I decided to go more neutral, using that color on the wall, since I wanted this room to be warm and cozy anyway. I wanted a warmer, darker neutral that wasn’t a solid black or brown, but was neutral enough to go with almost any color. I ended up with a cheetah print.
Gold is back “in” so the wood part of the chairs would be gold. I lightly sanded the legs and arms then taped up any of the upholstery batting that was showing so that I could paint them with my new favorite gold paint.
TA DA!!! This paint is seriously the bomb. It is a true gold with out being blinding. It goes on with even, perfect strokes – no crazy lines that you get with other spray paints! AND usually it covers almost everything with one even coat! For reals! Dry time? Super fast.
Once the chair was dry, I “antiqued” the gold slightly with a black glaze to hid all the imperfections in the wood. Had I left it shiny gold I would have sanded and filled all of the dents and dings in the wood for a more perfect finish.
I have to admit that this project had some sewing involved. Each channel had to be sewn together and then “stuffed” with the channel batting. I was lucky that all of the batting was in pristine condition so I was able to use the old batting. Then the side arm material was sewn to the back channels. If I am honest this was why I procrastinated for so long. Eeekkkk! Just the thought of it scared me. But guess what? It was do dang easy it was ridiculous. Once the sewing was done it went back together so fast it was crazy! It looks awesome. Even the Hubs, who is kind of jaded from all of my projects over the years, said that he was impressed! Woo Hoo!
Here is the side detail. I may have gone crazy with the gimp embellishments, but I love the black against the cheetah! As you can see the wood on the wings is a little battered, but I am good with that. You don’t notice it that much in person and I like that it has a little patina and wear to it.
Here it is again…. I can’t wait to get started on the library/ office so these beauties have a good home! Oh, yeah.. that project got put on the back burner too… oops!
Until next time…..
Good Monday morning to you! It’s time for another Before and After. Woo Hoo! My sister is contemplating a new business adventure that has a slightly chic country theme to it and needed some seating. She had scored some pretty steel blue and white material – and I mean ALOT of material – for $3.00! I have a pile few chairs in my stash here at the castle and this is the one that she chose.
My good friend Shelli called me about a year ago and had found this chair at the curb. One of the legs had been broken off. The Hubs rebuilt legs for it and I had been storing it until I could decide how I wanted to give it a makeover.
Here is this sweet little chair after removal of the old fabric, staining of the legs to match the rest of the wood, and adding the new upholstery with the blue and white material. I also added the skirt to give it a little bit more of a country chic feel.
Of course it needed a little bling so I added some white trim and these really cool rhinestone nail heads! LOVE these and can totally see using them on future makeovers. Found them at Hob Lob for $3.99 a box. The cool thing is they also come in about 4 different sizes. Woo Hoo!
If it seems a little plain, we plan on adding pillows from another fabric and stenciling her logo in the middle of the chair back IF she decides to go ahead with her business adventure. You can be sure that IF and When she does I will be sharing all of the news with you.
I have to say that this project may just be one of my very favorites. I love the color, the lines and the practicality of this piece. I love it so much I would love to keep it – but I have NO place for it. That’s right, you heard it here first. I have no room here at the castle. ( So it goes up for sale… and it is a sad , sad day!) Right now I have a ton of chairs just waiting to be painted, repaired and repurposed. What to do with so many chairs? I could have worse problems! At any rate, I wanted to share the process with you just in case you want a sneak peek of how we turn chairs into a bench.
I won’t bore you with the building process, other than to say thank goodness for the Hubs! He took three chairs, two regular and one with arms, removed the middle chairs legs then screwed all three together. You get that? Me either. I basically let leave all of the major building to the hubs. If you really want to know how to build one there are a billion youtube videos to help you with that!
Now it was my turn. I gave the bench a couple of coats of Annie Sloan Chalk Paint in Granite, followed by a top coat in clear and dark wax. The dark wax makes the Granite look more black than charcoal. Then I added a few gold accents to the details of the chair backs and legs.
The beauty of this design is that I was able to use the chairs seats. We just turned the middle seat around with the long side to the back. The hubs also cut a board the size of all three seats put together and then screwed the seats to the board. Yes! Ready to reupholster!
Before covering the seat with material, I wanted to hide the separation between the seats. I used batting rolled up and pushed it down into the cracks. Then wrapped the entire piece in poly-fil to smooth it over and make it look like one long, smooth seat.
Next wrap the entire seat in double layers of poly-fil and staple. Time to cover the seat with the fabric of your choice.
All that is left is to attach the seat to the chair frame with screws. Did I mention that I love how this one turned out? Just one or two times? Love this material… my sister has used it for her bathroom for curtains – so versatile! It makes me happy every time I look at it!
So what do you think? Great use of extra chairs? Some day I will have an entry hall big enough to put a bench like this in…imagine me projecting Scarlet O’Hara!
Until next time….
Sometimes it is the little things that change a room. After my closet makeover, it was time to focus on my Master bath and Master bedroom. Recently, I found some material to make new curtains for the bedroom, which I will share with you later this week. I had some left over and decided that one of the ways to update the bath was to give my tired vanity stool a makeover.
I started with this … I KNOW – Don’t judge!!! Those feathers look like I killed a turkey and stuck it on the vanity stool. Some days I look back and wonder “What was I thinking!” It was obvious that this needed a makeover.
This was the inspiration for the vanity stool. Clean lines, white seat and NO FEATHERS!
After taking off of the feathers and the material on the seat, I gave the vanity stool frame a good cleaning and then gave it a couple of coats of Metallic Gold spray paint.
This is what I ended up with… very much like my vanity stool makeover inspiration. And it was fine. Just – kinda of plain. When I got the new material, I quickly realized that I needed to bring some of the material into the bathroom. So – I recovered the vanity stool seat with the new material.
Not too bad. It looks a little more “yellow” in the photo than it really is. It is more of a pretty acid green and matches the bathroom perfectly! Now, this stool makes me happy! Not too shabby of a vanity stool makeover!
Later in the week I will share my Master bedroom with you!
Until then….
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