Chairs, chairs, and more chairs!!

A plague o' both your houses ... Jeff and I are at home sick. Ick. I know this may sound rather obvious, but being sick totally sucks. I had sort of forgotten about it, since it has been a while since I've had a head cold.

We did manage to get out on Saturday for a bit (before the illness took hold). A trip to American Way Thrift turned into a gold mine. I'll go ahead and apologize for the lack of pictures for this post, but remember I'm sick.

We found a totally awesome old-school Coleman cooler in great shape for $2.00. It looks really similar to this one -- same color, but minus some of the scratches and dings.

We also got a great chair for the office. I've been wanting to exchange our office chair for something a bit more stylish. We found a great old rolley-style chair with a sweet metal base and fabric that blends perfectly with our darker office colors. Score.

One major find was this old school recliner Jeff spied. It was in decent shape -- it had a smooth recline, the foot rest sprung out without snagging, but it did have some mysterious spots on it. I figured we could try and clean it, but worse-case-scenario would be having to replace the seat cover or carefully placing a throw in just the right position. So we brought it home.

I could shoot myself for not taking a before picture, but oh well. Halfway into "redesigning" the armrests, I snapped this shot. Most of the spots had already been removed using some carpet/fabric cleaner. But, you can see the original armrests and some buttons missing.

It was time for me to take this bad boy on! In true make-over fashion, my first plan failed and I went through many trials and errors. I wanted to recover the armrests, but one was kind of flimsy, so I just scrapped them both. I found some extra padding in my craft room, and fashioned new fluffy armrests with a cloth napkin I had purchased to make a pillow (but never did).

Next were the buttons. Jeff and I did a bit of research learning how best to reupholster the buttons. Oh, here's a pretty good explanation on the basics of reupholster a chair. I'm skipping all the details of the button ordeal, but you can find a fabulous explanation here. It's not as difficult as you might think. I covered the buttons (some were originals from the chair and some I had in my supply cabinet) with matching fabric that I used on the armrest -- one because I thought it would look really great, and two because I needed a way to make a matching set of nine.

After much debate about where to place our new friend, we settled with a slight re-arrangment in our office/library. We now have a new cozy corner to work and read. I love it ... Jeff does too.

Happy creating, y'all ...

Reuphostler the easy way -- just change out some fabric

Remember awhile back I said I picked up to great chairs from American Way Thrift ? Well, here they are. Total cost=$12.00. With a deal like that, you just can't say no.


So, I took them home and had my way with them. During the chair striptease, I learned that these chairs were from the local school district (of which I worked at for a couple of years). Neato.


O.M.G. I completely forgot to tell you about this AMAZING store located right next to Hidden Treasures. It's called Gladys African Fabrics & Food. It has *TONS* of gorgeous bright batik printed fabric, foods and drinks, and even some handmade traditional garments. Gladys wasn't too keen on my taking pictures of the place, so you'll just have to take my word on it that the fabrics are heavenly. Here's the print I picked for the chairs.


And now they reside in our bedroom, flanking each side of our dresser. Ahhh ... just lovely.

Redesigning an old suitcase into a new side table

So I have this suitcase that I bought at a thrift store back in college. Oh my, my, my ... that was a while ago. I had big plans for turning it into a small side table or coffee table. Instead, it quietly held rolls of unused fabrics that were also waiting to be used in some crafty scheme. Can we say Velveteen Rabbit??

Tonight my friends, I finally got around to doing something with it. Here are the initial goods -- suitcase and folding tray table.



Now, I have to add that my dear husband walked the store with me for a loooong time searching for what could be used as legs ... and all because I couldn't wait until the morning to run to Lowe's or Home Depot or some such store that would actually carry furniture legs. Does anyone else get creatively driven after hours?? I'm thinking of opening up a late night crafting/hardware supply store. Holy moly, I've digressed!

I started by taking off the top piece of the folding table. I was using a manual screwdriver - what was I thinking?



Once the top was off, I had the sense to get the drill and screwed in the pieces to the bottom of the suitcase. This allowed me to decide how low or high I wanted the table to sit.



And just a few seconds later ... POOF, my old raggedy suitcase is now a REAL suitcase that can cry real tears and hop along with all the other suitcases. Hooray for the new suitcase table!!



It didn't turn out exactly as I had envisioned, but I dig it. It totally inspired me to try my hand at this again. Perhaps I'll actually make that trip to Lowe's/Home Depot during regular daylight hours and invest in some hot legs for my next table.



Happy creating my dears ...

From blah to Ohh la la la -- A simple chair redesign

I've recently become obsessed with reading design blogs ... which have encouraged me to hop on the blog train and share my two cents.

Here's my first contribution. We got a "new to us" couch off craigslist. The new addition inspired me to change the large chair and ottoman in our living room, as the new couch was much chunkier than our previous futon. The chair/ottoman were from a local thrift store (a $60 find -- awesome!), so I figured a run-in with some scissors and a staple gun wouldn't be too detrimental.

Here's what the ottoman looked like before ...

So, I cut some excess fabric off the bottom and stapled the flaps underneath the ottoman/chair to give them a more modern look. I'm pretty pleased with the results.

Let me know what you think!

Cheers, Jennifer :)