Tuesday, May 27, 2014

Once in a Blue Door

I have a little A.D.D. in me. I'll admit it. Devin would argue I have more than 'a little' but what does he know? I can do my fair share of focusing but I tend to get preoccupied when it comes to home renovating. We will  start a project and if it's taking longer than expected, I find myself getting antsy and looking towards the next project. I'm pretty bad about starting a new project before finishing the last one. I get it from my mom (sorry mom). Luckily my dad and husband keep us both on track. Gotta love those Type A Personalities. This project is a prime example of me starting a project in the middle of another one. We were in the middle of painting the half bath (remember...the night scape one that was miserably painful to paint) and I decided that I'd start another project that would provide more instant gratification. Let me tell you...this project definitely put a little pep in my step and it was one of the easiest projects to date.

I've been seeing painted doors everywhere. Like this one.

And this one

And this one.

How cute are they?! After seeing those, I couldn't look at our boring, old white door the same. So off to Lowe's I went to find a color. I decided on blue because  A.) If you haven't noticed, we're fans of blue...i.e. our chandelier, our laundry room, our half bath, our newly upholstered dining chairs... B.) I wanted a color that wasn't too neutral but also wasn't too outlandish. I chose 'Distance' by Sherwin Williams but I had Lowe's formulate it since the Valspar sample cans are cheaper. I spent a whopping $3.20 on paint. True story.


Lucky for me, the back of our front door was already painted white AKA No stripping/deglossing/sanding/priming involved. Yahoo!! 

 The prep was easy. I simply removed the hardware, and taped off the hinges and glass.

 And then I just painted away. I didn't bother with a roller, I used a brush on the whole thing. It took 2-3 coats for nice coverage and a total of about 3 hours for the entire project. I'd say half that time was spent waiting on each coat to dry.
If I'm being completely honest with you, the color turned out a little lighter than I was anticipating. I was aiming more on the Navy side than this Air Force blue. It just goes to show how you can't pick colors based solely on color swatches. I still really love this color though so we can call it a happy accident. The best part is, if I get tired of the color, it's a cheap and easy fix to change in the future. I think it will really pop when we get the surrounding walls painted. We haven't done that yet because of our vaulted ceiling in the entry way. 

Here's a good view of our vaulted ceiling situation in case you're curious.
It's gonna take an extremely tall ladder or some scaffolding to get up that high. We may have to bring in the professionals to handle this one. That will be a sad day when we have to pay for someone to paint. 

But back to the door. She's a beaut.

I love this shot because it really shows how the door ties in with the dining set, chandelier, and curtains.

I'd say this project was a huge success...Even if it was in the middle of another project. Has anyone else painted the back of their front door? 
Adios,
Katy

Wednesday, May 7, 2014

Tables, Chairs, and Runners (Oh My!)

In my last post, I mentioned that we recently purchased a dining set from Craigslist for only $300. I can't emphasize enough how great of a deal that was. The dining chairs we've been eying were minimum $100 each, and we would have most likely spent $500 or so (if we got lucky and found one on clearance) for a dining table. That would have been a grand total of easily $1300 on a dining set. We just don't have that kind of budget around here so it was amaze balls that we saved so much. The furniture wasn't perfect when we bought it though. The lady selling it had a toddler and it was apparent when we took a look. Seeing what kind of damage that small human can do to furniture almost makes me second guess having children. (Just kidding mom/MIL....) They're little animals. We loved the overall quality of the table and chairs though and knew it would be hard to come across another set like this in our style and budget so we bought it.

Here's the damage from said toddler:

 It's hard to tell in this picture but there were stains everywhere. Grody.

Luckily, I was already planning on reupholstering the chairs since the fabric was blah, so I didn't care as much about the stains.


The worst damage was to the table. There were scratches and nicks all over the place. Being someone that sells wood furniture for a living, there was horror in my eyes. They might as well  have just put a jungle gym on top of the table for the kid to plan on.

And do they not know what a coaster is? I mean COME ON.

You're probably thinking right about now that we're nuts to have bought this furniture. Maybe we are, but we could see the potential.

The first thing we did was wipe down all the wood. I don't think they cleaned the furniture once since they bought it. Cleaning it also helped us get an idea of what we were really working with. Some of the marks that we thought were scratches were actually dried on food or dust build up (nasty I know) that just wiped off. We bought a wood re-touch kit at Joann's Fabric and went to town. It comes with a waxy crayon-like filler stick to fill in any deep scratches, as well as a marker to touch up color and hide any smaller imperfections. It was really easy to use and the walnut colored marker blended perfectly with our table.


This is the same spot where the water rings were. You can still lightly see the damage if you look closely but it's a huge improvement from when we bought it.

We also purchased some fabric at Joanns. They have some great coupons so between the wood touch-up kit and the fabric for all 8 chairs, we only spent $37. Saweet!

Upholstering chairs is really easy. No joke. The first thing I did was flip the chairs over and unscrew the seats. Our chairs had a piping detail around the edges that I didn't want to show through so I just cut them off each seat.


Next, I cut out squares large enough to wrap around each seat. We used two different fabrics because I wanted the chairs at the heads of the table to be a little different than the rest. My main concern here was making sure I cut the squares so that the pattern on each fabric went the same direction.

After that, I simply laid the fabric around the seat and stapled away. There's not really a wrong way to do this but I stapled the straight sides first and then the corners last. The corners took a little extra time because my perfectionist side came out and I didn't want to see any folds on the edges.


I also made sure to pull the fabric tight as I stapled so that I wouldn't have any wrinkles on the seat.

That's all there is to it. We screwed them back on the chair and put a fork in it.



I conveniently had a long piece of the navy fabric left so I thought it would be nice to make a table runner. I sound like Suzy Homemaker don't I?? Don't kid yourself, I have no idea how to sew. I've been seeing lots of tutorials lately on how to make no-sew curtains (like this one and this one) so I figured it would be easy enough to use this technique on a runner.


 The only things I needed for this project were my fabric (obvi), Heat n Bond iron-on adhesive that I picked up at Hob Lob, and an iron.

It was seriously the easiest project ever. First, I laid out my piece of fabric on the table to gauge what width I wanted and cut accordingly.

I unrolled the tape along the edge, folded the fabric over it, and ironed away. The trickiest part was making sure I was creating a straight line along the edge, but since my fabric had a big graphic print, it was easy to line everything up.


 I left a little space at the end since I knew I'd have to iron the edges there too.




 The directions on the Heat n Bond tell you to iron one last time on the other side to make sure everything sets.

That's it! The whole project took me maybe an hour.


I typically don't like things so matchy matchy but I love how it turned out. The best complement I got was from my best friend who asked if I bought the table runner from Target. I was doing a happy dance when she asked. Now that I know how easy it is, I'll probably be making more. I see Christmas, Thanksgiving, Valentines and Easter table runners in my future. Just kidding. Maybe. 

Have you tried any no-sew projects? Or am I the only one that doesn't know how to sew?

By the way, I'm linking up to the Best of the Nest , The Shabby Nest, and Thrifty Decor Chick !
TDC Before and After


Katy