Armchair Redo

Brian's Aunt Julie and Uncle Chris gave us this old armchair. They said they had looked into getting them reupholstered, but it was too expensive and not worth it. It would be cheaper to just get new chairs, so they gave one to me and one to my sister-in-law. While the chair wasn't terribly ugly, it wasn't really what I was looking for, and was kind of dirty. It sat unchanged in our bedroom for several months, but one day I decided it was time to try my hand at some serious upholstering. I didn't have a clue what I was doing...but I dove right in and did what I could.



The first thing I did was to get the back off the chair. From there I could see how the whole thing was put together--where it was sewn and where it was stapled. As I took it off piece by piece, I saved the material to use for a future pattern.



Pulling the staples out took HOURS. The whole chair probably took me two weeks to complete, but the fact that I have seriously sewn nothing but a few pillows, and those in the past couple months, it isn't surprising. I made some big mistakes and had to unpick a bunch of stuff, but I muddled through. It was fun to watch it come together though, and to think that I did it all by myself. It definitely doesn't look professional, but that's ok. I spent $16 total on the project, so if I had to do it again in the future, it wouldn't be a huge loss.

Ta da! I'm not sure where to put it, and don't tell anyone, but I still haven't finished the back. I just got too tired and wanted to get the chair out of the front room, so the back is to the wall in our bedroom right now. Whew....what a job. I wonder what I'll try to tackle next? If anyone has furniture...let me know before you throw it out.

I Chopped My Hair

I finally got so sick of my hair that I chopped it off. Was I sad to see it go? Not at all. After an entire year of pulling it back into a sorry-sight-of-a-bun for school and having it strangle me in the middle of the night, and dreading taking a shower because it took so long to wash and dry I was not sorry at all to see it go. Ahhh.... it feels so much better!

And I can do it curly or straight in about 20 min or less. Much improved from the hour it would take with long hair. So with gladness I say to my hair, "Go, Go. I would not wish you back again."

My Decoupage Table

While I wasn't able to do anything near as cool as the pieces in my last post, I did figure out HOW to do something that cool in the future. It started out with a little writing desk that I got for $10 off of KSL. Of course I forgot to take a picture of the original, but here it is after I had primed it. The desk was fairly unremarkeable, but I liked the thin and curvey legs. Those are some fine legs on that table...(does that sound weird to anyone else?)Here is it after I had painted and put the glaze on, and used Modge Podge for the top and drawer. The glaze was a little darker than I wanted, but I sanded and distresed some parts since this picture and I think I like it better. I also want to get a nice little piece of hardware for the drawer. I am thinking a crystalt knob or something of the sort. All the paper I used was just from a stack of scrapbook paper. I was going to do a music desk, but honestly I just got too impatient to wait to try and find old unused music in Oakley, so I went ahead and used what I had on hand. While it is not my favorite piece of furniture, I did learn a few things on the way, so hopefully I can do something better next time.