Chair makeover

How I love to go to garage sales and come home with “junk” that can be turned into something useful and beautiful! To me, it’s like giving the piece of furniture or whatever it may be, another chance, another purpose. Recently a friend of mine found such an item for I believe $5.00 in a garage sale. It was quite a drab chair that she brought to me to give a makeover…

 

As you can see, nothing too remarkable. I started by taking the seat off which was fastened by a few screws. (this was after it sat in the basement for a few weeks awaiting it’s turn)

I then took it out on the driveway and gave it a couple coats of paint. (do it best spray paint, white, semi gloss)

While the paint dried I reupholstered the seat and the little cushion with some neat fabric my friend had gotten at JoAnn Fabrics. I didn’t get any pictures, but it was fairly simple to cut out a square of material and wrap it tightly over the seat and then fasten it with staples on the bottom. For the little cushion I just made a cover that can be removed for washing. All together, I probably didn’t spend more than an hour to turn it into this…

I thought my friend did an awesome job of matching the fabric to the color of their bedroom walls.

It looked great in the living room too! So for all you garage salers out there, always think twice before walking past anything that looks drab, dirty, has an orangish glow,and is overall unappealing. It just might be a treasure waiting to be unearthed!

Café Espresso

 

One of the greatest things happened to me a few weeks ago… the paint at Ormes hardware got marked down to $3.99 a gallon!! They told me Do It Best came out with a paint n primer in one and therefore is discontinuing the original paint. (which I did think what if you actually don’t need a primer and are paying for one…) But anyway, I ended up getting about 10 gallons of paint! (I can always get them tinted later, thankfully!) Oh, and the only sheen they had for that price was their washable flat…so if you’re anti flat paint this would not be so exciting to you. I need to paint all our ceilings throughout the house and for me it’s so much easier to do walls too while I’m at it anyway and then of course, with that price I couldn’t resist! Some of our kitchen walls were a rusty red which always kind of bothered me because when I picked out the color I thought it would be a more red. After painting the walls with a color called stolen kiss, I fixed up the area by the beams with a café look…

I hand painted a sign using Microsoft word and transferred with carbon paper. I also added a few more things I had around here…

For this box I simply used Microsoft word to design a little café looking rectangle and printed it out. I used a glue stick to paste it on the box. (not sure how long it’ll last but thought I’ll give it a shot) The jars are actual coffee jars that used to come with coffee in them. I wish the old labels would still be on them!

I’m sure I’ll keep my eyes peeled for any old looking café décor in the future. For now I just used what I had which is nothing too great but it’ll work for the time being.

I’m always up for any ideas from you all so feel free to share! Thanks for visiting my blog!

Kitchen Cabinet Addition

Hi! I’m back again after taking some time off from blogging. What a busy time. We did take a few weeks off for a fun summer vacation which consisted of hiking, canoeing and enjoying a week at the outer banks. That all went way too fast, as usual. Anyway, coming home I got this urge to spruce things up a tad around here. Though I’m still working on it, I will share my cabinet addition which we all now wonder what we did without! Earlier this year I made a crude little table to hold our home computer which I shared in Little Spaces. Now, suddenly I thought everything looked cluttered and crowded in that little space.

 

Usually everything is centered with the wall but I had it moved to the left to take some measurements. First I drew a little print or layout of how I wanted to have it looking. I wanted it to ell out, providing more space. I also thought it would be a neat way to separate the kitchen from the dining area. I grabbed a hammer and crow bar and removed some of the trim and also the cabinet with the drawers. I had some trouble removing the cabinet. It seemed set on staying there. I got a new burst of energy when I thought of John coming home and finding me there with only some trim removed and in desperation trying to pry the cabinet from the floor. I had this goal of having everything finished by the time he came home from work. Partly, I like to surprise him and, I admit, partly having a little fear of being stopped before I’d be finished. Anyway, I did finally get it moved…

I also removed the bead board that was behind the cabinet because I wanted the new counter to be lower than the original. I needed to install new bead board that was longer. I had worked on the new cabinet and counter top in the shop the day before so that I could do this final step all in a day. I brought the cabinet frame in….

This all is very crudely put together. I’m not one of those precise wood working people. The wood I got for mere cents in my grandpa’s auction so this whole project was done for probably not much more than twenty dollars! The countertop is also made from wood that I got at grandpa’s sale…

This picture was taken in the basement while I was painting the countertop. I didn’t glue any of the boards together. it’s also very simply constructed; I pinned boards on the underside to hold the top boards together and trimmed the edges with two inch pieces to make it look thicker. The long boards are only 3/4” thick and I wanted a more countertoppish look so that’s why I added the trim. I had to cut the kick board off of the cabinet with drawers so I’d get the correct height…

The final step was adding the bead board. I used a pine bead board that is only $14.97 a pack at Holmes Lumber, a local hardware store & lumber yard. I’m not sure how much one pack covers but it was just right to enclose the new cabinet and add to the space behind the counter. It comes in a tongue & groove so it’s very easy to use. I didn’t get any pictures while putting that on but here’s the finished project…

It worked out great using the original cabinet with drawers on the end with the raised panel showing. I made the new section not as wide so we’d have more leg room. It also worked out great using the two doors that I had removed from the upper cabinet on the right for the under the cabinet doors. I measured them before I made the cabinet frame so they would fit the opening…

Now we can store the computer tower in the cabinet along with all the wires and speaker clutter that goes with it! The countertop will always be special to me because it was grandpa (who is in the 90s) that cut down the tree and got the wood cut and planed to make it as it is. A few of the boards are wormy chestnut which I was told is rare and expensive…

The wood would probably show up more if it wasn’t painted but I felt it wouldn’t look right with the other colors in the kitchen if it wasn’t painted black. I distressed it a lot before giving it a good coat of varnish. Needless to say, I was pretty well finished by the time John came home from work. Thankfully he wasn’t upset that I cut off and tore out a little of our kitchen cabinets…whew!

The next post will probably be about my little café corner so stay tuned…

Summer morning smiles

I love waking up these June mornings to the sound of the birds singing their hearts out and just looking outside at all the beauty of God’s creation that we are privileged to enjoy. This morning I took a stroll outside and got some pictures of things that made me smile…

  Water lilies

  Hydrangeas

  Long Whiskers

Boy’s Boats

  Tasty Gardens

  Brotherly Love

  Running Water

  Frogs

These are just a few visual things that make me smile. Too bad I can’t share the sounds and scents also! I do have to add a few more photos of the evening before…

 

We have a family of raccoons on our porch pretty much on a nightly basis. The top picture is a curious baby and the bottom one is wary mama…

Have a great week everyone!

Old Pump Music

I remember as a little girl I always had a fascination with water pumps. It was so neat how you could pump that handle and cool, soothing water would come gushing out. I can still hear the squeak of my grandparents pump handle as we would pump it up and down and how the taste of that fresh water was well worth the effort it took to get it. To me it was much more intriguing than a faucet that brought forth water with a twist of a knob.

We’ve had one of those old pumps around here and I always thought someday I want to make a fountain out of it. I removed it from the shrub and gave it a fresh coat of paint.

I am almost obsessed with the sound of trickling water and love old things so I thought I’ll see if I can combine the two and add some character to our porch. I got this water pump at Ormes Hardware. I think the price was $10.46. I got it for free with coupons that I had saved up…

 

I got this old barrel from someone that wanted it out of the way… ( love people like that!) I cut it in half. The wood was so hard and dried up that I had to alternate saws because my blades kept getting hot and would smoke! (I kept a bucket of water nearby, just in case…hope John doesn’t hear about this!!)

Next, I dug out some pieces of pond liner that I had left over from my water gardens and cleaned them.

I put the liner in the barrel and filled it with water before cutting off the excess.

I stapled the liner along the outside edge…

I had to come up with something to cover up the staples so I remembered there was an old rusty iron band that also held a wooden barrel together lying behind the shop so thankfully that fit pretty good…

So far not a penny spent!!

 

I had to screw a little piece of wood on the top edge of the barrel for the pump to sit on. A piece of timber worked to support the back part of the pump. I needed a few pipe fittings that I got out of my brother-in-laws shop. Thankfully the barrel had a hole in it already so I didn’t need to drill one through the hard wood.

I don’t really follow rules when it comes to plumbing work- I just kind of guess. Sometimes I glue and sometimes not. Here I did glue the hose onto the fitting because I was afraid it would slip off.

Now, after adding some plants that I had around here and dividing my water lily from my other pond-here’s how it turned out…

 

The only thing I want to add yet is a few fish for the boys to enjoy.

Finally, I have the soothing music of trickling water on the porch to sit down and listen to…now if I can find the time!