Dining Room Chairs

We finially found some lovely dining chairs on Craigslist. I couldn't believe we got six of them for such a good deal.

They ended up being much larger than I had expected, but sturdy, so they'll work. When they're all around the table, it kind of swallows it up, so I like the look of four chairs around the table better. I think I'll use the other two as accent chairs on either side of my new chest of drawers.

The chairs will be recovered. I just haven't been able to decide on a pattern. The current fabric is in good condition, just out dated. When I recover the chairs, I'll also recover the window seat and throw pillows. The room is a gray-blue color. If I could paint it again, I would. I would paint it a warm white. It's such a bright room. It's probably our favorite room in the house.

I'm leaning towards blue fabric, with maybe a yellow accent pillow on the window seat for a punch of color. I will be following the "geometric,organic, small scale" rule of thumb while combining fabrics in our dining room/homeschool room.

Here are all of my fabric choices. They are either from Warehouse Fabrics or Calico Corners.

Seat~



Slick Robin by Calico Corners.

Window seat~



Plateau Lemon by Calico Corners

 Honeysuckle by Calico Corners

Accent pillows~






And just because I adore this fabric...I probably won't use it, but I love it. It's so happy. Put a monogram on it and it would be perfect!



So there you have it- my sea of fabric choices!

Mariah Dresser Before and After

You can never take enough pictures and that's how I feel about the Mariah dresser. I know I took more pictures of her, but I just can't seem to locate them. Oh well. The ones I do have are post cleaning, so they don't do her justice.

Many of you have asked where I find the furniture pieces that I redo... My most favorite finds often come on trash day. The kids already know the drill on Tuesday and Friday mornings. They have good eyes for Mommy! I have sweet friends who spotted this dresser in their neighborhood (thank you).

At the time, I thought I would just have to re-trash it, but after lots and lots of cleaning, sanitizing, and cursing the gods, I started to see something. Most of the time, I don't know the story behind the furniture piece I am working on. I like to let my mind go as I'm painting and create a prior life for the piece. It's weird, I know, but fun. It had good bones and nice curves- which equals perfection, in my book. This dresser had a shady past with scars to show for it. One of the drawers had "Mariah" carved into it, which gave me a name for my made up story. Of course you can't see it now, but it's there. Underneath all of the pretty and fixins, there's a scar. It made me think about all my scars and stuff that made me who I am. Some pasts are shadier than others. Sometimes things happen to us that we had no control over. Other things we did intentionally at the time, never realizing they'd come back to bite us years later. With all that said, the way God's grace covers all of our imperfections is incredible to me. They're washed away, not just covered up. In that, there is no shame, just an abundance of forgiveness that will forever change us. 

Here is the dresser/buffet before:

 

 

This was my original color choice, English Yellow.

 

It looks like a dull yellow here, which would have been perfect, but in reality it was incredibly bright, even with antiquing wax. Mariah was nearly neon and I knew that wasn't what I wanted, so I decided to give her a coat of Miss Mustard Seed's Lucketts Green milk paint and I am happy with how she turned out.

 

Drum roll...

 

 

 

 

 

And here she is, full of soldiers, cowboys, and princess stuff! I'm loving all the storage space. I can't wait to paint something else in Lucketts Green! Isn't it the most happy color ever?

 

Too much table

This weekend, I found two occasional tables on craigslist. Both were from Bombay Company, so they were solid, but pretty scratched and stained. I couldn't wait to paint them.

My husband and I live in a townhome, so space is limited. A couple of years ago, we decided that we needed to start living with things that worked in our home and stop holding onto certain pieces of furniture that may or may not work in our next place. Letting go has been fun. I think I make a trip to Goodwill or put something curbside at least every other week. It's so freeing. Of course, I currently have three dining room tables, but that's another story. Live and learn, right?

We had a fairly large end table, from Ikea. It's been a nightstand for our master bedroom and an end table in our living room. It was just taking up too much space and needed to be traded out. It was actually our last piece of Ikea furniture. I guess we're growing up. The table sat next to our ginormous La-Z-Boy, which I hope to someday be able to switch out as well...Just have to convince my husband that you can take a nap in a pretty linen chair too :) So far, he's not convinced :)

Two bulky things next to each other in a small living room just wasn't working. For some reason, this is one of the only pictures I can find of the previous end table and it's blurry...

So, I ended up keeping one of the end tables. I'm still working on styling it. I'd love a blue and white lamp...some fresh pink roses, but here's the after~ complete with a broken lamp and a faux plant. Just keepin it real, folks.

 

The other end table, I painted with milk paint and it turned out looking a little "coastal" to me. I don't happen to have a coastal home, but I was really pleased with the finished product. I think I get so stuck on painting things to way I would want them in my own home, that I don't branch out. So I'm working on that. This was my first attempt...

 

 

 

 

 

I just put this end table on craigslist today. Please message me if you're interested!

A before & after look at our new dining chairs

I couldn't decide what color to paint these dining chairs. I thought that I was going to paint them black and I may at some point, but I decided to go with French Linen and antiquing wax in all the floral swirl carvings. We spend a lot of time in our dining room. We eat in here, play in here, and have school in here. I love how much light it gets during the day, but at night, without an overhead light or many lamps, it gets nearly too dark to enjoy. So...black chairs just felt like the wrong way to go. What do you think? They're a coat heavier than the china cabinet.

before

after



 

So that's them. These are the chairs our family will sit at every day. The ones they will spill things in...where they will learn...where stories will be told...where my children will complain about what I feed them...Sweet memories for my soul.

 

 

Linking up to No Minimalist Here for the Open House Party!

China Cabinet before & after

This has to be one of my most favorite projects so far. Thank you so much, Geimer family for giving us this beautiful piece of furniture. I am so pleased with the china cabinet's new look, that I just can't picture our home without it. Like honey says, nearly every piece of furniture in our house is for sale. He's probably right :) But I really do love this piece. Being able to display some of our treasured heirlooms makes me so happy.

 

Here are some pictures of how this china cabinet was transformed from simple oak to French country.

 

It started out in two pieces, like this. No worries, though. We have it attached securely now.

 

bottom

 

top

 

After~  

 

I painted the cabinet ASCP French Linen. I only ended up doing one coat. I liked how it looked more like a wash and screamed "French" to me. I lightly distressed it and did I mix of clear and antiquing wax.

 

 

linens

 

Instead of putting my crystal out for show, I decided to put it in the bottom cabinet and keep the cabinet shelves more casual.

 

The china was a wedding gift and the chintz is on permanent loan to me from my mom. The wine on the bottom shelf is a dessert wine that we'll be opening on our 10th wedding anniversary. Gotta keep it safe!

 

 

I included corks from the special events in our life in this teacup and a small chintz pitcher.

 

 

Now, the only question is...What do I do about the hardware? I just can't decide. So, for now, it'll be like this :)

 

 

Happy Monday!

Before & After Buffet

I really love my buffet. I found the little treasure at Habitat for Humanity Restore. If you've never been, I totally recommend going, especially if you're looking at doing a home improvement project for cheap. They have every thing from furniture to doors to tile to appliances- every thing! This dresser was at the very back of the store, where they keep the "on hold" items (so don't miss scouting that room out), but it had been there passed the pick up date, so I was able to purchase it. It was priced at $35, but I talked them down to $25. Steal!

Before

 

 

I really didn't know what I was doing at the time. Now that Miss Mustard Seed has seasoned me, I feel much more confident painting furniture. Her tutorials are so helpful.
 

 

At the time, we were in desperate need of toy storage. We have three children and they have a lot of crap toys, and I was tired of always seeing the toys in random storage places throughout the house, even when they weren't being played with. That's when I decided that some type of dresser or buffet would be perfect. As I've mentioned before, I like to do things on the cheap, so instead of buying milk paint or chalk paint for this buffet, (Ahh...that would've looked so good...) I decided to spend no money at all and just use the flat white paint we had left over from our baseboards. It wasn't ideal, but it was free.

 

Here's what I came up with~

After

~flat white paint~

 

 

I also like to move things around. I think it secretly drives my darling honey crazy. He says he can never find anything. I always tell him, "It's in a better place." Right?

 

And here's it's final resting place. It works here. I did like it in our living room too though...

 

But after looking at the dresser for a while, I realized that it needed something. She takes a beating from the kids, so it didn't stay bright white for long. I needed something to really seal the paint, yet still have that chippy look. So, I lightly sanded again and bought some of Miss Mustard Seed's antiquing wax. Granted, it was my first time using it, but I'm really happy with the aged look I got from it. I think it's just enough.

 

 

 

 

Here's a close up~

 

What do you think?


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