DIY - kitchen chairs make over

This is the story of a couple of chairs found at tip shops looking very sad and very ugly. I got this first chair for $1! I couldn't believe it! When I saw it I thought for sure they'd want something like $15 for it. At least. I'd seen similar chairs in much wobblier condition for $25 each at one of the other tip shops. This one was nice and sturdy. When I got the sales person's attention I asked about a couple of other items I was interested in, then offhandedly asked about the chair, sure I wouldn't want to pay their price for it. When she said $1.00 I had it in my car before she could change her mind.

It was painted in layers of oil paint which I found where almost impossible to get off using the sander.

So, I got out my trusty angle grinder with the sanding attachment and made short work of all those layers of paint.

I then decided to stick with the two toned theme on the chair and painted it Limed White, with a pale blue seat... And hated it.

I quickly repainted it. This time I used a mix of my own making. I never used to do this, but I have a good friend who is forever taking liberties with paints and mixing up her own tints. My biggest fear is that I'll find a colour I love and run out mid-job with no way to recreate it.

I soon got over my fears though and was happily mixing up colours for all I was worth. Almost everything in my way got a coat of paint on it over the last 2 weeks.

I finished up with a chair in a pale rich creamy white which I love. Its similar to the colour of the kitchen table. Once the chair was finished I gave it a quick sand, exposing a few spots on 'wear' areas, then I gave it a wax with some clear beeswax. I love the smell of that stuff and the soft gloss it gives to things. I'm totally new to furniture wax and this is the first time I've tried it. I read about it on the DIY blogs I've been reading lately and thought I'd give it a try.

After all, try everything in life once, and the good things twice.

The other chair in this little story is a dining chair from a set of 3 I got at a different tip shop for $5 each. These poor little chairs were sitting in the rain on the day I saw them. One had a broken back so I knew I had to rescue them. The pic below is of one of the chairs, the one with a missing slat, not the broken backed one or the horribly upholstered one. They had the best 50s style vinyl on them, marred by paint splatters, but gorgeous.

 

This is the horribly uphostered one. With a broken and splintered seat due to having nails pulled and hammered in quite a few times over the decades.

I thought I'd tackle the upholstered one first, thinking it might be the easiest one to start with - plus I needed to find a way to repair the broken back and fill the other chairs where timber was missing... 

I ripped off the check fabric and nails, found wadding and the original vinyl being used as a kind of backing. Plus lots of nails and splintered wood.

So, first things first, I painted it - white of course. This time I used my favourite stand-by Antique White USA. Once the painting was finished I gave it a quick sand and wax. I cut a bit of masonite to cover the hole and nails I couldn't remove or hammer in below 'ouch' stage.

Then I upholstered it. 

I'll spare you the gory details. It wasn't pretty.

I've only tried upholstering something once before in my life - using a staple gun. This time I tried my hot glue gun. That made it easier, but my corners leave a lot to be desired. Here's a photo far enough away as to hide the imperfections.

In the spirit of not spending any money if I can avoid it, I used things I had on hand. Paint I had on hand, offcuts of masonite I found in the casita, some toille fabric remnants I'd found a couple of months ago in the clearance bin at Spotlight, and some wadding I also found among my collection of 'stuff that'll come in handy one day'.

(I'll come clean: the wadding came out of stuffed toys the dogs ripped apart. I knew I kept it for a reason!)

All in all, I love my new kitchen chairs!

 They now sit proudly in the kitchen, awaiting the arrival of their not-quite-matching mates.

I have more of the black and white fabric and a complimentary fabric in cream and burgundy which I plan to use to make a cushion for the hard chair, maybe for all the chairs...

I just love doing this stuff!

z

ps. I just added upholstery tacks to the padded chair and its really finished it off nicely.

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i need a holiday

Just a quick post to let you know I'm still alive... but barely kicking. I'm exhausted and my arm has been sore since I woke up this morning. Usually it has the good grace not to hurt till I've been working for half the day. I'm not impressed.

I know I'm always saying I'm tired cause I'm doing too much, but I'm really working my butt off. Pity its still as big as ever... its just not fair.

So, photos of projects will be coming soon, as each is finished, but I'm still working on the kitchen chairs, a coffee table, a coat rack and some smaller projects. 

Meanwhile, the sign outside the door has changed - this one inspired by a sign on Pinterest. Love it.

Montana is fine, but still not her usual self. She's sooky and isn't eating much at all. Yesterday when I started packing the car with stuff to take to Fentonbury she got in and stayed there all day. That's not unusual, she loves the car. Sweet girlie. I hope the results are all good.

 

Meanwhile, Chris has been here since Friday and the guys have been working on stuff. In 3 days they lined 2 walls in the mudroom (they do look great) hung our new/old front door, bought and installed a deadlock on it, and I think they connected a downpipe to our new guttering - a good thing too cause its been pouring.

 

In the same 3 days I made a chalkboard and painted an old frame for it, sanded and undercoated and did 2 topcoats on a coffee table, 2 chairs, a louvre door and a coat rack. Groomed 3 dogs, 2 of which were standard poodles, did the washing and folding of  laundry, loaded the car with things to take to Fentonbury, entertained visitors, went to Fentonbury and cleaned the house and started getting it together, washed dishes countless times and avoided cooking.

Why is it that when men work they take so many breaks? Maybe if I adopted their more relaxed attitude to working I wouldn't be wearing my wrist brace during the day and moaning about the pain...

z

if there's no rest for the wicked, what does that make me?

Even when I'm supposed to be taking it easy, I'm doing something. I just can't stop. I'll stop for a cup of coffee but I'll read a book or check mail while I do it. I watch TV but half the time I also work on a craft project, brush or caress a poodle. Before I got a PVR I used to read a book during the ads.

Point in case, the vase above. This used to be an empty coffee can. I collected some old gum tree bark and used the hot glue gun (I love my hot glue gun) to glue the curls of bark to the tin. They look amazing.... just like cinnamon sticks. This is only a preview. I have plans for this vase... stay tuned.

Another thing I worked on while watching TV over the last week was a birdhouse. We now have two birdhouses hanging off the trellis in the yard. I promise I'll take better photos one of these days but I was so eager to hang it up and see what it looked like in its 'natural environment'.

This too was made from an old coffee can. Wayne helped by cutting out the door for me and making a roof out of some old rusty tin. Great isn't it? I love the little twisted wire 'hooks' he made to hold the roof on.

All I did to improve this birdhouse was to glue sticks to it to cover the tin. I've temporarily hung it off an old horse bit we have on the trellis. Kinda cool.






So, besides all that, now that the kitchen table is done, what have I been doing? Well. On Monday I found out that the tenants had vacated my house in Fentonbury. I had given them notice as I discovered that its very stressful and not at all easy to sell a house while its rented out. The only thing to do was to take the house back and move myself back in so I can have the house looking the way I like to have it: neat, tidy, clean, maintained... and gorgeous.

Not that the tenants were bad... they were fine to start with and to be honest I never had an problems with them till I decided to sell the house. From the minute I notified them of my intent to sell they became the tentants from hell. I wont go into details, all I can say is that it could have been way worse. I've seen the horror stories. We lost a sale because of them, but the house is ok... Nothing some cleaning and TLC can't fix.

I'm so glad to have my house back. Its been a really hard thing for me to let go of this house. I think its because I didn't sell it but decided to rent it. I confess I'm a control freak... I like things done my way. And seeing my house not being maintained the way I would myself... well... it was hard to deal with. If I'd sold it it would have been someone else's house, no longer mine to worry about.

When I sold my house in Melbourne I moved away so I didn't see what the new owners did or didn't do. When I did visit Melbourne and drove by one day a couple of years later I was disappointed that the new owners didn't seem as house proud as I was... but it was no longer my house, so it wasn't my problem.

My advice is this (and I really wish I'd given myself this advice a year ago): don't rent your house. Not if you're attached to it... if you want to move on, sell it. Being a landlord sucks.

But enough of that. I had been talking about my week. It started with learning the house was vacant on Monday, then having to take a day off on Tuesday to go and inspect it with the agent to be sure all was ok. From there things just got busier and busier. Tomorrow is Good Friday, so with having Monday and Tuesday off its been a short week for me... short but not quiet! My week included finding the vinyl I want in the mud room, taking chainsaws in for a service, grooming 2 new dogs, working, picking Merrill up from the airport, visiting the tax man, shopping and taking Montana to the vet to be spayed.

Yes... My baby girlie is in the living room right now, sore and miserable. She won't eat even though I chopped up some leftover sausages and a chicken schnitzel and tried hand feeding her. That's ok. She'll eat it in the morning I'm sure.

Thing is... I knew I didn't want to breed Montana again. She only had the one litter but she had bad diarhea for weeks afterwards so I didn't want to risk her health by having another litter. Plus, if I did  have another litter I'd have to keep a puppy and then I'd have to show it... and who has the time? and who has the money? Breeding Montana would mean airfares to the mainland for both of us, stud fees, and the cost of raising a litter. I sure don't have money to spare right now.

So, even though I knew I wasn't going to breed her again, I couldn't bring myself to put a full stop on that part of my life. You know... just knowing that I could breed another litter if I wanted to, that my own line didn't end there, well... it was reassuring.

But I finally decided it was time. Montana is 7.5 yrs old. I wouldn't breed her again even if I wanted to at this age. So this morning I dropped her off and asked that the vet who spayed her also look at a small hard lump on her tummy near her last teats.

$565 later (yeah, you heard me!) Montana is spayed, all went well and the lump was removed and is being sent to be biopsied.

I was fully expecting the vet to tell me it was nothing. But here I am now... not even wanting to think anything other than positive stuff.

He said its a mammary tumour - of those 50% are benign and 50% not. Of the not, 50% are the type that spread, 50% aren't. So, there's a 75% chance this is nothing at all to worry about.

Fingers crossed. I try not to think that Pagan (her mother) died at age 9 of cancer. She was fine till one day she had diarhea and didn't eat, the second day when things didn't pick up they took her to the vet and the ultrasound showed she was full of growths in her abdomen. There'd been no indication.

Hopefully this is nothing at all. I couldn't bare her being sick. I adore my baby girl. She is the most beautiful dog in the world.

Ok. Enough of that. It will all be fine. I'm going to go cuddle her for a while.

So, tomorrow I had planned to go up to Fentonbury to start the clean up of my house and yard. But I wont be... Wayne suggested that a day off wouldn't kill me. Little does he know huh? I'll stay here and look after my girlie, clean my car, do some work on my dining chairs, sort out stuff to take to Fentonbury, catch up on emails and computer work... that's taking it easy!

I'll leave you with some tip shop bottles I gave a 'sea glass' effect to using PVA glue and food colour (yep, you go it! another Pinterest idea). These will be going to the bathroom in Fentonbury as decor.

z

DIY - the kitchen table

Well, its finally done!!! The new/old table that I've been making over is finished! It only took about five weeks from the day I got it. Really. It would have been done sooner if I could have worked on it more solidly. As it was, it went from this:

to this:

Not bad eh?

Ok. So here's the story. I've always dreamed of having a country kitchen. Our kitchen here is melamine heaven (ugh) and not really big enough for the big pine table I dreamed of. So I make do till I can afford to do the kitchen up. Up till now I've had my 60s kitchen table (and chairs as you can see above) in the kitchen and that worked fine. But I still wanted that timber table. I figure the rest of the kitchen will catch up one day soon...

As you know, I'm a tip shop/op shop addict. And on one of my trips I saw this table and thought 'hey... I can do something with that!'

It had a horrible, broken top, a wonky leg and nails all over the sides.

All I saw was that it was solid tassie oak and I was going to replace the top anyway. I had plans to use the offcuts from enclosing the mud room to create a new top, but then I looked around me and found this:

And old shed door. Too small to use as a front door but still... I thought it'd come in useful one day. :)

I put it on top of the table and thought 'eureka!'. I had my new table top.

I started by removing the bracing at the back of the door and the very old, very rusty hinges. I quickly found out that the slats were in pretty bad shape. I had to pull them apart, clean them up and re-glue them together. They still weren't all that solid.

I sanded off the paint. I wanted to use the front of the door with the grooves between the slats. The slats were bent and uneven due to years of exposure to the elements. I had to sand a LOT to get the door more or less smooth and even.

Then I started work on the table. I turned it upside down and found it had a clever little 'hold the top on' system which I saved and re-used when I finished.

It had a nice solid oak frame which had originally held plywood covered with some kind of laminate which was long gone, only the glue remaining. I had to beat that out with a crowbar.

In the end I was left with the solid table top frame and the table legs.

I worked on straightening up the wonky leg and sanding back the peeling paint off the legs. I wasn't too fussy about getting it perfect. I'm after a country look after all. Worn and loved, not pristine.

Next came attaching the top frame to the legs with glue and nails, then the new top onto that.



And sanding.

Lots of sanding.

I got to use the new belt sander for the first time. That sucker sure can pull. Almost pulled me over the table top first time I turned it on.

 Eventually, I got to where I thought I was finished. Then I sanded some more.

The table was only about 19-20mm wide with ragged edges. Even after I cut the worst of them off with my circular saw I still needed to edge it to make it look neat. Plus make it look thicker. Nothing like a nice thick table, right?

I got some pine strips as edging. They were 40mm wide. Great, but too much overhang underneath. I didn't want to risk anything catching onto the edge and pulling it off. So I had to cut down some strips of timber to put behind as extra support for the edging.

Sorry, no photos of that. It was dodgey looking.

Once the edging was on I had to sand it again cause my joins left a bit to be desired.

I learned to work with furniture from a guy who makes rustic pieces. I basically learned to sand using a grinder ... need I say more?

I used some clear silicone stuff to fill the big holes. Big mistake. Sure, it worked on the holes, but that stuff was horrible. I tried to fill the gaps with it (cause who wants to lose crumbs in cracks in the table?) and I got it all over the surface of the table. I got my fingers covered in it for one thing, but I couldn't remove it. And when I went to sand it off it only made a kind of greasy smear. Yuck.

Note the clever trick I picked up from a friend: use a balloon stretched over the tip to keep the silicone from drying out.

I had to find a way to get the smeared silicone off, or at least minimise the mess... so I rubbed some burnt umber artists acrylic onto the table around the cracks where the smears were. I like it. I love burnt umber. I use it to give my 'distressed' items a more distressed look.

Then I looked at the table top, before applying polyurethane, and thought 'Hmmm. It needs something.'

I found a graphic I liked on the Graphics Fairy website, printed it out but couldn't blow it up to the size I wanted to tranfer it onto the table. I had to do it freehand.

I ruled up lines, then drew the letters on with a pencil. I then used a brown marker to draw on the type. I ain't a signwriter. It came out ok, but not quite as authentic as I would have liked.

 
So I attacked it with the sander, rubbing it down, making it look like it had worn off. I probably went overboard with the rubbing, and perhaps the black marker would have looked better, but when I tested it on a scrap bit of timber the brown sanded better than the black.

Finally it was time to paint and lacquer the table. I sat the table up on some tap bits (like the skirts you put under tap fittings) so that I could paint the legs all the way to the bottom without having to worry about then sticking to newspaper (a tip off Pinterest)

I tried another tip I got off Pinterest: the elastic band to stop drips. Have  I mentioned how much I love that site?

I had to do three coats of polyurethane, sanding lightly with 240 grit paper between coats (cause thats what the instructions said). I gave the legs 2 coats of a creamy white paint I mixed up using some leftover cream and a bit of Antique White USA. Once it was dry I gave the legs a light sand to show a bit of wear, then moved it into the kitchen!!!

Next project... the chairs!

z

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