Revealing the Living Room

Now that both chairs have been recovered, it is time to reveal the living room!  Before we get to the good photos (Ha!  Who am I kidding?  My pictures are never good!)  we should take a minute to see how far this room has come…



For the first year we lived here, this room was filled with the furniture, accessories, & curtains from our former home.  The result didn't seem to fit the look I was going for & it definitely felt a little more formal & a little less like us.



Believe it or not, the only furniture we bought new was the sofa & coffee table.  Everything else was originally bought used, & the only used furniture we bought for this room were the chairs by the windows, but I'm getting ahead of myself!  (Bonus points if you spot the baby doll creeper!)



After painting the walls Dusty Trail by Olympic Paints (found at Lowe's), we purchased the sofa & coffee table, which got a few coats of gold spray paint.



Believe it or not, but the botanical prints above the sofa were actually free printables!



You can read about how I made the chevron & fur pillows here.  The tribal print pillow fabric came from Spoonflower.



Normally, this coffee table is styled with toddler-proof accessories, but today I switched them out for a glass candle holder from Wal-Mart & a thrift store vase.  (Pretend you don't notice the upside down book...)



The furniture across from the couch was all purchased second hand.



We gave the china cabinet a makeover by taking some moldings off the top that were in disrepair, painting it black, & adding a mirror so we could use it for storage, rather than as a display.



I've heard it said that every room needs black & an animal print.  I covered both of those "dos" in this section of the room!  You can  read my chair re-upholstery tips here.



The turquoise pillows were a quick & cheap DIY using cloth napkins.



This view of the room is so much nicer...



now that I have these two chairs reupholstered!  The throw blanket is from Ikea & I made the pillows from this Spoonflower print.



I styled the table using a Target lamp, dollar tree frames, & a thrifted swan.



The curtains were adapted from these.



I am totally loving this room!  Although it is mainly monochromatic, it doesn't look boring because there are a variety of shades & textures used, along with happy pops of color in the accessories.  I hope you enjoyed the tour!

Linking to Remodelaholic

Best of the Nest

Thrifty Decor Chick

Reupholstering Chairs

After two years of living with these chairs:



I am happy to report that one of them has been successfully reupholstered!  A few weeks ago, I had given up on re-doing them myself & got permission from my husband to take them to a local upholstery shop.  I decided I should stain the the wood on the chairs first, since it was in pretty bad shape. 



After a quick sanding, I used a small paintbrush to cover the wood in one coat of Minwax Polyshades in Tudor with a satin sheen. 

Then, I called the upholstery shop & was told it would cost around $550 per chair!  Yikes!  Needless to say, after hearing the price tag, Mark came home from work & immediately started stripping the fabric off one of the chairs!  (You can see how nice & dark the wood is now in the photo below.)  We decided to work one chair at a time so we could use the other chair to reference how it had been upholstered.



When it came time to put on the new fabric (a 6’x9’ drop cloth) we started with the inside back.  We used the pieces we removed as a pattern & cut each piece out as we went. 

We folded the fabric back to prevent fraying & then put a nail in the middle of the top & worked our way out.  We had to pull the fabric through the sides & bottom & then stapled it to the back.  Next we used the same approach for the insides of the arms.



We then laid the fabric on the seat bottom & pulled the back through the crack (not sure what to call that!) & stapled it to the back.  We did the same thing to the sides.



To get a nice seam in the front, I cut a long strip of cardboard from a box of canned drinks.  With fabric folded underneath it, we stapled it to the bottom front of the chair & once we had the top part finished, we stapled it under the chair.  I’m pretty sure that doesn’t make sense, so here is the video we watched.  You’ll see him do it around 3:30.)



Next, we tackled the outside sides, which were fairly simple. 



The part that had us worried the most was the back, since we couldn’t just nail the back sides into the wood, since we weren’t going to cover that part in trim.  We ended up putting a few staples in the top, middle, of the back & working our way towards the side.  When we got close to the side, we used these upholstery tack strips to give us a nice, clean, staple free edge.  Before using them we watched this video to figure out how to use them.  It ended up being the easiest part of the entire chair!  (I’m just holding the tack strip up next to the finished chair so you can see where we held it.  Then we punctured the fabric & folded them 180 degrees away from the chair & nailed them in with a rubber mallet.)

 



The final strip was gluing on the trim.  Originally, the chairs had double welting around them, but I don’t have much patience with my sewing machine, so I just bought some trim instead.



I am so happy with how this turned out!



One more to go!  Mark is stripping the fabric off the other chair as we speak!  Hopefully, we’ll have a living room reveal soon!

Gray & Coral Bathroom

Nearly eight months ago, I updated my kids’ neon green bathroom to a more calming, neutral room with pops of color.  I still absolutely adore this room & it seems to be holding up pretty well.  I love the pattern in the striped shower curtains, the black toilet seat, & the pops of color in the towels, artwork, & yellow dog (which was something I wasn't sure if I would keep).  The only change I have made to this room is that I raised the artwork in the shower slightly higher & put a nail in the drywall to hold it, after it fell several times & scratched up the tub (magic eraser to the rescue…). Unfortunately, the pictures I took of the room didn't turn out very well, so I decided to try to take some with my son’s new camera.









Oh well!  I’m not sure those are much better!  The only thing left to do in this room is replace the flooring.  I would love some classic white & black hex tiles, like these.