My Latest Creations

Here are some photos of my latest DIY projects.

Before:

After:

 

 

Totally refinished and reupholstered chair. A new femine look for the Duncan Phyfe style chair.

 

 

Before:

 

 

After:

 

 

From beat up and boring to colorful and modern wicker table . 





Inspiration

I'm always looking for design inspiration - in magazines, on TV, or online. Here are some designer rooms from HGTV. Each room has some feature that I really like.

In this room by Balis, I love the formal chairs in hot pink with the whimsical zebra print pillows.

 

 

The rug in this room by Patrick Bagli is simple, but very elegant. The straight lines in the red velvet chair are contrasted with the curving lines of the cream and dark wood chair.

 

 

 

The dining chairs in Riehl's room are a bold citrus lime - as is most of the room (maybe a bit much IMHO). I really like the color as the fabric for chairs with white wood. I like the pairning of the chairs with the dark wood table.

 





 

 

Sometimes it's colors, other times it's shapes or textures that draw me to a particular piece of furniture. I just keep clipping, bookmarking, and saving photos that inspire me.

 

What inspires you? Let me know - send a link to your favorite room in the comment section. 

Side Board Steal

Our vacation house is a log cabin surrounded by pine trees and forrest. After we built the house we did not have the money to furnish the rooms except for the great room. I convinced my husband that I could find and refinish furniture for the house that would fit in with its look, location, and be functional.

This is the great room and my favorite feature - the fireplace and stone wall.

During one of my regular visits to my local thrift store, I found a heavy wood side board with nice details on its doors. It was in very good shape except for nicks and scrapes in the wood. Just the kind of thing that I could handle. The price was right and so was the size - it ift in the back of my Subaru with the seats down.

My first plan was to distress the piece since I had just done a distressed console for the log house. That idea was vetoed by my husband who said I should try stripping and refinishing the piece.

 

During my next visit I took a look at all the different types of woods and stains in the cabin - pine logs, a Brazilian cherry floor, cherry stained maple kitchen cabinets, and wood doors. It was way too much wood!.

Instead I decided to use the deep red and black swirled pendent lights that were over the island that ajoins the kitchen and dining room as the inspiration for painting the side board. I bought sample sized Behr paint in black suede and red pepper both with primer included and tested them on a piece of scrap wood. I liked them so I was ready to go.

 

I marked off the sections that I wanted to paint with the red in painters tape and began painting with the black.

I removed the hardware from the drawers and cabinets, and I removed the drawers from the piece. I did a bit of painting every day for several days in a row.

When I was done with the black paint, I started with the red paint. After everything was painted, I used Minwax polycrylic to coat the entire piece. I gave the top an extra coat.

Banished Chairs Into a Bench

I had two chairs that had been in my dining room that were in bad shape (read rickety and dog-chewed). They were finally replaced in the room makeover. When I took them to the garage my husband banished them from returning back inside. BUT, that didn't mean I couldn't use them to make something else and/or use them outside on our deck. I remembered seeing ideas for making a bench out of chairs when I was searching for tips on creating an upholstered bench. So, I went back to the Web and did some digging. An Oregon Cottage had really great step-by-step directions for making a bench with a solid wood seat and cushion. I had pressure treated wood that I wanted to use for a more traditional slatted bench so I combined the ideas for a slatted bench from two chairs on My Repurposed Life with the other diy style to create my own bench.

Here is the starting chair.




Unfortunately I don't have pics of every step.
But I removed all but the back and rear legs of the two chairs using a bow saw.





Then I attached the chairs together with three pieces of wood, two on the outside and one on the inside. I used a circular saw to cut my wood (a first use of this power tool). Next, I used a piece of wood attached to the legs of each chair to make a scaffold for a bottom shelf.

The Wall

One wall in my dining room has the current thermostat and the old thermostat. I find the old one especially unsightly and was looking for something to tactfully cover them. The trick was that I still need access to the working thermostat.

I had some left over fabric from a set of chairs, and I decided to make a wall hanging.

 

I had some wood that was 1" x 1" and 44 inches long that was perfect for the space. I measured the fabric and cut it to size. Since I do not have a sewing machine, I used fabric fusion to make clean edges on the fabric. All you need is an iron to make a hem - it's that simple.

The Color Teal

When we moved into our house 7 years ago I knew we would have to repaint the dining room, but I was in no hurry since we never used the room. The walls were a mix of Jackson Pollock style painting in burnt orange, gold, and teal combined with a hand-painted floral border in the same color scheme. This was on top of wainscoting in a neutral shade of white (thankfully). I never did understand the purpose of the border; the room has crown molding and a tray ceiling.

It's the tray ceiling that is the true architectural feature of the room. It was painted teal with gold stencils. My husband and I agreed that it was really striking and probably something that we would keep when we eventually redid the room. This photo was taken when I was repainting the room. I left the entire tray area as is and set out to find fabrics and paints to coordinate with the woods and rest of the palate.

Olympic paints make coordinated paint schemes as part of the Audubon collection. I used one of them - Splendor - as the inspiration for my living room (see my earlier posts) and hallway. I liked the Grandeur collection as a starting point for the dining room because it has turquoise, teal, icy blue, and leafy greens. I found a couple of nice fabrics at Calico Corners Outlets. One was striped with turquoise, cream, beige, and chocolate brown. The other had a graphic print in cream and turquoise, was enough to recover two antique chairs that I restained.

For the walls I wanted to keep with a neutral color so it did not detract from the ceiling. I painted the walls a wheat-toned beige from Valspar. I actually picked two colors and tested them on the wall before making the choice - the lighter of the two colors.

Dining room visit 1

The next major piece of furniture in my dining room is a mahogany drop leaf table with ball in claw Queen Anne legs. It is a reproduction that my parents bought for me at an antique auction. I fell in love with it, and I think that my folks spent as much shipping it to me as they did to buy it. I have had it for 20 years and 4 different homes. I especially love the beading on the edge of the table.

I didn't have chairs for the dining room and the ones that I liked were very expensive. Plus, I knew that I couldn't match the table exactly. I had seen some examples of mixing dark wood and lighter chairs and I liked the way it looked. It was something that I thought would work well with what I planned for the paint job in the room.



I had seen some photos online with examples of the kind of chairs that I had in mind. The example on the bottom is from Decor magazine's Spring/Summer 2012 issue. Now I needed to find some chairs to work with to recreate the look. I began scouting thrift shops, and luckily I was able to find 4 matching chairs - 2 arm chairs and 2 side chairs that were in good condition. They were a bargain at $4.97 a piece.

A photo of the before and after priming of the arm chair is below. I used Kilz odorless aerosol spray primer.   

Then I painted them with 2 coats of Olympic's Spice Delight semi-gloss, a creamy vanilla color. This is the color of the wainscoating in the room. I used a gold glaze paint by Martha Stewart to accent nooks and crannies in the chairs including the faux canning. I also reupolstered the chairs.

Here are the chairs with the table.  

The room is progressing...stay tuned for more.