Building our farmhouse table & repairing chairs

To preface, I have a great interest in power tools. As for skill, lacking. I come from a family that builds, a lot. My mom has built everything from garden sheds to chicken coups, tables, fences, four poster-beds, and everything in between. A few weeks ago, she built the rope swing platform below. She's taken a few classes, learned from her mom, and can use just about any power tool you could think of. My dad is very handy and got started by helping work on the structures of boats. Together they designed their home and built a miniature scale model of it for the architect, for heaven's sake. I have a lot to learn.

My grandma, at almost 80 years old, managed to fully sheetrock and build this library in her home so that she could use the opposite side as a pantry. When she passed, we found tons of tools in the back of her truck as well as wire cutters, saws, post hole diggers, etc. Naturally, during her last hour on this earth before she passed away, she built a knife rack. I feel like it's a family legacy of hard work, but I have so much to learn! I love to build, but sometimes I don't have the best attention span when I'm working in new territory.

I was able to select some chairs out from my late Grandmother's life-long antique/thrifting possession. I really loved the legs on the chairs and have collected other pieces in our house to match. We needed a small kitchen table to fit into a little nook we have in our family/kitchen area in our new home. I really wanted to buy this great farmhouse table we saw in Wyoming, but had no way to get it home. So, we decided to build our own, thinking it would match our country-style chairs the best!

First, I had to address the chairs. I loved how beat up they were, but they needed some TLC. They had no seat bottom or cushions, for starters. Two are a little bit different from the others, but I like that. So, I drew a template out of newspaper and followed the steps below.

(sorry for the blur, I had to take a picture of a picture).

While I'm at my yapping, I really hate to re-finish anything that's old. It pains me. But these chairs will also be in our dining room if we entertain, so they needed a little bit of fixing up (I figure 2 people don't need 6 kitchen chairs and 6 dining chairs at our point in life.) The happy medium is a product I love, called Restore-A-Finish in walnut. It's a wipe-on, wipe-off product applied with steel wool. It's not a stain, but just kind of enhances the wood that's there. You can see the before and after on this one chair that was much lighter than the rest.

Onto our table. We had Home Depot cut the wood to our measurements and then just used a screwdriver to secure the apron to the legs. Grant is so great at building, and is a huge help at making my home hopes and ideas a reality.

So here's our farmhouse table before (and before we cut the legs down further after HD cut them a bit too long)...

After staining the top...

Now we just had to paint the base. I mixed up a warm off white/yellow, painting and distressing a little but I didn't want it to look obvious like some "shabby chic" tables do.

And After...

It's not perfect, but I love that we were able to make our kitchen table together.

Ic an't wait to put curtains up in this little nook (and hopefully replace the light fixture with an old country one)!

Grant built a taller version of our table with a shelf for tools and gifted it to me as a surprise for a work table for projects & sewing. He is one sweet husband and I'm a lucky girl to have him.

Now, we're working on our trestle-style dining table! Why not just buy one? Well, we like to do things the hard way over here so we can say, "what were we thinking?" later!

Anyone want to take a power tools class? No, but seriously, I hope to take one someday soon! Have you built anything?

Reupholstering an antique chair & giveaway

It's good to be back! We just got back from a nice little vacation in Wyoming and Utah last week and I hope to post some pictures soon.

For now, I'd love to share a recent undertaking with you. My grandmother passed away last April and I was fortunate enough to help sort through her estate and keep a few things that were left in her years of collecting just about everything you could imagine (she was a child of the great depression and kept just about everything.) I have fond memories of seeing this chair in her living room and always loved the lines and hardware, but disliked the bright green upholstery. The detail on the arms and legs also went with a few wood tables my husband and I have picked out, so I decided to reupholster it. I'm putting notes below in case it helps anyone, but feel free to just scroll through pictures!

A few notes before beginning: Although every piece of furniture is different, I started by looking at these two tutorials: http://www.diyupholsterysupply.com/how-to-upholster-chair.html and http://littlegreennotebook.blogspot.com/2011/06/reupholstering-chair-part-1-stripping.html These are more helpful than any words I could probably offer!

After that, I took lots of digital pictures from different angles of the chair so I could remember how to reassemble it.

1. STAPLE REMOVING: I used a very small and thin flat head screw driver, popped the staple out part ways all the way around, and then removed them with pliers (a must!)

There were tons of staples. I started with the bottom of the seat, but here you can see how many staples were just in the top back of the seat. Within 5 minutes, the screwdriver slipped into my thumb, below. It just screamed, ROOKIE!!! I also managed to get two wood splinters under my nails and in my eye! Awesome!

I realized this would take a while and lots of patience, so I turned on Pandora and worked away for about half an hour just on the seat. But, I digress.

CAN YOU GUESS HOW MANY STAPLES, BUTTONS, AND METAL HARDWARE PIECES I REMOVED AND PUT IN THE BOX BELOW?

IF YOU HAVE THE CLOSEST GUESS, I'll SEND YOU THIS CUTE LITTLE NOTEPAD BY SHABBY CHIC. Just comment with how many staples you think I removed, and if you're the closest guess without going over, I'll announce you next week and get your address!

2. PATTERN: I removed all staples and fabric from the base of the seat, being careful not to rip the fabric too much, as it was my new pattern. The existing padding was in really great shape so I kept it (replacing foam can get costly). I then traced the original fabric pattern with yellow highlighter on the opposite side of the new canvas and cut it out carefully with fabric shears. Laying the pattern back on the chair, I stapled each side down, starting in the middle and then pulling the fabric taught and stapling to the left and right (see tutorials linked at the top of this post).

3. FABRIC- I love bright patterns on chairs and was tempted to do a Ralph Lauren style navy fabric, but decided on something neutral to match our off white canvas couch. I chose a white cotton canvas remnant I bought for about $3 at a fabric warehouse. After removing the fabric, I kept the original tack and cardboard strips to use in recreating the nice, clean lines on the back of the chair.

4. STAPLING/ TECHNIQUE: I was tempted to rent a pneumatic staple gun and air compressor from Home Depot for some projects, but realized my $20 or so stapler would probably work just fine (I later realized my staples suggested on the box of my gun went in about 3/4 of the way, but the wood was so hard that I had to hammer them in with a mallet the rest of the way). On the back rest, I also started by stapling the center top down and then moved across the left and right sides of the top. I flipped the fabric over the front of the seat and stapled the opposite side down, then flipped the fabric back over and inserted the tack strips to the left and right sides. These were then folded under so the sharp points could be hammered into the left and right sides of the back.

(You can see the tack strips on the opposite side of the fabric here).

(Picture before I folded in the lower left and right corner)

5. FINISHING THE BOTTOM: After doing the bottom seat, then top backrest, I took the black base sheet I had kept from the original upholstery and stapled it back on the bottom to give it it's nice finished look.

Done! I love the original hardware pieces, still debating whether I want to put them in as some friends say they love the simple, clean lines. I do too.

(You can see I left a tiny bit of slack to add the original buttons). Good luck guessing on the giveaway- I hope you enter!