Souped Up Desk Chair On the Cheap Vol. I

This week is all about chairs:  three chairs, in fact!  We needed a bunch and I found a bunch and with a little time, TLC, paint and fabric, I was able to transform them into great additions to the spaces in our home.  Up today:  the chair for our desk in the kitchen.

A few weeks ago, I got an email from the Pottery Barn Outlet that made me run -- not walk, run -- to the store.  It was a buy one get one free sale on their dining room chairs.  And the chairs were all an additional 15% off of their sale prices.  I needed chairs for Big's desk, Little's desk and my kitchen desk, so I grabbed the kids and high-tailed it to Lancaster.  And we were not disappointed.  I ended up getting two chairs at the outlet for just $75 total.  Not bad for really well made chairs, no?  This is the chair I picked for the kitchen desk:

It is the Isabella chair, which retails for $140.  It was priced at the outlet for $88 minus the 15% discount (and then I got the second chair free - more on that chair in a future post) -- so about $75.  I got it in green, but they had black, red and one white at the outlet.  Unfortunately, the white chair had a big crack in the frame, which I did not feel like dealing with.  I knew I'd have to paint the chair and green seemed like the easiest color to paint over.   So green it was.  

I will note that I saw a seagrass chair there that I literally stopped in my tracks and drooled over.  It was a little pricier (I think it was around $100) but still less than the retail version at $160.   I loved it, but I'm practical and my cat would Destroy with a capital D it.  So that beauty stayed at the outlet.  

Back to my chair!  The original plan was to give this chair to Big for his desk.  Once we got home, he declared that he did not like the "straw" on the seat.  So, Plan B was to put it in the kitchen.  I think it fits a little better in the kitchen anyway.  Now I had to choose what color to paint the frame.  I knew I'd keep the rush seat for texture.  I thought about Comfort Grey, which is the color I used on the pedestal table in the kitchen or Waterscape, which is what I used on the entryway table (both Sherwin Williams colors, by the way). Ultimately, I decided that Dover White (like the rest of my chairs) was the way to go.  It took three coats to cover. Here it is painted:

And here it is with the rush seat back on!

I'm super thrilled with this transformation. What do you think?  Stay tuned for two more posts this week about chairs on the cheap!  

See you swoon,

Getting Benched

I got a workbench! A custom-made-for-my-5'1"-self workbench!  Wanna see it? Here it is!

As I've gotten handier and taken on more and more projects, I realized that I really need a dedicated workbench for doing projects and for storing my tools and hardware.  I looked around but the workbenches I saw at Sears or Lowe's or Home Depot weren't doing it for me - they were pricey and didn't seem to fit the bill.  Plus, they were all out of the box, which meant they were just too tall for me.  My dad is handy and has a workbench so I talked to him about it.  He offered to build me a simple one to my specific measurements.  It would be nothing fancy: just 2x4s, some posts and planks, plywood, and peg board.  But oh my ... I was so excited and it sounded perfect!

First, I had to determine the spot for my bench: garage or basement.  That was an easy one - basement all the way.  Our basement is unfinished and used only for storage.  It's also huge. And now, it's my workroom.  I decided to put the bench on this wall:

Next, I figured the size of the bench and sent the measurements to my dad.  He cut all the lumber at his place and then came up to my house on a Friday, when we assembled the bench together.  I wish I could do a tutorial, but my dad is the mastermind behind this build.  It took us 5 hours to build the bench (he had already precut almost all of the wood that we used). Here is another picture of it finished!

I'm going to have to paint the bench or at least use Poly on it ... but you know me and you know I want to paint it. I'm not sure what color just yet.   I love the functionality of this bench. I have a perfectly sized work surface, a really great Craftsman vice that my dad bought for me, a shelf for storing things, pegboard to hang tools and an open spot for my Shop Vac.  Now for organizing!  I took a few minutes on a Saturday afternoon when my parents had the kids and took this ...

and whipped it into shape by turning it into this:

and this

I bought the white shelves (made of heavy duty resin) at Lowe's for about $30.  I definitely need at least one more for that wall, which will be my paint area.  The pile o' tools and hardware on and around the work bench is getting organized pronto with the help of another inexpensive shelving unit from Lowe's, pegboard and maybe some shelves.  I think I'm going to go with a fun, bold, punchy color palette down in my work shop, like this picture from House Beautiful:

Aren't those stripes to die for? They're fun and feminine but not too silly or girly-frou-frou.  Let's talk about your home work area! Do you have a work bench or a dedicated work space for projects? Where do you get 'er all done?

See you swoon,

Frame Transformation

Here is the second step in my vintage key/frame transformation for the entryway wall art.  On Monday I showed you my finished entry so now I will show you how exactly I got there. 

Gotta love the Christmas Tree Shops!  The day Shanna had seen the vintage keys I had come across this beauty.  OK, not really a beauty but it had potential and I loved the wood planks on this frame so I thought I could rip all of this insanity off and create a custom frame to my liking.

This is what I started with:

Lucky for me everything was just hot glued on so I was able to rip it off and sand lightly to get a smooth finish.  Then I used Sherwin Williams dover white to paint the entire frame, took about three coats to cover all the blue writing.    I originally planned to take the mirror out and add some plexi glass with a picture but then Shanna threw out the idea of using burlap in the frame and hanging the keys on top.  LOVED THIS IDEA!

Break out the trusty spray adhesive.  This stuff is more handy than you would ever think, every household needs a can in my opinion.  So I sprayed the board that was in the frame and pressed the burlap on top.  Instead of folding the burlap over the edges I just cut it along the edge of the board, mostly because when I tried to fold it over it wouldn't fit back into the frame. 

I lightly distressed the frame and then popped the burlap back in:

Last step was to hot glue the keys down.  The glue was a perfect solution to hanging the keys, they had bumps in strange places that made pinning them down very difficult so the hot glue worked just as I had hoped.

One more time with everything hung.  Ahhhhhh, what a nice entry to come home to every day :)

Happy hump day everyone!  Any projects planned this weekend?  Do you find it easy to look past unusual decor and find a way to make it work in your home?  

See you swoon,

Yippie! An award!

Ooh goodie!  My sweet bloggie friend Kirsten at The Foreign Domestic nominated us for an award! The Liebster Blog Award!

The award is designed to promote up and coming bloggers with less than 200 followers. Jamie and I are so thrilled and touched that you thought of us!  

The rules of the award are that you copy/paste the award to your blog linking back to the one who gave it to you. Then you pick 5 blogs to pass it along to and leave a comment telling them so.  Here are my five!

Noelle at Home Preferred

Sara at The Fat Hydrangea

Nicole at Busy Girl

Maury at Life on Mars

Anna at My Design Ethos

Take a peek at these blogs - I absolutely love all of them!  And thanks again Kirsten for thinking of us at Swoon :)

See you swoon,

O Christmas Tree, O Burlap Tree ...

I know it's still November, but now that Thanksgiving is over I am ready for Christmas!

On a recent trip to the Pottery Barn Outlet in late October, Jamie and I were really, really, ridiculously excited to discover that the outlet and virtually every other store was decorated for Christmas.  I don't know if it was because we got a freak snowstorm the day before or what, but we were pretty psyched to see all the jingle bells and snowflakes and reindeer and trees.   Before we got to Pottery Barn, we hit up the nearby Christmas Tree Shops, since Jamie had such a great find there the last time.  We both spied these little fake Christmas trees in gold and silver vases.  They seemed cute ...

And at $3.99 each, well, that's a great deal.

But we weren't thrilled with them as is.  The gold and silver made them look a little cheap.  So we passed.  We put them back and set our sights on Pottery Barn.  Well, wouldn't you know, when we walked in the outlet, we saw these very same trees but wrapped in burlap and tied with a twine bow!  I don't see these on the Pottery Barn website, and I wish I had snapped a picture but the last time we did that, we got in trouble for doing so.  But rest assured, we inspected those little burlap wrapped trees and concluded they were the very same trees. We could even see the gold vases under the burlap.  But, at $14.99 a pop, we said no thank you Pottery Barn and went back to Christmas Tree Shops and snatched up three each.

Making the little burlap-wrapped trees is a snap.  Jamie and I each bought a yard of burlap at $7.00 a yard.  One yard is way too much for this project, but Jamie has plans for her extra and I can always use extra fabric and burlap.  I had the twine on hand.  And I whipped out my glue gun.

First, I just my burlap to size.  I just laid my tree down and figured out how much to cut so that the burlap covered all of the vase and a little extra on the top.

Then I frayed the edge at the top. I wanted them to look sweet and rustic, not perfect.  To do this, just grab one of the fibers and pull. It's as simple as that!

Next I glued the burlap to the vase and used a few dabs of glue around the vase as I wrapped the burlap around it until the whole vase was covered.  I cut the burlap, glued it down and folded it over like so:

Finally, I wrapped the twine around the vase twice and tied it in a little bow.

And here's the finished product!

Super cute and really inexpensive.  The three trees were $12 total plus $7 for the burlap (and I have tons and tons of that left over).  I probably only used 1/4 of a yard, which works out to $1.75 for a grand total of about $13.75.  So for less than the cost of one tree at the Pottery Barn price, I got three!

Have you copy-catted any Pottery Barn crafts lately? Please share! Tis the season!

See you swoon,