Dining room table.......

I have been busy working on our dining room table this past week.  It was more work than I thought!  Especially since I was working with stitches in my pointer finger it took me more time. (cut my finger slicing an onion)  I was able to finish it and I LOVE it!!!

First a little background.  I bought this table and a matching buffet about 5 years ago.  I usually never would buy a large
purchase like this without TJ, but this time I did. (no idea why)  I got it home and to be totally honest never really loved this set.  Something always bothered me about it.  It was kind of just there.

Here is the buffet.  I have since sold it on craigslist.

I replaced the buffet with this one.  I found it at the flea market and painted it Annie Sloan Provence Blue.

Click here to see the post on how the buffet was painted:

http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=5262909746498862430#editor/target=post;postID=7073122560177735944

I have been thinking of selling the table too. Then I decided since I would probably have to work on whatever piece I ended up buying. I might as well see what I can do to this one.  My first step was to find fabric.  I looked for a LONG time for this.  When I found the fabric I knew for sure it was the one!!

Here are a few beautiful white tables that inspired me......

  This set is from Pottery Barn.



Bear-Hall Interiors

This one is so beautiful!  Love that chandelier! 

Another pretty one from Pottery Barn.

Here is the dining room table before.  Again nothing at all is wrong with it, I just wanted to add something to it.  I did not feel bad about painting over the wood.  I knew I did not like it as it was so could not wait to change it up. 

First I took off all the seats so I could paint the chairs. 

I used Annie Sloan Chalk Paint in Old Ochre. It took 2 coats. After the paint dried I did some light sanding. I then waxed each chair with Annie Sloan clear wax.

** I learned something very very cool from Kristie at Carter's Cottage.  She sands ASCP with a scotch bright pad.  I had never heard of this.  I tried it and it was amazing!  You have to wet it and then just sand away.  No mess!  No dust!  Awesome!  You just need to rinse the pad often. It sands better than sandpaper! Did I say no mess??? LOVE IT!!!**

Here are the chairs with one coat of paint.

Here is what the chair cushion looked like before I put the painters drop cloth on it last year.

The new fabric was easy to work with.  Except that I learned that recovering chairs with stitches in your finger does not work very well.  My stitches started to break apart so I had to work without that finger!  It was that or be patient and wait a week until they were removed! That was not an option for me!  :)

Here is a completed chair! 

ALL DONE!  I am so happy with how it turned out. It is exactly how I pictured it looking when it was finished. 

 A little bit of paint and some new fabric made this set unique!  I LOVE that! :)




Links:

http://shabbynest.blogspot.com/

Burlap Bench!!

My little burlap bench......

Sometimes I do not get it right the first time, but I just keep trying!

I have had this faux leather bench for many many years.  It was from Target and it went well with everything in my home.  That was until I decided I wanted to lighten things up!

I love projects like these.  I would much rather reuse something I have then go find something new.  Not only does it save a ton of money but it makes it unique!

Ok so my first attempt did not go so well.  I thought I loved the fabric I found at Hobby Lobby but it took me (and my teenage daughter) a few minutes to realize it did not work! I did not spend too much on that fabric, and maybe I will end up using it somewhere someday!

In comes the burlap.  I have never used burlap before but I was excited to try it.  The best part about burlap is it is CHEAP!

Before I go on you will see I do not have pictures of the actual process of recovering the bench.  I sometimes get on a roll and forget to take pics!  This bench was so easy.  Except for getting those darn legs off.   I spent more time on that than anything else!  I finally got a hammer and just banged on each leg and they finally fell off!  (you can see how distressed each leg is!) I was ok with that since I planned to have them distressed anyway.

Once I got the legs off I spray painted each one with Rust-Oleums heirloom white.

The burlap was very easy to work with.  I used my staple gun and went right over top the faux leather (I did take fabric #1 off in case I decide to use it on something else.)

Ok this is not it, but I love this burlap bench.   It is from Mecox and has a price tag of $1285.00

And of course my favorite store Pottery Barn ALWAYS has something I like.  This pretty bench is $499.99.

This cute bench above is my finished product!

After getting all the bench covered I added nailheads around the bottom.  Again this was very easy, just needed a hammer and the nailheads were about $2.00.

Here is my little bench all burlapped up.  I love how it turned out!  If we forgot about the first fabric incident this project cost me around $7.00!  :)