Ames Family Adventures - Project #1

I would like to call myself somewhat of a handy-woman. I helped (more like watched) my dad do several do-it-yourself projects growing up including Making my own headboard for my bed out of a picket fence piece, build a corn hole (beanbag game) set for a friend, change my own flat tires, and paint practically everything. Now that I'm a grown up with a family of my own, I've started collecting "do-it-yourself" projects that I never seem to have the time to start (or finish for that matter). 

DREAM DINING ROOM

Yesterday, I received a sales flyer in the mail from Haverty's furniture. As I sat there drooling over the gorgeous dining room table, chairs and hutch (above) I found myself trying to figure out how I was going to buy this set immediately after we close on our house. I mean, look at it. It's gorgeous, has seating for 8 and is going to match perfectly in the rest of the house. After some heavy daydreaming I had a come-to-Jesus moment with myself I had to face the facts - I'm going to be broke as hell once this house finally goes through. After the pre-paids, closing costs, new flooring, paint, and general repairs needed throughout the house, any "fun money" I have is going to be non-existant.

Faced with that fact - and staring at my lame dining room table set (which we inherited from a friend) - I decided that NOW was the time to design my own dining room table and customize it to look EXACTLY like I wanted. I had always thought I wanted to paint the dining room set white and throw a navy blue material over the cushions. But after eyeing that set from Haverty's, I decided that I wanted to strip the bad boy down and stain it dark. 

My sad dining room chair (before picture)

Therefore, I did what any brave, DIY'er would do and had a chair massacre in my living room. It took me about 30 minutes to take each chair apart - I was smart enough to put all of the nuts & bolts in ziplock bags and then got to work googling how I was going to strip the wood down. After a couple of calls into my dad and a few texts to Mike letting him know our next adventure, I had a plan in place.  Operation "Update Dining Room Furniture" is officially underway! Stay tuned for updates!

Parker's Fisher Price chair was the only one who survived the Chair Massacre of 2015

Cheers! 

Annie

PS: An update to this post was created on 8/7/2015 and can be found here.