Ames Family Adventures Project #1 - UPDATE

Y'all - I FINALLY FINISHED SOMETHING!

Remember that post I did back on March 12th? The dining room table & chairs that I was going to re-stain and recover and make look like something straight out of the haverty's catalog... I FINISHED IT. HOWEVER, it took on a life of its own and I ended up changing every thing about the project.

Once Mike & I went to get the paint stripper, we realized pretty quickly that that was NOT the way we wanted to go. It burned our eyes, nostrils, skin... and took FOR-EV-ERRRR. Mike bought a sanding tool thingy (like that technical term there?) and set to work trying to sand every square centimeter of those chair legs, backs and table. Two nights into the project, and sawdust covered my garage and husband. He determined that painting it was going to be the way to go. BUT - why paint something until we were ready to use it. It could have been ruined during the move! So the project went dormant for a couple of months.

Parker likes to help shop at the home-improvement stores. SO handy.

Finally, June rolled around and we were able to move into our new house - post on that coming soon - therefore, it was time to finish this dining room table up! I spent my weekday afternoons and weekends during Parker's nap time spray painting each of the chair legs, backs and table satin white. Of course, it took a couple of coats and about 8 bottles of spray paint, but they eventually were WHITE.

All of the pieces - painted white

Then came time for big decisions. To distress or not to distress. After looking hard at the table and chairs and noticing quite a few imperfections on my painting abilities, Mike & I decided it would be best to distress. After another trip to Lowes for sanding paper, Mike & I set to work grinding each chair and the table down to "chabby chic"mode. It took a couple of days, but we finally got them sanded down to perfection!

On to the cushions. I initially found the fabric that I liked on the interest about 5 months ago. It was neutral, teal and chartreuse. Most random colors ever. But I loved it. After checking around Jacksonville, I came to the conclusion that the $10/yard price was the best I was going to find and with a 20% off coupon, I might as well go for it. Turns out I LOVED IT. With some help from mom, we were able to recover the seat cushions quite easily - making them my favorite part of this whole project.

Best deals on fabric - hands down! www.fabric.com

Eventually, once I get brave, I'll order the curtains material and attempt curtains. 

Need to learn to sew first!

NOW - remember how I mentioned that it took me about 30 mintues to get all 4 chairs undone? And how I put the screws in two plastic baggies for safe keeping? Well, apparently when we moved, Mike & my dad put those two bags of screws "in a box" when they loaded up the garage. Which box? They didn't know. Where in the new garage was this "box"? They didn't know. I swear, y'all, I searched that garage for a month and a half STRAIGHT. I prayed, I unloaded, I unpacked, I repacked, I threw away. That garage was practically spotless due to me looking for those dang screws. All until last Sunday morning.

Mom was in town, helping us do some chores around the house - so I asked her to come outside with me one more time - just to see if we could find the screws. I moved some furniture around, moved some baby gear around, and LO & BEHOLD - there those dang screws were. In a piece of white furniture along with an old can of black spray paint and some other weird garage stuff. I about cried I was so happy.

Needless to say - here's the finished product! I couldn't be happier if I bought & paid for this set myself! But the fact that I made it makes it 10 times more enjoyable!

PS - those were my bridesmaids flowers from our wedding! :)

Cheers!

Annie

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.