Main Floor Custom Cabinet

One of the few regrettable decisions I made during the construction of our house was removing a 3-sided fireplace between the living room and dining area of the main floor. The intent was to open up the space but it backfired...now it's too open! The result has come to be known as "No Man's Land".

Right now, No Man's Land is home to a curio cabinet I got from a friend, that's become a catch all for random accessories and books. Needless to say, something has to be done!

I stumbled on a local craftsman who does amazing custom woodwork, and challenged him to come up with a solution to my problem.

His cabinet design is approx. 3' x 5' x 4'. Big enough to fill up this empty space and provide us with storage, but not so big that it overwhelms the house.

I love it and can't wait to see it finished!

Slipcovers and Slip Ups - Part 3

Check out Part 1 and Part 2 of this nightmarish project.

I am embarassed that what was intended to be an easy peasy update of these chairs has become what it has. I appreciate you all bearing with me while I continue to try (and fail) to get this right.

Ok, so we're now going to reupholster these babies. I am not going to lie. I contacted several upholstry shops to see if it was in my budget to have this professionally done. At $1,000/chair (no, I am not kidding) that was not even an option. So, here we go again, Mel is gonna DIY!

I found these two helpful blogs that show, step by step how to go about reupholstering a wing back chair. Brooke, at All Things Thrifty, also tackled a wing back with amazing results! Definitely check out these how-tos before tackling this yourself.

These chairs have a very traditional shape, and I thought I would have some fun with them by using a more modern fabric. I bought my fabric for 50% at Fabricland. Mr. Mel picked it! Each chair will use about 5 yards of fabric. I decided to do away with the piping, and keep it simple. Yeh, famous last words.

I started by stripping the chairs of fabric. This was a tedious and time consuming process. I figured that I could strip both chairs in a morning. In fact, it took me just over three hours to remove all of the staples from just *one* chair!

Once I had the chair naked, I took the fabric pieces I had removed (and carefully labelled) and used them to cut out pieces from my fancy new fabric. It was at this point that I had a conversation about my project with my in-laws, and vented about how frustrating the process was. My ever helpful father in law suggested I call his sister, because her boyfriend used to own an upholstery shop! Turns out he redid all of the antique furniture during the restoration and renovation of a gorgeous, and historic hotel 5 star here in town.

I could have kissed him I was so excited! A call was made and, after a trip to a nearby city to drop them off and little negotiation, this project was officially someone else's problem! Ha ha. A week later the chairs were done, and the torturous project was at an end.

In the end, this project pretty much kicked my butt. I know that I could absolutley have recovered these myself but, honestly, my heart just wasn't in it anymore. I was relieved to pass it on to someone else. But, even after all of  my mistakes and the cost of materials and labour, I still got myself two awesome wingbacks for less than the cost of one new chair! I call that a WIN!

A couple of tips if you are going to tackle a project like this (our upholsterer added a few I hadn't even thought of):

• Buy an extra yard or two of fabric for each chair, you will likely need it and, if you don't, you can always use it for cushions later.
• Beg, borrow, or steal an electric staple gun. You will not regret it.
• Have a glue gun at the ready, it will come in handy dandy.
• use a fabric steamer to santize and re-puff the existing foam. Not having to replace this will save you loads of cash.
• Be prepared to improvise. You are not a professional, you may have to use your imagination to figure out how to get things just right.

After all of the drama, here is the cost breakdown for this project (including cost for my screw-ups):

$100 for wing back chairs
$52 for canvas drop cloth (fabric)
$44 for supplies (cording, thread, buttons, staples, etc.)
$155 for fabric
$400 for labour
Total cost of this monstrous rehab = $751

Slipcovers and Slip Ups - Part 2

Check out Part 1 of this project here.

Mission: Slipcovers Part Deux was underway. Pin-fitting these covers was so much easier than cutting pattern pieces. Pinning the piping in between the fabric was a bit tricky but it got easier once I worked with it for awhile. Check out this post at The Nesting Place on basic steps to pin-fitting slipcovers.

Once I had all of my pieces pinned together on the chair and basted, I took the entire piece to the machine. I would periodically refit the cover in the chair to make sure it fit properly. It's a bit tedious for sure, but it’s fun watching the piece come together! Jones, as usual, is all up in my bidniss, I have learned to just work around him.

After 9 hours, multiple mental breakdowns, achy and swollen fingers, and several hundred f-bombs, this is what I ended up with. Hmmm, I am not feeling it. I decided to stop here. This was not the look I was going for, so I started to debate my options. But what to do? Ah ha...reupholster! Yes, I would reupholster them!

Stay tuned for Part 3 of this marathon transformation…

Slipcovers and Slip Ups - Part 1

Please join me on the odyssey that was the transformation of these chairs...

I decided to get going right away on the slipcovers for these wing backs I scooped up for a song a while ago. I know myself and, if I didn't start on these ASAP, they would have sat there for months and months collecting dust. Mr. Mel wouldn't say anything for, like, the first 6 weeks then would make snide remarks about tripping on them, repeatedly asking what my "plan" was for them, offering to drive me to the fabric store to get supplies to finish them. I'd get irritated and demand a Haagen-Dazs bar for his insolence, he'd get it for me and it would taste soooo good...wait...what was I getting at?

Okey, dokey, first things first. I have to share my fatty cat Jonesy lovin' these chairs. As soon as they were in the house he declared them property of Sir Jones. He'd sleep on them, play on them, and I even caught him gnawing on one! The other two cats, while very curious, figured out pretty quickly that these were the domain of Jones, so they steered clear. Ha ha. [Note: Jones is a 20+ lb Maine Coon… steering clear of him is something all of us in our house do alot]

While I know my way around a sewing machine, and have tackled some mighty big projects before, I have to say that this one intimidated me right from the get-go. Thankfully, there are some tremendously talented and *informative* ladies out there in the blogisphere who shared their technique for creating slipcovers for wing backs. This blog , in particular, was really helpful.

After much debate, I decided to used cotton dropcloths as fabric. When priced per yard it was only half the cost of the fabric store! I also picked up a cording at Fabricland to make my own piping.

I did the piping first. Here is a great tutorial on how to create your own custom piping. It really was crazy easy.

I started by creating a pattern of the various pieces of the chair. I didn’t create my own sections, I just followed the existing seams of the chair to make my pattern pieces. I used a roll of craft paper I had kickin’ around, pinned it to the chair and traced the seams onto it using a trusty Crayola crayon (I tried pens and pencils, seems that a crayon was the only thing that wouldn’t pierce the paper). I made sure to mark on each pattern piece the top, front/back of the piece so I knew how to put it together later on.

Once again, Jonesy is a big helper, making himself right at home amongst my pattern pieces.

I made several attempts to make the more complicated pattern pieces with the craft paper, but it just wasn’t working. This was such a tedious process that I was at my wits end. I grabbed the laptop and started surfing...and then I came across the term that would change everything: PIN FITTED SLIPCOVERS! It's pretty much just what it sounds like...no pattern pieces, no muslin, nadda. You pin the pieces of fabric onto the chair wrong side out, hand baste the seams, and then machine sew it together. Bless you Google!

Stay tuned for Part 2 of this project...