Step One: Re-cover Dining Room Chairs

I debated whether to begin my living room update with curtains or captain's chairs.  I had decided on curtains, then cut and pressed the fabric, when I discovered I had no thread.  So, by default, tonight's labor was focused on re-covering the first of nine dining room chairs.

My plan is to use the two antique captain's chairs I inherited from my grandmother to create a sitting area which will replace one of our ratty "couches" (a broken sectional disguised with pillows, a well-placed toy box, and a throw blanket), so I figured I would start with one of them and get to the standard dining chairs later in the update.

The chair was in good shape; it did have a few scratches and dings in it, but not enough that I have any interest in refinishing it.  My major issue with the chairs is the cushion fabric:  it, like just about everything else in my grandmother's house, was pink and had to go.

 I began by turning the chair upside down and removing the screws -- one in each corner -- that held the seat to the body.  Easy peasy.

 Next, I started pulling out the staples that held this black stuff -- which, I'm sure, has a technical name -- to the wood.   (Essentially, it covers the raw edges of the upper fabric and hides the webbing underneath.)  This would have been easier with a staple remover, but, since I didn't have one, I used the screwdriver to pull up the staples.  Also, while the seat was off, I got some wood oil and gave the entire chair some TLC.  It shined up quite nicely!

 I then removed the staples from the fabric, which were securing the fabric to the underside of the wood frame.  Once I got going, I saw that the frame was already riddled with staple holes.  My guess is that this is at least the third (and maybe fourth) time this chair has been re-done.  Somehow, that made me love it even more!

 Underneath, I found some interesting stuff that I had to Google.  First off, I expected to find a seat made of solid wood with foam on top.  Instead, I found woven webbing topped with burlap, then some kind of upholstery filling or batting on top of that.  Apparently, webbing like that is pretty common and is supposed to make for a more comfortable seat, which certainly fits my purpose.

 The filling was another matter entirely.  Most websites I'd seen recommended using foam core for the seat; my mother has recently re-covered her (similar) chairs and simply used cotton batting.  Whatever this is, it was kind of delicate and crumbly, and looked sketchy.  I still don't have a name for it.  But...it is sturdy, soft, and comfy!  I sniffed it; no odor.  And, ultimately, I decided to re-use it, and the chair is very pleasant to sit on.

 Next, I used the fabric I had removed from the chair as a guide to cut my new fabric.  I LOVE this fabric.  And I really love how it looks modern, but it's not permanent...it doesn't seem like it will be a big deal to re-do these chairs in a few years if I love it no more!  I had read that it wasn't hugely important to get a perfect cut, since the edges of the fabric would be hidden under the edge of the seat, so I didn't really bother much with that, as you can see in the photo.

After cutting, I chose to ScotchGard the fabric.  I went back and forth on this, but ultimately I tested a small piece of fabric and was completely amazed to see droplets of water bead onto it and not soak in.  With small kids in the house, I figured this protection was a must.

After that, the process was shockingly easy.  I stretched the fabric around the wood base with the original filling (pulling it pretty tight) and stapled it in place.  Then I used the same piece of black stuff I had removed to cover the raw edges of the fabric and screwed the seat back into the base.  Boom!  Done!  I know that people do this all the time, but it was my first try, and I am incredibly impressed with the results.  From start to finish, I would say this took less than an hour.

There are imperfections; my seat has bumps, and I am not 100% sure the fabric is aligned perfectly.  Still, I'm pretty happy with what I got, and I assume my second captain's chair will turn out even better. As soon as I get it done, I will post pictures of my little sitting area!

Living and Dining Room Makeovers

We've lived in our house for close to six years now, and the process of making it our own has been a lot slower than for most people.  We started with paint, but even that was spread out over the course of several years.  We have gotten new furniture, but it's always been hand-me-downs that we worked into our decor:  a new couch from my brother, a new table and chairs from my grandmother, some bookcases from my parents.  My mother-in-law made us some valances the first month we lived here, and they haven't been changed since.  I genuinely think I have spent $0 on decorating improvements like pillows, rugs, wall art, and knick knacks.  All our major work and purchases have been to our kids' rooms, changing the decor and furniture as they aged out of cribs.  The master bedroom and bathroom, plus our common areas (kitchen, dining room, and living room), have been largely untouched except for the addition of furniture and the updating of family photos.

This summer, the hubby and I decided that we could spring a little (key word) bit of money for improvements, and that they would aim to spruce up the living room and dining room.  To save money, everything we are doing is upcycling and DIYing.  Our total budget for the project is currently $300, but I have only spent $225 and hope to be able to swing another $100 or so in another few months.  Here are the challenges I had to work with:

1. Our house has an open floor plan; the kitchen, dining room, living room, and eat-in kitchen are all part of a big circle with our pantry as a divider in the middle.  The color scheme for this area -- more than half the house -- has to coordinate without getting old.
2. We can't afford to buy new, or even nice used, furniture.  (I discovered quickly that furniture purchases would take huge chunks out of our budget.)  So we are re-using and re-styling as much as possible.  I'm starting with the living room.  We currently have, to the naked eye, two couches and a love seat.  One couch used to be white before my kids got ahold of it; it's sort of a variegated cream color now.  The other "couch" and "love seat" are actually two pieces of a broken sectional that we disguise with cushions.  One part has a broken back, so it needs to sit against a wall; the other has a sunken area that we stuff with homemade cushions. 
3. The open floor plan means lots of windows...four standard-sized ones in the living room and one triple-wide one in the kitchen.  All our panels have to coordinate, and purchasing that many panels at $10-$30 a pop wasn't practical for the budget either...so, again, I'm going to have to aim for homemade.

Here are some photos of the living room as it currently stands:

My master plan for improvements is multi-step:

1. Ditch the brown "couches" (the broken sectional).  [Cost:  $0]
2. Steam clean and fabric protect the white couch, just to spruce it up. [Cost:  $11 for the ScotchGard and cleaning fluid]
3. Bring two captain's chairs from the dining room into the living room to replace one couch; re-cover them with a nice fabric, and set up a little sitting area with a small round table I currently have in the bedroom. [Cost:  $24 for fabric from Hobby Lobby]
4. Get an old wingback chair out of storage from my grandmother; buy a nice slipcover, and use it to replace the "love seat" under the window.  (Side note:  the chair is currently pink.  I checked, and it will cost $300-$400, plus fabric, to re-upholster it.  It's a nice chair, but that's not an option for right now.) Move the ottoman/toy box under the window for extra seating/table, and put a cute half-priced tray on top for magazines. [Cost:  $75]
5. Move the coffee table in front of the white couch to open up the walkway to the back door. (On another side note, we hope to also spend some time -- later -- improving our porch and back yard to make it more appealing.)  [Cost:  $0]
6. Ditch the old, beat-up, stained, faded throw pillows, blankets, and floor pillows, and make new ones.  [Cost:  $20 for fabric]
7. Ditch the dated brown valances and make floor-length curtains out of neutral canvas duck; stamp a lattice pattern in burnt orange along the bottom (for interest, but not too overwhelming, since I'll have eight panels in the room).  [Cost:  $150 for fabric, stencils, paint, and curtain rods]

I've already bought the bulk of my supplies.  I need a little more curtain fabric, curtain rods, and the slip cover, but I have enough to get started.  I think the project will realistically take several weeks, since I'll mostly be working at night after the kids are in bed and if there's nothing else on my plate.  But hopefully, there will be a huge improvement, and once the living room projects are done, I can move on to the dining room!

argh!

And then we unpacked the sewing machine ... the movers broke it. I put the tension all the way at zero to get it to do anything at all, and it won't backstitch. Guess who's getting a new sewing machine! Booyah! I still want to try to fix the current one, though - two sewing machines would be a good thing here, so Adam and I can both work on projects at the same time.

we are here we are here!

We are in our house!

We have approximately 2500 square feet. Most of the living space is on the upper floor - the living room, kitchen, and all the bedrooms and bathrooms. The master bedroom has its own bathroom - hooray! That seems kind of rare here in Connecticut because of all the old houses. This house was built I think in 1967 and is "newer," since a lot of homes were built about 100 years ago and a few even date back to the 1700s. The basement is really well-lit with a ton of windows so it doesn't feel like you're in a dungeon. The family room/play room/rec (wreck) room is downstairs, where ALL the toys reside! No more toys in my living room - hallelujah! Or in the bedrooms. There's also a very large storage room that includes the laundry area, and the garage is downstairs as well.

Our yard is huge - we have 3/4 of an acre. The side and the back property line are all trees - I stopped counting them when I hit 40 because I couldn't tell if I'd counted some of them already or not. Unfortunately, the groundcover growth under the trees gets really tall really fast and you can't play in it because of the bugs (ticks and slugs and tons of other things I've never seen). We're going to try to clear a lot of it out so we can string up the hammocks. There are bushes all around the house - azaleas, hydrangeas, rhododendrons, and some other kinds that I don't know.

We're on a corner in a really friendly neighborhood. Before we even moved in, we took a walk on a Sunday afternoon to check things out and some of the neighbors (who had already heard about us from the previous owners) came outside to meet us. We ended up talking with them for over an hour. They have a daughter who is between our oldest 2 girls, and they're already great friends. RG says that she is "fond of" MB. Too funny! And a number of other neighbors have come over to introduce themselves when they saw us outside.

We closed on Friday June 28 but continued to stay in our temporary place until Tuesday (July 2) when the moving company brought our belongings out of storage. So that was the date we actually moved into the house. We've of course been unpacking ever since and still have a long way to go. The thing that keeps going through my head is, "I can't believe we crammed all this stuff into 1000 square feet."

Don't worry. Pictures are coming. I have to do all the "before" shots for when I really start working on this place!

a whole new level

Operation Domestic Goddess will be going to a new level on July 1. All this time, I've been in rented apartments, and now we're BUYING A HOUSE!!!! Closing is currently scheduled for June 27 - we'll be in Connecticut for about a month before that, but we're waiting for the family currently living in the house to have their kids finish the school year. Anyway, I've never been able to do anything with the structure itself, not even paint the walls. Now I can do ANYTHING I WANT! (And can afford. But we won't talk about that right now.)

Rule 1 for our new house: We are not college students anymore with a college student budget. We can buy furniture much nicer than cheapo junk at Walmart, or even Ikea. And heck - we're not even planning to buy everything. Adam wants to build pretty much anything made of wood, or get used items that we can fix up. The only things we plan to buy (new. No used.) are upholstery/fabric things like couches, chairs, and mattresses. No more pressboard bookcases! He has informed me that if I want bookcases and a butcher-block dining room table and other fun things, he first needs his shop set up in the garage, which means he'll get to spend a bunch of money on saws. Yeah yeah. Just build some darn bookcases because I'm not unpacking the books until they're done!

Rule 2: I want color. I am SO bored with the plain neutral-colored walls that we've been stuck with in all of our apartments, not allowed to paint. If we do have any white, it's going to be WHITE. No off-white eggshell or whatever it's called. It just looks dingy. I've been going through kid design ideas on houzz.com (basically pinterest for house design - good times!) and what strikes me in all the pictures is the COLOR. Really saturated hues. They're gorgeous. The house we're getting is currently painted all the same safe neutral boredom I've been living with for forever. I am so ready to shake things up, it's not even funny.

Rule 3: I need to keep a lid on all the accessorizing that's possible out there, but here is where my chronic indecision will serve me well. There's SO much cool stuff out there, and I'm not a big spender, that I never get around to doing anything about anything. I also have developed a pretty minimalist attitude about STUFF in general. I don't want more junk to have to clean and keep organized. I have enough already. But mainly - lamps and light fixtures, clocks, and curtains on the windows. Those are a must.

I'm still thinking this through, so I'll be back with more thoughts another day. But this is where we're starting.

slight change of plans

The baby is finally here - hooray! 

And in an interesting twist, the day she was born was also the day Adam got a phone call from a job in Hartford, Connecticut that he interviewed for last fall ... was he still interested in the position? Most definitely! We don't have a firm moving date yet - paperwork is still going back and forth. But we figure it will probably be in May. 

So the Make My House Pretty project is, for the next couple of months, Make My House Packed. Then I'll go back to pretty stuff. In the meantime, I do have a bunch of clothes to make for the girls, starting with Easter dresses. SM needs new play dresses and skirts because everything she currently has is getting too short.

February pretties

Continuing the count to 52 weeks of pretty things in and around my house ... to get every week covered so far, I should be at 9. Given that I missed 2 weeks in January and have been in phase 1 of labor (don't ever call it "false" labor because there's nothing fake about it) for most of February, I'm kind of surprised that I got much of anything done this month. But I did! Go me! And I have a couple more projects started that aren't done yet, even!

Project 4: Adam and I rearranged the pictures and everything on the walls all over the house. We took some pictures down awhile back because we shifted some furniture and never got around to putting them back up. That's done now including with updated photos (that are still almost a year old, which tells you how old the other pictures were).

Project 5: I make a new flannel swaddling blanket for each of my babies, and it's what they come home from the hospital in. Baby JK was showing signs of an early arrival (and all labor indicators flat-lined this week, so she's still not here) so I got going on her blanket. I had it halfway done when JE took a chunk out of the side with the scissors (my mom refers to her as a "busy" 2-year-old - yeeeeah, that's a good word for it.) Fortunately, it was the side and not out of the middle. Unfortunately, it was a side that was already done. So I had to trim that edge down to get rid of the cut and do it again. Done, packed in the hospital bag, and scissors put away.

Project 6: When clearing out some drawers to use for the new baby's clothes, I put down scrapbook paper as a drawer liner. I just taped it instead of using glue so I can switch it out when I get my drawers back. Cutsey pink is great for a baby but I prefer something different for myself.

Project 7: Miniature corkboards on the "school wall" in our entry for the girls to hang up their art. I saw this on a homeschool blog but didn't bookmark it. Oops. Sorry, person who should get credit but won't. You get random picture frames, take out the picture and glass, sand and paint them in whatever colors you want, and put corkboard in them. The original link used really bright colors, which I liked. I've kinda/sorta decided that our colors for homeschooling are green and yellow, so those were the 2 colors I used, and I put them up with a pink board that SM built at a Home Depot kids workshop. I also put one in my sewing corner (painted to match my spool board) to display my collectors pins that I used to get while traveling and have been sitting in a box for forever. I gave the girls my Disney pins for their boards and some others from places they've been. I kept my Australia pins and some that have more sentimental value to me.

Project 8: I wanted some kind of sewing hand-work to do while sitting in the hospital for 2 days, so enter this month's Christmas project - fabric gift tags. I used this site to look up embroidery stitches, and still seem to have kind of come up with my own version of a chain stitch. Go figure. This is not done at all - I'm making about a dozen of them, and have the stitching done on 4. It's a decent start, considering everything that's been happening lately. I'll finish all the stitching and then do all the backings at the same time.

I also cut out skirts to make for the girls but haven't sewn them together yet. My March Christmas project will be from the scraps of the corkboard after cutting it down to fit the 8x10 frames. The March priority is definitely Easter dresses for the girls, since Easter is on the 31st.

my sewing box

This was my Christmas present from Adam:

The whole sewing box, which doubles as my sewing table. Yeah, I have to sit sideways to use the foot pedal, but whatever. The plan is for Adam to eventually build me an actual table for the sewing machine itself, and the top of the box will be used for cutting, laying things out, etc. We don't have the space for it right now - maybe my next Christmas present? The spool board above the box to the right was my Christmas present last year. This is my little sewing corner in our bedroom.

Inside the box, there are two shallow shelf/boxes. One is for projects in the works, and the other is divided out for all my little bits and pieces - scissors, tape measures, buttons, my bobbin box, elastic, embroidery floss, bias tape, etc ... I've already learned - the hard way - that scissors need to be kept IN the box at all times, unless they are actually being used.

The shallow boxes lift out and underneath is all my fabric - hooray!

The box isn't stained yet - it's still just the raw wood. We're waiting on staining until next month when my mom is here to help with the new baby, and can help keep kiddos out of the way. We also need the weather to break to have the box sit outside for a couple of days for the stain to dry. I have a couple of ideas for the inside of the box that are a little more funky - I'm debating how to paint the shallow boxes, maybe some bright colors that wouldn't really go well with anything else in the bedroom. And I think it would be cool to paint some kind of "frame" around the edge of the lid, and then mod-podge swatches of my favorite fabrics so I can keep them as a sort of sewing scrapbook.

We've talked about me having a whole sewing room with lots of fabric piled here and there on shelves, but really, that's not for me. Sure, it sounds cool to have an entire fabric shop in my house but I don't think I'll ever get to that level of sewing. It's perfect that I have this big box with my fabric and notions and tools in it, which I will use to make clothes for my girls and home decor items and eventually some full-sized quilts. When I finish with the fabric I have, I'll get more for my next round of projects. Add a little table for the machine and a serger (which is also down the road a bit more), and I'm set.

January "pretty projects"

I'd like to think I can work on sewing and crafts every single day for a month, and maybe I'll be able to later this year or at another phase of life. Right now, my daughters are not particularly cooperative with letting me work on things during the day so I have to sew late at night. Even that's a hit and miss because I have punk children who refuse to go to sleep until darn near midnight sometimes. So I'm going with doing something pretty for my house and life every week for this year. Hopefully I can finish something every week, but as long as I at least work on it, I'll be satisfied. So here's what happened in January.

Project 1: hook racks for behind the girls' bedroom door. They were scrap pieces of wood left from making their bunkbed 2 years ago. I painted them and got the little hooks at Walmart. I made others here for their coats, which are under the stairs. Mindy beat me for the first project done for the year because even though I had them painted, it took me awhile longer to get to the store for the hooks, and get them actually onto the wall. This is just one of them, but there are three.

Project 2: I went through ALL of the children's books and reorganized the whole bunch. There are hundreds. An entire box went to the recycle bin because it was random loose pages, torn up books, children's magazines that had been pulled all apart ... it was a mess. It's still a mess because the girls are constantly pulling books out and not putting them away, but at least it's less of a mess. All the trash has been cleared out - that alone made a big difference. It wasn't making something - it was organizing stuff we already have. But occasional organizing projects are necessary to keeping my house livable at all, if not more pretty.

Project 3: I started my quilting class and made a scallop banner thing to hang up over a window or doorway or something - this is also my January project for the 12 Months of Christmas because I made it out of Christmas fabric.

Weeks 4 and 5: Nada - we were out of town for a week for my mother-in-law's funeral, and the next week was spent unpacking and putting the house back together. Why does it take so long to get cleaned up from a trip? It was just unpacking suitcases, for pity's sake. Sheesh. Anyway, I need to rewind back to the of my quilting class (it's all online and self-paced so I can do that - hooray! because it's, um, over now) and I want to get back on track with that at least a little bit. It's a 5-week class with 3 projects per week - it's not expected that you do everything. You can choose. I'd like to at least try everything since I paid for all the lessons and patterns but it's going to take me the better part of the year rather than just a month. Some of the projects are pretty substantial and require quite a bit of time (making more than one full-sized quilt, if I'm reading it right), and I don't have days at a time to devote to sewing. I have a few minutes here and there.

And for my weekly project deal ... I will make up these 2 weeks of missed projects! I will! Maybe not in February because of being at the very end of the pregnancy, but I'll figure it out eventually.

Also - going through everything from someone's life was an major eye-opener on what to save and what not to save. For example, photos. If Nancy wasn't actually in a photo, we chucked it. We had no idea who these people were, and the photos had been sitting in a box for literally decades. I have no interest in hauling things like that around when we move, or leaving it to my children and grandchildren to say after I die, "Who is this person, and why did Mom have a photo of them?" If there's a reason for me to have someone's photo, I'm sure I can find something that has me in the shot with them, and I need to journal/ID everything now (before I forget myself) of why this person is/was significant to me. I did a big photo album sort and purge 2 years ago when my parents brought me all the stuff I'd had stashed in their storage room for 7 years, but I feel another one coming on.

simple storage

Not being able to breastfeed means having a bajillion formula containers around the house.  They are perfect for storage, so I don't complain too much.  Tape a strip of paper around them and they are even decent looking.  I've used wrapping paper and scrapbook paper and both work great with a little bit of double-sided tape.  What can go inside of these things is absolutely endless - toys, food, sewing bits, etc.  I'm using one for my headbands and hair things. 

Headbands on the outside, everything else (ribbons, bows, flowers, clips, etc.) on the inside.  While I was organizing my hair stuff, I took a small canning jar and put all my ponytail holders around it (wouldn't work with little ones), and all my bobby pins inside of it.  Much happier with this than anything before.