Office Chair redo

We live in a college town and one of the great things about that is you can always find free furniture on every corner. This chair I found on our front porch when the apartment upstairs was being renovated and I saved it from the trash planning to fix it up and use it at my sewing table.

To refurnish your own chair you will first want to detach the cushions in order to recover. Since my chair was made out of a slick vinyl we decided to also remove the old material before adding the new home decor weight material I bought at JoAnns for less than $5. Usually I would just recover the cushions right on top of the old material.

Now, using a staple gun attach your new pretty material to one side and then the other.

Now do a corner by folding down your material on top of each other until you get a nice crease. After finishing your first corner, you will then staple down the loose side of material coming out from the finished corner. Continue to finish off the other corners and additional loose side.

Trim off excess material and at this point we reattached a square, screen-like material that came off the original chair. You could leave yours open or add a square of fabric to make it more professional looking.

The top cushion of our chair was nontraditional and made completely from metal. So no chance of stapling fabric into place. We copied the existing system and poked our material through these metal grippers and then pushed the grippers down flat all the way around.

The bottom edge I hotglued into place and then cut out a piece of material to cover the exposed back which I simply ironed under and hotglued down.

Now check your work and get ready to spray paint.

I used a shiny cherry red from Walmart for $3.47 and covered the entire metal frame.

Once dry, all that is left is to screw the cushions into place and pat yourself on the back. A cute "new" chair for less than $10.

And my favorite part? This little detail I didn't even originally realize was back here. It is a plaque indicating that this chair used to live in the library at the local university.

Magazine Christmas Tree

I had another craft night at my church and this time we made a Christmas decoration. Martha Stewart has a video tutorial of how to do this and I love how instead of spray paint, she covered hers with spray adhesive and glitter.

I made this miniature magazine tree out of an old National Geographic magazine and it is done simply by folding in every single page and then spray painting it if you want.

Martha Stewart's version is a little more complicated than what we came up with at craft night. Here's how we switched it up a bit:

 First, fold your page all the way into the center fold of the magazine.

 Do this a second time.

Then either fold the remaining flap up so that the bottom is now flat or fold it under so it is tucked in nice and tightly.

I just folded all of mine up and I didn't have any problems with it looking too sloppy.

Also I found that it makes a great picture/card holder and I am thinking it would be cute with a red pom pom on top... oh the possibilities!

for my Bathroom

My sister has a really cool old tool box on the back of her toilet to hold extra rolls. My solution isn't quite as nifty, but it gets the job done.

I started with this wicker basket I thrifted and added some shiny blue spray paint I bought from Walmart for about a dollar.

And now my toilet paper rolls have a proper home :)

Now I am thinking I need something pretty for the walls.

My Living Room Wall(s)

Another project using this flat black spray paint I like so much. I have collected quite a few frames from second-hand sources and a couple I bought full-priced. The frames that weren't already black, I painted. I even painted some of the paper boarders that came with some of the frames.

I am falling in love with spray paint. It works up a project so quickly.

I stained my grass, but it disappeared surprisingly quickly. Next time I would use towels or a sheet or something because the grass and leaves got in my way a little and was a bit annoying.

I love this huge wall of pictures. Our ceilings are so tall which created this huge blank wall. I was able to fill it up pretty nicely with all of these frames.

btw, when printing out the pictures, I found that Costco by far was the cheapest especially for my larger, poster-sized prints. And they printed in about an hour at no extra cost.

Candle Stick Holders

 I love candles. Every time I visit my local secondhand store I always check for some cool candlestick holders. They sell them for about 75 cents each. I finally decided to do something with my little stash.

 I started with a can of flat black spray paint and an old towel.

Sprayed a few layers and that was it! Some of the holders were wood and some were ceramic. Both did really well with the spray paint.

 Beauty for my table.

That same day I happened to go back to that secondhand store and I scored one more holder. So now I have an even six.

I think it would be cool to get a bunch more and do some of them in a shiny black. I am going to need a bigger dinner table if I get anymore though.

My Kitchen Wall

I have this huge, ugly wall opposite my long, skinny kitchen. We live in an old house which was turned into a four-plex apartment building. Needless to say our kitchen was not meant to be a kitchen. It was meant to be a hallway. So half of the hallway became a kitchen and half became a huge, ugly space that needed some attention. Here is my quick and (almost) free solution. A recipe wall...

And a daily planning wall. The "dry-erase board" was the only thing that actually cost anything. I bought a couple of dry-erase markers and I had to buy one piece of scrapbooking paper, but that was it!

The frames I got free from a friend who moved away and I used black construction paper to border each of the recipes. By the way, the recipes I chose to include were: chocolate chip cookies, chicken tortilla soup, peach cobbler, sweet cornbread, and chicken tetrazzini. All family favorites.