Dining room table

The table has now been out of our house for nearly 2 weeks. Very frustrating. I just had to sand and paint it now didn't I. What a silly thing to do. We're now paying for my haste in starting the table when the weather was really not ready for painting. Luckily David has been out there today masking off the table top from the legs and then painting the table. He's managed two coats so far. I've only taken photos after the first coat, but it looks good so far. And the best thing is when its finally finished it will be all ours and the change of table will have cost us next to nothing.

A little present

I decided that since my maternity leave is coming to an end I have to finish a ton of jobs I've wanted to do over the last year. But let's face it who has time to do anything with a new baby!!
So since I'm now down to 10 days until I'm due back at school these projects are calling my name. Since its school holidays and the kids are able to entertain Hamish for a little while I thought I would start sanding our dining room table.
I got under the house and found the electric sander, some sanding paper and of course the extension cord and then needed to take the legs off the enormously heavy table so that we could get it outside. Josh was a wonderful help with that. It's so nice having another man in the house. Not quite as strong as Dave yet but stronger than me. Yay.
With the table top on top of a trestle table outside I started sanding. The stupid table kept moving as I sanded so I had to sand around the edges. I wonder if I'm the only one who gets a sore hand while sanding with the vibrating sander in their hand. AND it was taking forever.
I called Dave of course and asked him to bring some courser sand paper home. He is only around the corner from Bunnings at his new office. He dropped everything to get his crazy wife the sand paper she needed to get the job done. Tomorrow I'll be sanding and sanding and then laquering or staining the top and painting the legs. I might even do the coffee table. We'll see how keen I am after tomorrow though.
Poor hubby only got home from work at 8 pm. A very long day. But he came home with a present for little me. My own little sander. Thankyou honey. You're the best.
These are some inspiration photos I took from Freedom Furniture a little French furniture store. I'm not sure what the colour of the wood is yet under the old stain. When the stain has been sanded then I'll decide on what colour to go with.

Three Balmain finds

Josh's orthodontist is in Balmain and so quite regularly we go visiting there to throw away our money on his teeth. Only joking! I had braces and think that straight teeth are important and would do anything to find the money to pay for them. Anyway, while I'm there I usually go window shopping. I love looking into the shop windows and imagining what other delightful things they've got lurking out of view. Well just last week I finally go to go and have a very short look. I had Josh wait in the car with Isabella and Hamish while they were finishing off ice-creams (bribery is a wonderful thing) and no Hamish didn't eat ice-cream, and I got to go and have a little look at the stuff inside. I'm so totally in love with the stores. ALL of them are on-line!! Yay!! So I got to show Dave and he thinks that they're great little stores too. Here's a look at some of their stuff...
Inside Traders
They are a little shop in Darling St. that have a few hand-made things like below, but mostly they have fantastic furniture finds! Go to the link above and check them out.

This is only an example as I couldn't get a photo from their site. But you get the picture. Cute stuff!

Quintessential duck egg blue
I'm in LOVE!! This shop is full on industrial finds and I could almost buy everything there. PLUS Dave likes the stuff too. Bonus!

Hope this is okay, but this is from their shop. They have fantastic stuff!!

no Chintz
This is a shop for sewers only. But if you love fabric you will love this store. They have examples of things that you can make with their beautiful fabrics. I wanted to touch everything in this store. Ahh Just in heaven.

Beautiful material range. You have to check out the store if you can sew!

Two before and afters

Some recently completed pieces of furniture.
And an almost after. I have to get a key plate to cover the whole in the door and some white paint needs to be painted blue.
And my other beautiful cupboard.
And the after.

Finished freebie!

I found a couple of ugly chairs on the side of the road just before council pick up which meant they were free!! My lovely husband even drove around the block to pick them up. He called me to find out if I wanted all of them. I said no just the two best. So he rummaged through the pile of chairs like a homeless man and brought me two back. What an absolute sweet-heart. It's taken a few months to actually sand them, paint them, choose the fabric, cut the pattern, find a store to cut a new cushion etc etc. This is in between caring for a new baby. Mad? Totally!! Here are the befores, firings and after.

Sneak peak of furniture

I'm almost finished some of my office/craft room freebies. I thought you might like to see a sneak peak.
My chair as you can see is black and my one cupboard is black and the other one is blue. What colour should I do my desk? I'm not sure if I go blue, black, white or try and strip it back to wood? Also the blue on the material is dark and the blue paint is light and kind of greyish. So many decisions and so many projects to do before Christmas!

Pavement find

I love council pick up time when everyone puts their junk on the side of the road to be thrown away. It's like Christmas time!! Well last time I was able to get my very patient husband to go and pick up some chairs I had seen on the side of the road that I wanted to recover. They're closer to being finished today. I took the staples out of one of the seats and as I type my wonderful husband is taking the staples out of the other one. It took me a lot of muscle to do one seat and I am very grateful that he's doing the second one. Here's a peek at the seat frame I did before I took off the webbing. It was an awful job!

Dining room change

I've been thinking of painting our dining room table for a while and luckily Dave's now come around to the idea. I found this table at Freedom with the exact same shape as ours. Now I just need to find some time to actually do it. I'm still finishing some other furniture make-overs so it will have to wait a little longer.

Recovering Dining Room Chairs

I finally got to the store to buy some more of the material I needed to do the recover of my dining room chairs. My baby brain had meant that when I first brought the fabric I forgot that our chairs actually have backs to them! I didn't want to start the recover of them until I could buy the same material. Well that was accomplished on Tuesday after my physio class and lunch with my mum and sister.

So here goes. I've done a little tutorial with photos incase you happen to have the exact same dining room chairs in your house! I missed a few photos in the middle, but it was too hard to insert them after I had rearranged the photos for the umpteenth time. So when you use the backing as a pattern you need to cut out two for each chair back so that you can of course sew them together. When sewing the chair backs use the yellow chalk as a guide for the edge and sew inside this. You need to sew about 1.5cm inside this line. Before turning the right way round check that it fits by sliding onto your plastic wrapped back. If it doesn't fit properly then sew it smaller checking as you go until you happy. Then cut off the excess, and use this as a pattern for the rest of the backs. The plastic that is around the chair back is just glad wrap. It will make it much easier to slide the tightly sewed backing onto the foam covered back. The rest of the photos are self explanatory. It took about 4 hours to do three chairs while taking photos and entertaining a 3 month old baby. If you had a helper you could probably have done all six chairs in 4 hours!

Before

Take the chair apart.

Lift the staples up.

Use pliers to take the staples out.

Pick the seam to take off cover on the back of the chair.

This is what the chalk mark looks like before cutting out backs to chairs.

Trace this one onto all bits of fabric for backing.

Staple the one side down.

Unpick stitches where the metal prong needs to come through.

Fold other side over and staple.

The completed back.

Take out all staples.

Use the chair cover as a pattern.

Staple new cover on stretching taut as you go.

Staple gauze cover back onto chair to hide mistakes.

Screw it all back together.

The finished product!

After mothers group

Isabella had some lovely friends over to play today from my mothers group. A really nice bunch of women and really it's more about the adults than the kids I think. We all had a lovely play day and so did the kids.
I was lucky enough to have Sammy make some weetbix slice this morning before she went to school. What wonderful children I have! I couldn't have done everything I needed to do without her help. I managed to have breakfast and a shower AND feed Hamish. It's really like having a much needed extra pair of hands now that she's older.
The friends came and played monsters and also with the playdoh I made last week. There is now more grey brown playdoh after there visit, but isn't that the point of playing! Mixing all the colours together makes browny grey every single time funnily enough. I'll just make some new playdoh when we run out of the different colours.
Once her friends left we had a "face plate" lunch and then Isabella did some craft. In between her beautiful creations she decided to wash her bike. Who knew it was dirty!! Then back to craft again.
While she was washing I washed down the table top of our outdoor setting. It was so nice to be able to sit outside in the warmth today. It didn't feel like winter at all. It did remind me that we need to go and pick up the outside umbrella from my sister. It almost started getting too hot outside. Well never for me, the reptile that I am who never seems warm enough.

The dining chairs

Our dining room chairs.

This is as far as we've got with the chairs. Would you believe it but after all this time of owning these chairs I forgot that they needed material for the backs of the chairs. I've realized that I don't actually have enough material to finish them. Darn it! I'll have to go and get some more of the same material if they have any or something that will match. And why do I now have no chairs to sit on. Well poor Miss Isabella is really not well her eyes are really sore and she has a high temperature. It could be conjunctivitis, slap cheek or some other nasty bug. I have my fingers crossed that Hamish doesn't catch anything nasty. He's just too little to get sick.

Recovering dining chairs

A lovely grey for our chairs.

We've had too much red in our house for some time and so I'm trying slowly to tone it down. That meant that our red dining chairs needed a little face lift. We both went and chose the material at Spotlight and decided on a dark grey. We need to think of the kids and what will hide the dirt well - so something dark will work. I've recovered the chairs 3 times now and they've gone from light to dark. It cost $44 for the material which is not too bad.  I'll post before and after pics soon. Here is the material we chose.