Cane Back Office Chair

Today, I am sharing a chair revamp I did for our office. I found this chair at a thrift store for $25.00. It literally sat in our garage for two+ years as I procrastinated my intentions for it. I dropped the ball and didn't take a before picture. (Sorry) Just imagine a brown wooden cane back chair with a dirty white seat cushion.

Spray paint seemed the easiest way to bring this back to life. Regular paint would have been a drippy mess because of the cane back and notched leg/arm detail. I used Rustoleum Auto Primer and Rustoleum Lagoon in a satin finish. I picked this color because I wanted the chair to match my office bench that I refinished back in 2014. If you missed that you can find it HERE. 

After the the primer dried, I sanded lightly with a low grit sandpaper before I applied the paint. I used three, light, even coats of both primer and paint. A local upholstery company made a new cushion cover out of some left over fabric I had laying around. 

In the process of painting.

Here is the finished product. It was hard to capture the true color of this paint. the last picture is more accurate. It is more on the teal side. 

Now I can say that my office is complete! I will be doing an office reveal soon. So keep your eyes pealed for that. Have a fantastic day!

Amber

Hanging By A Wire

We desperately needed a new media center. This little black one just wasn't cutting it. It was too small and having the wires exposed looked tacky to me. It was also in the way of our fireplace key valve. Every time we moved the TV, the cord concealer would rip away from the wall. It was time to hire someone to do a proper wire concealment behind the wall and get something that hid our game console, router and cable box.

I called a recommended Installation Company. 1.5 hours later the wires were in the wall and we were left with a few patches. I really wish I had done this sooner!

After looking online and failing to find a media center with the measurements needed, I decided to design and build my own. Here is what I came up with.

I was inspired by this media stand/sideboard from Target. So I purchased my lumber and got to work. I had Home Depot cut the wood to size and I took it home to stain. 

I started with Miniwax Pre-Stain wood conditioner. After that dried I mixed Miniwax Early American 230 & Dark Walnut 2716 and applied it according to the directions. I let it dry 2 days and then assembled the outside.

Next, I added the hardware I needed to attach the legs. 

Then came the shelves and doors which I failed to take a picture of. (Sorry) My awesome father came to my rescue with his router to get the holes cut out. Once it was complete I was left with this creation...

Shhh don't tell anyone but the door on the right was put on upside down. Haha

The black basket below stores what is left of our DVD collection. The basket on the lower shelf houses X-Box accessories. 

Art books, a round basket full of small LP's, candles and a vintage pineapple live on the first shelf. 

This map of Mexico is special to us because it's where we spent our honeymoon. The yellow box contains the coasters (that never get used). Our favorite photo booth picture and incense holder sit on more art books. 

I found this electric meter lamp at a yard sale. I know what you're thinking "I should have left it at the yard sale!" but for whatever reason I gave it a new Edison bulb and fell in love with it.

Funny back story....Have you heard of Lindsey from the blog called Better After? She has a yearly "ugly lamp" contest that is pretty entertaining. Guess what lamp showed up in her contest? Yep, a similar one to mine. Check it out, its #4.

So there you have it. No more wires exposed and I got the perfect, customized media center with a little bit of "elbow grease" as my dad says. 

BEFORE

AFTER

Table Fit For A Dog

As you probably know, I share my house with two large dogs. They each had their own elevated metal food bowel stand, but Koda's stand was always coming apart while he was eating. The food and water would come crashing down making a huge mess. I got sick of cleaning it up and watching my dog eat in fear with anticipation that the thing would collapse.  

So I decided to make one myself (which always means my dad gets dragged into it). Two stands take up more room and there was no reason to have two water bowels. I wanted one water bowel in the middle and two holes on each end for their food bowels. 

 I purchased four 12" wooded table leg from HD and used some MDF board I had laying around. My father used his router for the bowel openings and even added some finger holes to make getting the bowels in and out easier. I added some 1.5" molding around the sides and sprayed it with Rust-oleum Ultra Cover in Sun Yellow. The last step was applying Famowooda Glaze Coat to make the whole thing waterproof. 

 I love it and my dogs... could probably care less. All they care about is what is in those bowels. I plan on adding a new layer of epoxy every now and again to keep it in good condition. 

Have a great day!
Amber 

Have a seat

Hi guys! Its July 1st and I realized that I haven't posted anything since April. Time flies when you are busy. I was also down and out with a head cold. No fun! But I will tell you what is fun...a bench up-cycle! This guy came home with me after I paid a whopping $5.00 to the thrift store.

Someone had stapled a towel over the seat cushion to cover this rip in the vinyl.

I removed the towel, vinyl and what felt like 10,000 staples. See all the staple holes? (Ignore the white chair cushion below it. That's another chair reupholster project I'm working on)

I recovered the seat cushion with this scallop fabric from Joann's I had laying around. You might recognize it from my logo photo. 

I gave the wood a nice sanding.

After I primed, painted and recovered the seat cushion with my fabric, I had this new addition to my office.

I built a large L shaped desk for my office. (Ill get a post written about that some day) On one side sits our desktop computer, where we use an office chair. The other side of the desk gets used for art/craft/projects. This bench is working out perfect for that spot! Its small enough to tuck under the desk and isn't fighting the chair for floor room. It makes me happy. Who knows, maybe I will become more productive because I will want to sit on it all the time...maybe not. 

Has anyone scored a $5.00 treasure lately? I want to hear about it. Have a wonderful day!

Amber

Closet Desk

Its finally here! The big "reveal day" for the closet desk Ive been working hard on. This project was fun, exciting, frustrating and horrible all at the same time. It was full of surprises, all bad of course. The problems caused the finish date to be stretched over a few weeks even though it ONLY took 29 hours to finish. 
 
I started by having the MDF cut to size at Lowe's. The shelves, desk tops and table leg got a nice even coat of white paint. (Sorry, I don't have the name but I know it is from Valspar) These small foam rollers are always my go-to when it comes to painting. They give a flawless application.

 

 

Next, I pulled down the shelf, cleats, hardware and hanger bar that was in place.

 

 

I used a utility knife to cut the caulking away from the wall.

 

  

I have removed closet cleats before so I was aware of the "nail gun happy" contractor that put this up before me. I came prepared with a tapping hammer and flat head screw driver to pry it away from the wall.

 

 

You can be as careful as you like but there is always some kind of wall damage when you remove these.

  

 This called for some wall patches and plaster to repair the wall.

 Once that was finished I marked my studs and hung the cleats.

 



The wall received a coat of Valspar Silver Dusk. Its a really pretty soft grayish blue.

There is a large rainbow mural on the wall so my client wanted to stay away from child like blues as much as possible. This bedroom is serving as an office/playroom. 

I made sure to cover the cleats so they would blend in better.

 

A wooden spacer had to be made for the table leg due to it being 29" and the desk top 34". This was foreseen, but what I didn't see coming was the difficulty of finding the right size screws needed for the attachment. It took four trips to three stores to get the correct wood/machine threaded screw needed. I also found out that they do not make the size of screw needed to connect the wooden spacer to the desk top. My father had to create what I needed by cutting four screws down to the length needed. Talk about a pain in the bum!

 



The leg was finally attached! There was allot of screaming and there might have been some dancing going on at this point. (Sorry, for the out of focus phone pic. I'm really better than this.)

With everything installed I could start on the molding. I'm not going to lie, I was scared to tackle this part. Miter cuts scare me. They are HARD and very easy to mess up. I had to bring my secret weapon in for this one- my dad. He was able to instruct me with simple directions that made the process easy. It gave me perfect cuts each time.

 

We attached the moulding with wood glue and finishing nails from the nail gun. Then I covered the nail holes with putty and filled in the cracks with caulking. After a light sanding. I gave everything another coat of white paint and finished with two coats of poly.



 

 
The molding covered the ugly wooded spacer nicely. No one will ever know its there.

 

Here is the finished product! I randomly threw on the decor that my client purchased for it so it didn't look so empty. I cant wait to see what it will look like once she gets it decorated and her Apple computer set up. As soon as her new computer comes in and she decides on placement, we are going to cut a hole in the desk top for the wires. She is also on the hunt for a white file cabinet that will tuck under the desk nicely.





If you couldn't guess why the table top is lower on one side, its to accommodate her three beautiful little girls. Now they have a place to do projects while the grown ups can work. The adult desk top is 39" and the child side is 34". (I love how our red cork board pops against this color)

Lets look at more pictures, shall we?

She picked up the shelf brackets at Lowe's. I love the finish and industrial look they add to the space.

 

One last BEFORE:

 



and AFTER:

I plan on taking more pictures when she gets the space finished. I will share them as soon as I get them. I still need to show you the door desk I made for my office. That's coming as soon as I get the molding on.

Has anyone attempted to make their own office furniture or turn an unused closet into a work space? I would love to hear about it! Have a good one!

Stay Humble
Amber