A Chair Named Molly

Meet Molly

Hi Molly :o)

Isn't Molly pretty?  She came from the ReStore.  I'm not sure how she got separated from her set, but I'm a little glad she did.  She was my last addition.  I was waiting for a chair with that beautiful curve on top and was SO excited when I walked in and spotted her!

Molly, like Lucy, started out glowing in the dark.

yikes!  Are you blind yet?!

But ended up looking like this...

I didn't do too much special to Molly, I will probably make her a cushion in the future.  But for now, I like her just as she is :) 

The curve at the top turned out beautiful once it was a little distressed.

All these brush marks give her so much character. I used to hate brush lines and I did everything I could to avoid them.  I still do in some cases, but when I want something to have character and look like it's got a life behind it.... brush lines are the ticket :o)

See my blurry pugger in the back?  I haven't introduced you to my pups yet.  I have two of 'em :o)

Where did the name Molly come from you ask?  Well I'm so glad you did!  Molly is my grandmother who is in town visiting.  She was over last night and absolutely fell in love with this chair. I already named a daughter after her, and now I will name a chair after her :o)  She deserves 2 things.

In a way, this chair is a lot like her as well.  It's beautiful, strong, and special, which are 3 of the things I have always admired my grandmother for.  She has been through so many things in her life that I can't imagine surviving through.  I respect her so much for remaining so strong when she had to.  This is by far the strongest chair in my new set (which I have almost finished introducing you to!).  I have some pretty amazing women ahead of me to look up to!  I found out yesterday that my grandmother and my great grandmother were really into refinishing furniture... it's funny what you find out about yourself when you take the time to listen.

Tomorrow is the final day of chair week, I will be introducing you to Mr. Chair.  Then this weird story-telling-introducing-you-to-inanimate-objects-with-names fiasco will be over.  

I'm excited to be starting my fall decorating this year and here is a sneak peak of my first project

Happy Fall!

Here are the introductions to my other chairs in case you missed them...

Lucy

Sister Chairs

Ellen

Check out the whole dining room set here!

My favorite Chair

Let me preface this post by saying this: my mom has a great sense of humor, she will in no way be offended by anything written below, and she knows I love her :)  This will make her day... promise!

My favorite chair carries the name Ellen.

This is my favorite chair because it holds a lot of memories for me.  This is the only chair that was in my family growing up.  It used to be a part of a massive dining room set that held lots of people for lots of different occasions.  I remember lots of Thanksgivings, Birthdays, Christmas's(I can never remember where the apostrophe goes in situations like this... and my last name ends in an s :) , and  Easter's gathered around in these chairs.  But this was the only one left and was in pretty bad shape.  The seat had fallen out  , and I can't remember if someone was in it when it happened or not!

Why did I choose to name it Ellen?  Well that's my mom's name.  Her real name.  For one, all of the memories around that table involved my mom.  At birthdays, she brought in the birthday cake. At Thanksgiving, she brought in the Turkey (and FYI, most of the time my birthday cake and the turkey came in at the same gathering cause I'm a Turkey Baby!)   At Christmas, she brought in the ham.  They are special memories, so why wouldn't I name a chair after her?!

Now to the more obvious reasons.  This chair is an antique, as is my mom.

This chair is beautiful, as is my mom.

This chair has hip replacements, just like my mom.

This chair has an old bike on it, probably like my mom used to ride... lol, just kidding... she isn't that antique!  

This chair carries the number 119605 which are my kiddos birthdays.  I know they mean the world to her.

And last but not least, it was once part of a very uniform, complete antique set that was beautiful from the outside.  That set has now been pieced out across the family, split apart.  But this chair is now becoming a part of something more beautiful and pieced together from sets all over.  This is a lot like our family.  We have broken apart and spread out, but we have added in so many more to our family over the years.  It may be a little more eclectic, but it is equally as beautiful. 

But the dining room set you will have to wait to see :)

If you missed the first 3 chairs of this set
Sister Chairs
A Chair Named Lucy

Linking Up To:

Perfectly Imperfect
Home Sweet Butterfly

Check out the completed dining room set here!

Sister Chairs

Let me paint a story of what happens EVERY TIME we sit down to eat a meal.  Breakfast. Lunch. Dinner. Snack.

I tell the girls that the food is ready and Boog (3) and Bear (2) come running.  Bear always runs directly to Boog's chair and climbs up looking all ready to eat.  Boog always looks at Bear and says, "No, your spot is over there!"  Bear climbs down and then goes to her chair and sits.  As soon as I set the food on the table, Bear is all over the place- moving, standing, turning. That's when I always say, "Your bottom goes here."

Now onto the chairs...

Sister Number 1

Sister Number 2 is the one between sister number 1 and Lucy... not sure where the before picture is :)

Sister Number 1 I got from a yard sale, she is absolutely perfect.  Now I'm usually a painter, I think it can make things that much more beautiful.  But for some reason, I just couldn't lay a brush to this chair.  Her color is amazing and the wear and tear on her couldn't be matched, so she didn't get painted.  You can tell she has a story, I just don't know it :)

Her hand-carved rose.

Sister Number 2 was the only chair left from our dining set that wasn't chippy and falling apart, so I chose to keep her a part of the new set.  Here is how she turned out...

Aren't they cute together?

And now for the whole point of the story above....

Boog's Chair

Bear's Chair

I will still probably hear the same conversation at every meal, but at least these make me laugh :)

Check out the completed dining room set here!

Partying Here!

A Series of Unfortunate Events

Due to the fact that someone may have accidentally overlooked the fact that we are out of ink in our printer.  And the fact that I need ink to finish these blasted chairs, chair week will hold off until tomorrow.  But tomorrow will be double good, promise!  I will leave you with a small preview of a table that is coming together beautifully!

OMG, I can't wait to show you this!  (yeah I've been known to spout off in text lingo every now and then, wut up?!?)

That's all :)

A Chair Named Lucy

Yesterday I shared with you that this would be chair week!  I will share a different chair every day (and I mean different!) ending with a reveal of the set with my newly refinished dining room table!

These chairs have gotten the best of me the last few weeks.  I have been excited, stumped, discouraged, annoyed, and even frustrated with them all.  But they have all taught me that design is a process.  Things change, evolve into the end product.  There are lots of layers to making something look aged.   In the end, I am happy with the result (but I really don't know how I got here!)

I am kicking off chair week with Lucy.  Lucy came from a garage sale where she was sadly sitting at the end of the driveway. I liked her shape and she was super-solid (which I find an attractive quality in a dining room chair :) 

I used the same process that I told you about in this post and she was glowing.  I mean, if-I-turned-the-sun-off-and-the-whole-world-was-dark-I-could-still-see-this-chair GLOWING.  

Enter stage left - the feeling of discouragement.

I sat on the color of the chair for a few days (ha!) and eventually decided it was NOT what I wanted, but it was a good base to what I did want.  I got out my brush and glazed her a bit with some black, and then glazed her a bit with some white.

TIP:  I have seen a bajillion people do posts about glazing and, somehow. when I went to the store to buy some... I didn't know what or how to buy it.  I went in asking for black glaze and twice, TWICE, they said they didn't have that and sent me away.  The third time I went in I told them that there are a million bloggers using black glaze so don't tell me you don't have any.  The man said, "Oh, all you have to do is buy the glaze and then mix whatever paint color you want at 1 part paint to 4 parts glaze."  Seriously?!  Not happy with the first 2 places I tried.  So if you go, here is what you are looking for (brand doesn't really matter and the small size will last you a long time!)

Then just get a little tester color of black or white (or any color) and mix it 1 part paint to 4 parts glaze.  I plan on doing a tutorial on glazing soon, but just in case you want to buy some sooner... I'll save you the trouble of expecting the people that work in the paint department to know what they are talking about :)

TURN OFF RANT NOW....

After a few hours of slapping on glaze and wiping it off a little more glaze....  

May I introduce you to Lucy, who turned out exactly how I wanted her to

Remember the vintage bird cage print I did with freezer paper?  Lucy was the proud recipient.

And while it appears crooked, I swear it's not :)

Her seat is a little plain, but trust me, when seated next to the dining room table I am refinishing... she is going to need to be a little toned down! 

It's been a long adventure, but in the end I must admit, that I LOVE Lucy :)

Do you?

Happy Monday!

Check out the completed dining room set here!

Partying Here:

It's Chair Week!

Remember this picture? 

 And this one?

Our dining room set was given to us the day we got engaged by some friends who were moving and didn't want it anymore.  The table is beautiful, in need of a little love, but her lines are amazing.  Check out those legs!

But the 6 chairs that went with them?  Yeah, they were in rough shape.  The backs were made of layers of thin wood that were splintering apart.  When you leaned back on them, they would snap and splinter into little shards of wood.  I was always a little afraid to have guests over, because I never wanted my chairs to stab them in the back.

I have seen mismatched chairs at a dining room table before, and I have always been a little fond of the eclectic look of it.  It's fun, different.  And I like fun and different :)  So I went to looking.  It took me awhile, but I finally ended up with that happy set above.

I like my stuff to look loved.  Like it has a great story and history to tell.  I like things to look like they were pulled from the bottom of a rusty junk pile and then loved a little bit.  I'm weird like that.  If they don't have a story, then I'm at least going to make them look like they have a darn good one.

So that is what this week is about.  Starting tomorrow I will be featuring a chair a day for 6 days.  They are all done differently.  Ok they aren't all done yet... that's why I have to take it slow revealing them :) But they will all tie together.  Promise.

On the seventh day, I will reveal them as a set (and hint, hint the table looks way different and I'm UBER-excited about it!!!)

Have a relaxing Sunday... I'm going to watch my Falcons win :)

Katie

Freezer Paper Greatness!!!

I have seen a few different people mention ways to transfer images onto fabric.  I wasn't too keen on the idea of running my fabric through my printer, I don't like the plastic-y (totally made up that word) feeling of an iron on transfer, and I didn't feel like running 30 minutes away to the local health food store to get citrasolv when I was ready to do my lamp yesterday.  Eventually I found a few sites (I'm not sure where they all are to reference them, but there are lots!) that said you can transfer images to fabric using only 3 things... Yes, I used to freezer paper to make this!

Heres what I used... freezer paper (what!?), a piece of paper, and spray adhesive.

I had all of those things so I figured it was worth a shot!  Ignore the pillow in the above picture, I was going to attempt a different project that didn't pan out...

Here's what I did...  (the project I will showing you is part of a chair revamp)

Step One:  Lay your freezer paper shiny side down on a table. Spray your piece of paper with the spray adhesive and lay it on top of the freezer paper creating one sheet.

Step Two:  Trim around the edges until they are the same size.

Step Three:  Find the image you would like to transfer onto your fabric.  I chose this birdcage from the one and only Graphic Fairy.

Step Four:  If your image contains numbers or letters, use your printing options or an editing program to mirror the image.  Photoshop elements calls it flip horizontally.  Resize your image if needed.

Step Five:  Place your Freezer paper in your printer so that the printer will print onto the freezer paper side.  Print your image.

Step Six:  Remove image from printer **BE CAREFUL NOT TO SMEAR** Dampen the surface you are transferring on to just a little bit.  (I just take a squeezed out paper towel and rub it over the fabric a few times)

Step Seven:  Place the image face down very carefully onto your fabric and use a blunt solid object to rub some pressure over the image.

Step Eight:  Peel away your transfer. Those messy dark spots around the outside are just where I got it a little too wet...

I love how this makes the image look washed and vintage.  It looks like it has been there a lot longer than it has!  

No idea why this is sideways, but I'll go with it....

I'm not going to show you where this image is ending up quite yet, but I will show you this lamp I did using the same technique! 

UPDATE:  To see where this project was used see here and here.

If you are interested in the pallet art, you can find that here!

Remember that lamp from a few days ago?  I think she's a lot cuter now :)

On a sad note, I am now out of freezer paper until I stop blogging and go to the grocery store already!!

I decided that I want to start posting a few pictures from elsewhere in my house every now and then.  I will call this the "keepin-it-real" segment of my post.  I, in no way, want anyone to think that my house is perfect all the time.  I don't have it all together and my home isn't EVER "magazine ready".  So here you go... are you ready?  I don't think you are :)

The playroom in it's usual state of mass chaos.  One day I'll get around to organizing this...

My bedroom.  Granted it's painting day, so cut me a little slack on this one :)

Feel better now? I hope you all have a fantastic weekend!  Now back to work :)

Partying Here: