2016 Projects Review

It always helps me see what I have accomplished when I go back and review the projects that I got completed in the past year. There are many gaps in my blogging story each year because I do so many projects that I don’t consider “blog worthy.” I rarely publish any of my Christmas decor because I have some paid decorating jobs which I do first and by the time I get my own home decorated the blogosphere has been overdone with Christmas photos out the wazoo! One project that has not yet made an apearance on the blog was a fixer upper home that my son and daughter in law purchased this past fall that our family and my daughter in law’s family spent many hours making cosmetic improvements on. You can click on any of the green highlighted text to go directly to the post about the photos.

My biggest project this year was updating my dining room for the One Room Challenge last spring.

 You can read about that project by clicking here. That post also has links to previous posts with all of the details.

I gave the screened porch at our summer cottage a much needed update. You can read about that by clicking here.

My son got married in May and I completed a couple of projects for the wedding.

I made this mason jar chandelier for the reception tent. You can get the details here.

I also made these lazy Susans for the rehearsal dinner tables. You can see those here.

I refurbished this chair for my mother.

Even though it has a plant in it in this photo, I completed this beverage stand as a Home Depot DIH workshop project. Unfortunately it was not a positive experience. My hope is that my local Home Depot will work to improve these workshops.

This copycat tea kettle was a quick and easy project.

Of course my year also included plenty of travel, most undocumented on the blog. I did blog about our trip to Arkansas to visit Allen Smith’s Garden Home at Moss Mountain Farm.

I can’t tell you how many homes I have toured but this is one of the few that I could move into today and not change a thing! There is so much to see in that post!

The gardens were the icing on the cake. I did 4 posts on them so you can start with this one and follow them through here, here, and here.

Wow! That was a busy year! I’m linking to the Top Projects Link at Southern Hospitality. Click over to see lots of inspiration!

New Life for Another Old Chair

This post contains affiliate links. By purchasing through the links I make a small commission at no extra charge to you.

I love giving new life to something old. I just reupholstered this old chair for my mother to use in her bathroom.

I love a cute pagoda and I love the fabric that I used on the back of this chair. I chose to use a solid textured blue fabric for the seat. Let’s take a look at what it looked like before.

I found this chair in a second hand store for $35. That’s a little more than I usually pay for a single chair but it was in very sturdy condition and I knew it was perfect for my mom’s room.

There is a reason why upholsterers charge so much money. It is because it takes a long time to remove all of those darn staples!! I used this staple remover to speed things along. It really is a great tool to have. I’m thinking that if you are taking something to be reupholstered if you took the time to remove the staples first it should be much less pricey since taking the old stuff off is the most time consuming part of the project. You can get this one  from Amazon for about $10 and it is worth every dime! It is eligible for Amazon Prime shipping.

It was hard to get a good picture of the bottom of the chair but I removed the cover from the bottom to work on the springs that had come untied and were bulging out the bottom.

This looks a little better after I retied the springs. I didn’t do anything to the finish of the wood since I like its aged character.

I kept all of the original stuffing including the old springs and horse hair. After a little work and vacuuming up all of the dirt and dust it was ready for the new fabric. I don’t have a picture but I ALWAYS use this pneumatic stapler, also eligible for Amazon Prime and well worth the $30. I have tried many times to use a heavy duty hand stapler and I can never get the staples all the way into the heavy wood frames. I use the stapler with this pancake compressor and I have been very happy with the results I get. All of those tools can be purchased for about $100 total so if you use them one time they are paid for!

Once all of the preparation was done, putting the new fabric on was very quick. Gluing the trim around the edges to cover the staples was a little time consuming and tricky.

The fabric is Ming Pagoda by P Kaufmann in the Zephyr color. The solid blue fabric was picked up on a remnant table so I don’t have the name of it. I already had the gimp trim left from another project.

I love the way it turned out.

If you are interested in seeing some of my other chair rescues click on any of the photos below to see the post related to that chair.

 

 

Thanks for reading and a BIG thank you to those who take time to leave a comment!

I’m linking to Metamorphosis Monday, to Wow Us Wednesday, to Grace at Home, to Thoughts of Home On Thursday, to Before and After Wednesday, and to Anything Blue Friday. Be sure to click the link for lots of inspiration.

Painted Tea Kettle

I love anything Mackenzie Childs! Every time I go to New York I stop by the store to browse and enjoy all of the beautiful merchandise. I recently decided to try my hand at painting a tea kettle in the Mackenzie Childs style. Both of my young adult children made the same comment when they saw the tea kettle. They said “Oh, you painted your teapot like your store in New York.”  They don’t know the name of the store but they know that it is one of my regular “stops”.

Painting on the curved surface was a little challenging but it turned out OK.

I purchased a stainless kettle from Walmart for about $20.

I removed the knob from the top and covered the handle and base with painter’s tape. I stuffed the bag inside the open top to keep paint out.

Next I applied a base coat of white spray paint.

Then I went back and added black squares and did some dragging through the white squares with acrylic paint.

Far from perfect but good enough for me!

I also made a rare splurge purchase! I bought the Mackenzie Childs weekend duffle bag. It was half price on the website but still a big splurge for me!

As if that wasn’t enough, I went back online and purchased the tote bag. It was also half price!

We recently took a short trip and I took the bags with me. At one point my husband was carrying the duffle for me through the airport. I did notice several ladies admiring my hub’s cute bag!

If you would like to see another Mackenzie Childs style project that I did you can click here to see a table and chairs that I painted several years ago.

I hope you are enjoying the rest of your summer!

I’m linking to Wow Us Wednesday, to Thoughts of Home on Thursday, to Grace at Home and to Metamorphosis Monday. Click the link for lots of inspiration!

DIY Beverage Stand Workshop- the Good, the Bad, & the Ugly

This is NOT a sponsored post. All opinions are my own.

After seeing a social media push by Home Depot about a “Do It Herself” Workshop for building a beverage stand I decided to go online and sign up. Since I love a hands on project, I thought it was something that I would really enjoy.

photo from Home Depot

The image above was used by various bloggers to encourage participation.I followed a blogger’s link to register then I received a confirmation email reminding me of the store location and time. I arrived at my local Home Depot store at 6:15 for the 6:30 workshop and stopped at the service desk to inquire as to where the workshop was inside the store. Both employees at the service desk were working with other customers so I had to wait for several minutes. When it was my turn I asked about the location. Neither employee had any knowledge of a workshop that night. After I told them that there was a workshop they tried to convince me that there was not then one employee stepped out to the store entry to “check the sign” and came back and told me there was not a wokshop beause it was not on the sign. I insisted that there was and told her that I had an email confirmation.  She asked to see my phone to see the confirmation. After reading my email she decided to call a manager. Apparently the manager had no knowledge and told her to call someone else. After the second phone call she told me to go to the saw where they cut lumber.By this time it was 6:28. I proceeded to that area and seeing no signs of a workshop I asked an employee. That employee sent me to another saw at the very back of the store. There I found a group of 4 women and shortly afterward our instructor came up.  We were working around a lumber cart with a large piece of plywood laying on top. Said lumber cart is not a stable surface as the two center wheels are bigger than the wheels on either end and thus wobbles up and down. Our instructor, who was very good, told us that we had a very limited amount of time and that one beverage station would be built and that we could take turns using the air nailer, as the materials were already cut. Each of the ladies there had a very odd look on our faces and the instructor asked us if we thought each of us was making one. While the website registration did not explicitly state that each participant would be building a stand to take home, we all thought that we were when we signed up for the workshop. That issue has since been cleared up on the Home Depot website registration page for DIH workshops. The instructor told us that the materials for the project cost $38 each so we would build one then we would draw numbers to see which lady would take home the project. I wish that I could say that the class went smoothly from there but unfortunately it did not. Other employees in the area were busy bringing in stock from a truck and putting it away so our instructor was interrupted by other customers several times. We finally decided to continue without his supervision while he helped a customer. As we were building I looked at the materials.

The photo above shows all of the materials with the exception of the 10 quart galvanized bucket but also includes a piece of scrapwood in the lower left corner. The instructor said that the store was out of stock on the buckets but should have one the next day. Is it just me or did they not know for weeks that the workshop was coming up? The instructor told us that he found out a 8 PM the night before that he would be teaching the workshop. Maybe I’m over the top here but how much trouble would it have been to have a folding work table, maybe a bottle of water for each attendee and perhaps a small token or coupon for each lady. Silly me, I thought Home Depot was trying to build relationships with potential customers. Instead, it appeared that we were a major inconvenience to employees trying to bring in stock.

I asked the instructor why the materials were so much. His answer was that if you purchase a piece of plywood that is 2 feet by 4 feet it runs the price up since it is just a few dollars less than a full sheet of plywood ( which is 4 feet by 8 feet). So I ran the numbers in my head and figured that if 4 of us purchased one piece of plywood and shared it that each of us could have a project for less than $20 each. I asked the instructor if that was correct and he said that it was. He even showed us a lower grade of plywood as another option that was less expensive. I also asked him if he could cut the wood if we bought it and he said that he would. I then asked him if we could use his nail gun to put them together. He said that we could not because he had to help put the stock away and we could not use the nail gun without an employee with us.  My only regret is that I did not get the phone numbers of the other ladies so that I could invite them to my home for our own workshop and allow them to use my tools. None of them had an air nailer but thought that they would be able to improvise.We decided to purchase the materials using the lower grade plywood. I think our final price for materials was $12 each but that did not include the bucket since they didn’t have any buckets! When I went back to purchase a bucket I think it was $9.99.

These are the legs for the beverage stand. I actually used screws instead of the small finishing nails so that it would be more sturdy. I don’t have step by step photos as I didn’t have my tripod and couldn’t take the photos and hold the material at the same time. Christy from Our Southern Home has an excellent tutorial here as she was one of the bloggers who participated in the promo. At the workshop at the store we did not cut the circle out of the top since we did not have a bucket. When I built mine at home I did have the bucket and wanted to cut the circle. This was by far the hardest part.

As you can see, I drew two diagonal lines on the top to find the center. Then I used a string, a pencil, and a nail in the center to draw the circle. I have completed many projects but have never tried to draw a circle like this. You can also see that that was a disaster! It was ugly!! I could not hold the pencil steady and came up with a very wobbly circle. I ended up doing what I always do; I found an object (probably a plate)with the diameter that I needed and traced around it. It works every time for me. Then I drilled a hole for my jigsaw blade and carefully cut the circle.

I painted it black since the other furniture on our screened porch is black. I set this geranium in the bucket when it’s not being used for ice.

If you look closely in the photo above you can see that I added molding to the top edge for a more finished look.

The beverage stand makes a nice addition to our screened porch.

In summary, I was very disappointed in my Home Depot experience. I think that they missed some good opportunities in a big way. After the workshop I saw many other comments on social media that other participants in other locations also had negative experiences while a few had wonderful experiences. I do hope that the Depot will work to improve the workshop experience at all locations.

I’m linking to Metamorphosis Monday at Between Naps on the Porch, to Inspire Me Tuesday at A Stroll Throught Life, to Thoughts of Home on Thursday at Decore to Adore and to Grace at Home at Imparting Grace. Click over for lots of inspiration.

I hope that you are having a wonderful summer!