"New" Furniture For the Craft Room

Playing the sliding-tiles game with furniture in my house again:  

Problem: 

• a giant armoire full of towels and sheets in my bedroom, which was in my way, and was also inaccessible to my roommate when I was asleep in there
• a mostly-empty hall closet
• some slapdash shelves on a corner wall in my craft room, full of boxes of fabric and supplies, and  surrounded by piles of same on the floor

Solution: 

1. I removed the shelves in the craft room and put them up in the hall closet, and moved all the linens into the hall closet where they're accessible to everyone
2. I moved the armoire to that corner of the craft room, and re-organized the boxes and supplies into it

(I don't have pics of the hall closet - there's so little light in that hallway that I can't get a decent one.  It's basically just shelves in a closet, though). 

And then...

A friend and I swapped dressers over the weekend - my small one for her large one (she wanted to use two smaller dressers in her daughter's room instead of one huge one).  And so this came home with me on Saturday: 

Ikea HEMNES

Most of my fabric stash had been stored in sixteen of those white plastic Ikea (SNALIS, discontinued) boxes (like the two on top of this dresser in the pic), stacked in/on top of that long, low, black shelving unit under the window in the pic (it'll be re-homed soon).  The contents of all but those two boxes fit neatly into the four main drawers in this dresser, and I got all of my small scraps into the smaller drawers at the top.  

So, what do I do with fourteen 5-gal plastic boxes?  I'm not sure yet.  They'll probably end up holding craft supplies in the closet in this room, or full of small tools and things in the garage.  



Cross-posted from my SCA sewing blog, clothofstars.blogspot.com

I Made A Thing!

Actually, I made a bunch of things.  I made my bedroom clean. (And re-arranged the furniture).  And then I made my sewing room clean. (And rearranged the shelving).   Pics of all that soon.

For now, though:  my sewing chair reeeeally needed an update.  I re-covered the back of it when I brought it home from the as-is bin at Ikea, waaaaay back in October of 2011.  The back fabric was still okay (aside from a couple of holes), but the seat had never been recovered, and it had definitely seen better days. It was covered with paint and loose threads, and the fabric had been worn shiny in a couple of large, butt-cheek-shaped spots.

Before: 

Oh, also?  It was...beige.  So office-y. 

After: 

Is that not some crazy grandma-riffic fabric?  Hee.  I've had this (printed, drapery-weight, cotton) fabric sitting in a bin for a couple of years, and though it's pretty horrible, I couldn't bring myself to get rid of it.  It's BLUE!  Like 90% of my stuff is blue.  And it's fun-horrible, tee-hee.

Both the seat cover and the back are just slip-

covers closed with a drawstring underneath.
Ikea's seat cover was permanently affixed to the
under-side of the seat.  I left the beige cover on
the back, because it was the only thing covering

the bare foam. 

The back also has a discreet zipper on one side

edge. When I made the original beige cover, I had

to slip-stitch the open side closed by hand (because the top of the back is wider than the 

bottom). This time I just happened to have a zipper

that kinda coordinated. :) 

The whole slipcover project only took me about an hour.

That was after an hour of ripping four years' worth of sewing detritus from inside the wheels.  It rolls again! Yay! Ew.

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About That Chair...

So when I said I was going to re-upholster the chaise and the green wing chair, I may have lied a bit.  Accidentally.  I'd been trying to decide whether or not to try something else with that chair first, and last night the mood struck me and off I went. The project isn't finished yet; but I'm halfway through and it's looking really promising!

The "green" wing chair before: 

• faded in very weird and random patterns
• several horrible shades of ex-green

I thought about re-upholstering the chair.  And about simply making a slipcover for it - or even just buying a cheap one.  But then I kept seeing blog posts like this one, and pins like this.  I decided that I'd try it, and if it didn't work I could always just make a cheap slipcover out of some old cotton twill I have from a previous furniture project. 

And so I mixed a capful of liquid Rit dye, in black, with about a 1/4tsp salt and a 1-1/4c HOT HOT HOT water, put it into a spray bottle, and went to town: 

During...

I chose to go with a spray bottle instead of a brush after a test on the bottom of the chair showed me that a brush would take A FRILLION YEARS and also ruin my brush, because of the lumpy-bumpy weave of the fabric.

I was concerned about striping, but figured if I can spray paint things, I could do this.  And, as it turns out, the same technique kept striping and blotching from happening:  sweeping, side-to-side motions with the sprayer.  I noticed it also helped greatly to (a) follow the grain/nap of the fabric, (b) spray in vertical sections, and (c) work from bottom to top, which keeps the top from dripping off the dry fabric below it if to much builds up in one place and begins to run. 

Other things I learned: 

WEAR GLOVES.  

Not-Really-After...yet...

So, here's the wing chair, sans seat cushion, after a single coat of black Rit dye. After I sprayed it (in sections), I went over it with a hot blow dryer to begin heat-sealing the color.   The next stage will be to apply a second coat, and then to spray it with vinegar to set the color even further and heat-treat it again; once all that's dried completely I'll take it outside and spray it with a fabric sealant.  

The best thing about it so far - aside from the chair already looking velvety and lush - is that this morning, without any further treatment at all, I couldn't get any color off the fabric with my hand!  

The color's pretty even, especially given how faded the fabric was to begin with.  A second coat will even it out completely;  and it'll also darken the color to actual black.  Rit's "black" does a great job of dyeing things purple when you don't use enough of it!   I also still have to do the seat cushion.  So far, I've only used about half a bottle of dye (I had two bottles to start with). 

More on this as soon as it's done!  :D




P.S. - my knees hurt. Something I always forget about spraying large objects? It's basically like doing three hours of squats and deep knee-bends.  >_<

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SEE I TOLD YOU

One last dining room chair - an Ikea KAUSTBY.  This is the one I use at my computer desk at home.  I'd say I got tired of sitting on an un-cushioned seat, but I pretty much never did.  I got tired of stealing couch pillows to put on the seat, and then having them all butt-shaped after a couple of weeks.

While I was upholstering the dining room chairs (for the actual dining room), I went ahead and did this one, too, with a scrap of heavy drapery fabric I got from a friend in a de-stash:

Tr-drrr. 

The end.

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Craft Room Shelves, Take III

Craft Room Shelves 

I don't think I've ever, in my life, taken THIS long to put up one damned set of shelves.  I keep finding myself one bracket short (and cue Peanut Gallery).

three out of four ain't bad?

The good news is, I'm one bracket away from putting up the fourth and final shelf, and then I can go get some plastic boxes from Ikea to store all that fabric in, to keep dust off of them.  I also need to re-organize the closet a bit so I can fit those last two gray bins into it: they're both full of old costumes, and upholstery fabric, none of which I want to put out on the shelves.

before: stacks of tubs, ack! 

I also moved all the cat boxes from the guest bath cabinet into this room.  They're on the floor under the shelves, for now, until I can get some sort of enclosure built around them to keep the litter dust from flying, and to camouflage the, er, boxes of turds and sand.  º~º   So, building stuff YAY.

To be [perennially] continued...

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Grunge-Be-Gone: A Gnu Before-N-After

On my last trip to Ikea I found a little office chair in the as-is section for $9.99. Yup. A $140 NOMINELL chair for ten bucks.  SCORE.

Before:

It'd been a floor model.  For a long, long...long...long time, it would seem:

ewww.

EWWW!

But, never fear!  It only took about half an hour to remove the old (grungy, red, microfiber) cover, separate it into its pattern pieces and use them to make a new cover...

the little hooties that go around the posts under the back

After: 

TADA!   New clean chair that coordinates with the color scheme that will be in the room once I finish painting things, and get some real flooring down over that green-painted concrete:

oooh, aaah.

CLEEEEEAAANN!!

Awesome.

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In Which Our Heroine Is SICK OF SEWING OMG

Once upon a time, there was an old wicker chair that had been scratched to death and un-strung by cats, faded with age and sunlight, and covered in an aging, faded, and stained fabric that had once been...well, okay, it was probably always ugly. 

It was Kress' chair, actually, and though he wanted to trash it when he moved in this past Spring, I convinced him to let me try fixing it up.  I cleaned it and repaired the frayed and un-woven pieces, and set about doing a really nifty antique'd/shabby teal finish on it...which did NOT come out right at all, so I stopped halfway through, after which the cushions sat stacked in a closet and the frame sat in the garage for six months holding up a couple of fish tanks that I kept meaning to throw away but hadn't yet. .

Once again I didn't take a "before" picture yesterday before I started re-painting it, because I thought I had one, but I didn't.  Here, though, is a picture of half of a new paint job and the old cushion covers (look closely - the print on the back cushion is actually upside-down):

Wow, that's...tropical.

 The frame got a smooth coat of a sort of tree-bark-brown color, and then dry-brushed with an off-black to give the color some depth so that it wouldn't look just painted. 

I re-covered the cushions using the old covers as a pattern; the fabric is from an old papasan-chair cushion cover that I had stashed away in a box of upholstery fabrics.  The pattern doesn't really work with the style of my living room, although the color's nice;  I just needed something so that I could use the chair in the room.  This'll do fine until I find the perfect fabric:

I also decided to take the opportunity to try top-stitching a soft, wide, false roll- edge, since I love the look but had never done it myself.   I didn't measure or mark the fabric, I just eyeballed it, to get a feel for it - it's not perfect, but I kind of love the way it turned out.  Definitely going to be doing this again.

After my hands heal, because MY GOD this was hard on my arthritis and carpal tunnel!  There's probably some sort of nifty clamp-thing you can use to pinch the cushion edge while you sew with the other hand; but since I don't have one, I just did it all with my fingers.  You would not BELIEVE how much my knuckles hurt by the time I was finished (two hours later, if you want to know).  UGH. 

P.S. - the wicker chair happened yesterday (Saturday).  Today, I finished the couch cushion covers - the couch cover job is actually complete!  Pics later this week when I can get some sunlight up in here.  (So, um, yeah:  I'm pretty sick of sewing right now). 

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iBoard: A Picture Essay

Remember the mini-ironing board?  Last night I did the big one: 

not hideous; but old and worn

uh-oh...the Ikea PRESSA cover is too short!

and too wide!

trimmed front end; used trimmings to layer back

ewwwww. 

short Ikea pad extended, joint patched 

This awesome little dude came from the old board.

And THIS awesome little dude came with the PRESSA.

New ironing boards FTW!

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More Teal Curtains + Outdoor Spaces

About a week ago, during the aforementioned Thriftstravaganza, I found a *gorgeous* teal silk paisley scarf with a cream/gold/black border print for $3!  On a whim, I draped it over the curtain rod over the back door glass in the living room, and I love it!

See:

(apologies for the weird light - had to brighten up a rly dark photo)

Here it is tied up to let the daylight in.  I let it down at night for privacy, and when the lights are on in the house, it casts a lovely blue glow over the patio that I intend to amplify with:

Ikea's JÄTTEBRA

This glass bowl/vase/thing with a candle inside, plus:

via Oliveaux

Something along the lines of this - Christmas lights in white and blue.  Maybe.  I'm planning to try it this weekend for a party with just white lights, to see how I like it.


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B&A: Guest Bath Yay!

So, the office is moved, I spent my entire Saturday at the office busting my butt and then sleeping all day Sunday recuperating from really, really, REALLY over-doing it...but then I got back to work at home. SO...

Hey, look, it's a room I haven't posted about before!  That's because I haven't been happy with it.  I loved pretty much everything about the room except the shower curtain.  But yesterday I fixed that. :)

First, though, let me show you where the room has been:

 <-- once upon a time, I thought the only way to make my tiny guest bath feel bigger was to paint the entire thing white and add a tiny bit of color here and there.


It was okay, for a while...

and I did really love the results when I painted the cabinetry white (a decision I angsted about mightily).

But the aqua and white was...


...well, it was boring the CRAP out of me

So I decided, to hell with it, it's not like anyone's going to be fooled into thinking this bathroom was enormous, so why not just have FUN with it?  It's a little out-of-the-way room that people see for maybe 5 minutes when they come over, so why not go the opposite direction and go WAY over the top with it, to make it a WOW room and give folks something to look at while they're in there? (Even if it's a "wow" of "wow, what is this woman smoking?!"  LOL)

So I sponged over the entire room in an "olive-drab" sort of green I had sitting around from an old project;  then went over the lower half of the room a second time to darken the bottom half.

 I stenciled over the line between the top and bottom halves of the room in a soft gold...


(which I freaking LOVE, by the way)

(and the art in this shot is from Matt Manley's 2008 Rumi-quotes calendar)  -->


(I also did behind the big mirror, so that one day, when I get a smaller, framed mirror, I won't have to go back and make the paint job and the stenciling match - it's already there).

Oh, I also left about 10" down from the ceiling completely unpainted, on the theory that it might lend a dropped-ceiling look and maybe add a bit of visual height to the room since I couldn't magically create more square footage with color schemes...and it mostly works.  I really like the effect, anyway.


This red glass thing is probably my favorite item in the entire room - it was a Christmas ornament that I got on clearance last year at the hobby store in January for like a dollar.  I hung it on a length of jewelry chain from a pin in the ceiling.  :)

<-- but then there was this crazy magenta-and-orange *!~*CONTRAST OMG~*~  that...really didn't work.  It was neat, but a little too over the top.

These are the same magenta sheers that are in my bedroom, by the way (Ikea's SARITA). :)












I really wanted a sari-looking curtain in there, but hadn't been able to find any (or any suitable material) that was remotely affordable - until yesterday morning, when Kress and I hit the fabric store early to get the rest of his Halloween costume together.  There I found:

This GORGEOUS teal taffeta, on sale for $4 a yard!




Which I promptly hemmed...

...put a rod pocket at one end with some fabric leftover from another project (because I didn't want to waste any of the taffeta on a pocket, I wanted the extra couple of inches for curtain length).

...and then painted a border print with the same stencil I used on the bathroom walls.  I dried the paint with my hair dryer as I went along so that I wouldn't have to wait for the paint to dry, so that the process would go faster.







And WALLA! 

(there's supposed to be a brown glass knob on that cabinet door, oops)

whoa, camera, slow down on the flash there!  *is blind*

Ta-da!  :)


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Peek-A-Boo

Here I am!  Your turn to hide.

I dunno, I'm just slacking this week.  People do that sometimes. :)  Mostly I'm checking out two new computer games that I got, working in the backyard (sprucing up the patio some more, instead of demolishing the whole thing in frustration like I was talking about the other week, and it's going really well), hanging out with friends, and catching up on some stuff in my Netflix queue.  :)

I did, however, have a mini-thriftstravaganza last week where I got some clothes and a purse for like $12, total (I know! Crazy!)  While I was there I grabbed a beautiful and LARGE turquoise scarf covered in paisleys, little tiny mirrors embroidered on, with a beige-black-gold border print all the way around the edges.  It looks like a little sari - and it was three dollars.  Score!

I hung it up on my back door last night as a curtain, just to see.  I think I like it.  It's a BIG patch of turquoise - which is what I've been wanting more of in the room/house;  I can't decide if it's too much, or if it's too much only because I'm not used to going that bold (something I'm trying to learn to do this year).

Anyway...no pictures.  I know, I'm a big tease.  Maybe tomorrow. :)



::Edited to add:: 

1.  One of my new games is The Sims.  Is it weird that I'm having SO much fun building and decorating the little houses?  :)

2.  I'm getting a work table for my garage/workshop and a rolling filing cabinet from work for free, since we're getting rid of some things this week;  the cabinet, I believe, is exactly the right height for my sewing table, to replace one of the wire racks and organize my sewing stuff better.  Woohoo!  I hope it works.  If not, it'll go into my shop, too, and be turned into a tool chest. 


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Sewing Room - the Beginning of the After

A few "after"-ish pics.  ("afters" for the whole room will have to wait until I'm actually done with the whole room, which may be years from now, fair warning):

After cleaning out the room (two years ago!) and ripping up the ugly, dog-stained carpet (ewww), I painted the cement floor green and the walls grey (not the same grey in the living room, but these were the walls that inspired the grey in the rest of the house).  

The ironing board that started it all!   Okay, actually it was this photo (Pure Style Home) that "started it all" in my sewing room.

that Singer is so old it's *yellow*

 

The "chalkboard" corkboard over my work table, with my little color-scheme suggestions stacked against it for inspiration to keep going and not just go play video games.  I painted this corkboard with black chalkboard paint, since I need a corkboard to pin up patterns, measurements, and design sketches for costumes and things, but I wanted the look of a chalkboard.  Now I have both!  (And no, you can't write on it - the cork texture makes erasing chalk and cleaning the board pretty close to impossible). 

A cheap plastic clock I bought for my office a couple of years ago, with a new coordinating background (a computer printout of a needlepoint fabric from JoAnn's). 

A poor-quality photo of the new shade over the window in the same green damask-print cotton that I used to cover the ironing board.  It's basically stationary - it can be raised and lowered, but I made it for looks, not functionality.  I use the mini blinds behind the shade for privacy when I need it.

The last couple of days I've been moving furniture around and painting a couple of bookshelves black so that they'll all coordinate (instead of it looking like a flea market in this room) - no pics yet, but I plan to move them in over the weekend and continue working.

More to come!


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