It's a process- Stage 1: Cutting the Seats

So about a month ago I mentioned that I scored some wonderful free chairs!

Since then I've been slowing making some progress on finishing these puppies, but man there are a lot of steps involved. So I figure let's go ahead and talk about it in steps.

Now let's talk the first step- seats! The chairs didn't have any when we snagged 'em so I decided I would buy some 3 or 4-ply particle board, cut it to size, sand em down, get some foam and batting for cushion, and finally upholster them! Shoo- and that's just the seat part! Granted, that is by far the most time consuming part of the whole thing.

So off to Lowe's I went and man was I in for a treat! I went to the lumber section (albeit I feel a bit weird whenever I go to that part because I get these funny looks from burly men- What? A girl in an Ande's mint green trench coat and grey faux suede boots doesn't belong in the lumber section!?) Anyways, I just couldn't find the dimension I needed- either I would have had to buy a bazillion little pieces which would have meant big monies or one big 8'X4' slab that would have left me with over half left in extra wood. Again, not necessary. So I pulled the cute card and asked if they had any in between pieces. TA-DA! It worked- they took me out back and cut down a perfect 4 ply board to the dimensions I needed and instead of paying 20$ for wood, my grand total = 3$! Yesss!!

Then it was time to cut. Fortunately Josh's work has a band saw that I could use and after taking many measurements I drew out a seat matched to each chair frame, and went to work. I made sure to measure and measure and measure! One thing I also recommend is to err on not cutting off enough, that way once you put the seat in the frame, if it doesn't fit you can trim a bit more, but if it's too small... well you can't add the wood back on.


Here's my 'workshop':

(Safety first- my husband wanted to point out that glasses are required. Fortunately-I complied.)

One thing to note- it is extremely important to measure each chair (I used a numbering system where I numbered the chairs 1-6 and matched their seat 1-6 to them.) Each chair although, very similar, is unique in it's shape for the seat and thus needed individual tweaking.

So after hours of cutting, here is the end result for Stage 1- Cutting the Seats!

(It looks like they're having a pow-wow discussing their seats. 'yah dude, ya look good.')

Up Next- Cutting the Foam

Painting Party!

Today was fun!

Despite the fact that it was a dismal, foggy, damp day- it was tons of fun inside my older sister's bathroom! Her birthday was about 2 weeks ago and for it, the ladies on my side of the fam decided to give her a bathroom re-decoration! What a fun idea. So what I decided to contribute was a paint job complete with painting services!

And today was delivery day. =) So at 10:30 I showed up with paint, paintbrushes, roller, and a pan and we got crackin'! April, my older sister, sent me the paint color she wanted yesterday and I knew from the name it was going to be good-

Brandied Pears!

It's a great cream based color with a pear undertone and it makes the whole bathroom feel relaxing, warm, and open! Three great things from a paint color. I can't take any credit on it though- it was all her expertise color picking. =)

Unfortunately I didn't remember (durr holly) to take any before shots of the bathroom but here are the afters!

(Here you can see the color to its truest. It's a tad lighter than the light towels which makes for the best kind of depth to the bathroom!)