Camelback Comeback

When Hubby and I first bought our house, nearly a year ago, I knew I needed some extra furniture to fill it up. This sounds like great fun in theory, but our "Superfluous Furniture/Home Decor" expense fund had mysteriously run dry.

I've yet to get to the bottom of it.

So I turned to Craigslist, my new bestie. We had an entire extra living space to furnish, and we found this old gal for a reasonable price.

(these were the only pics I could find of the old couch)

I liked the shape of it and we both liked the color (at the time), so with a quick sniff and a once-over, we hauled it to our new, empty home.

Fast forward a few months and I'm not so thrilled with my purchase. Oh, I like the couch okay, but our dog, who is NOT allowed on any other furniture, has seen fit to curl up for an afternoon nap on numerous occasions. His tiny white hairs are a dead giveaway. Stinker. I really didn't mind so much, since we hardly ever use this room and have only sat on the couch a handful of times.

Also, I've since decided that buying a second-hand, upholstered piece of furniture this large is walking a little too close to the edge for me.

We briefly discussed getting a new one, but didn't want to spend the money. And besides, Mrs. DIY (moi) was pretty sure she could make a slipcover or reupholster it herself!

Sounds easy enough, right?

RIGHT.

So here she is! Sadly, I have no in-progress photos to share. I wasn't entirely sure I wouldn't scrap the whole thing mid-way through, and I didn't want any physical evidence.

What do you think? Totally different, right??

You guessed it- I stapled and hand sewed that baby right on top of the old upholstery.

The fabric I chose is probably a mid-weight cotton, so the stiffness of the old chenille underneath helped give it good structure.

I like to wing it. I'm wild like that.

The arms here probably took the most time. I sewed them on BY HAND, people, BY HAND. Not gonna lie- I'm pretty proud of myself. I even put a little piping in the cushions! I thought it would be a nightmare, but it wasn't too bad.

Then I made these babies for a little something extra.

In case you're wondering (and I know you are), I made myself a pattern before I got started to know how much yardage to buy. I found this tip on some upholstery website and HIGHLY recommend this step if you're planning to try this. Basically you measure each piece of the couch and make a pattern to scale on a piece of grid paper, then cut them all out and lay them out in 54" width, to see how many yards you need. Make sense? :) It took me all day just for this step, but I would have seriously underestimated how much fabric I needed otherwise.

Hope you like it! Come over some time and have a seat!

Got Wood?

Sorry for the wildly inappropriate title. Please don't take offense and add my site to your list of banned internet pages.

I just couldn't help myself.

Hubby and I went dumpster diving the other day. We were on our way home and I saw a section of fence in a trash pile by the curb and yelled "back 'er up!"

Or something like that.


So we hopped out and with a quick look around to make sure no one was watching (we're fairly infamous in the neighborhood), we loaded it up and headed for home.


I have had a project idea in mind for some time now and wanted to use some reclaimed wood. And this was perfect in that it was cheapo-deapo.
You know, FREE.

Here she is all cut down to size.

We had to take it to a friends house to cut down and now a power saw of some type is squarely at the top of my Christmas list.

I haven't decided exactly what I'm going to do, but here's one of my inspiration pics:

Loving this Pottery Barn piece. Except for the horse, that is.
I'm digging the distressed wood and the peek-a-boo wood knots, but equine isn't really my thing. Hubby and I toyed with the idea of doing an outline of our dog... :)


I also like this PB piece that Susie at Bienvenue totally copied, which I am all about! I don't know about you, but $329 is just a little rich for my blood. Sister's gotta eat.

Check out Susie's version here. Just as cool if not better!

I am also in serious lust with these guys:

They're from Rockett St George across the pond. I like the idea of a saying or quote or scipture written out graphically like this. I toyed with the idea of using these lyrics, but I just can't get around the whole Beatles thing.
My dad might never forgive me. Let alone my own husband.


So what do you think?? Any ideas for me? I'm thinking about tackling it this weekend, so maybe I'll have some thing to show you next week.

No promises, though, a girl's gotta keep her options open.

Day of Labor

Happy Tuesday to you.  Here I am, a day late and a dollar short for an actual Labor Day post, but seeing as we actually labored, I'm assuming you'll give me a pass.  Plus I basically collapsed on the couch for the remainder of the night and even typing seemed too taxing at that point.

My husband and his mom (and me, by default, hehe) own some land southeast of town.  His dad used to run a sod farm there.  Hopefully we can get it up and running again someday soon.

Hubby is now in the process of installing a fence along the property line.  

You know, to keep the riffraff out.

It's a lot of hard work, so yesterday I thought I'd earn my keep by helping install a couple of corner posts.

Steady, steady...  

Clearly I brought some much-needed muscle to the table.

My major contribution was hauling a five gallon bucket of water about the length of a football field.  I grunted and heaved the whole way (water is heavy, people!) and slopped that bucket down, waiting for some praise at my hard work.  Instead I got a variation of "bless her heart" and "what the H is she doing" looks.  

Apparently we didn't need any more water.

But to their credit they dumped out what they had and used the water I had schlepped over.

I've since decided that fence building is NOT my calling.  I don't think it's his, either, but for some reason he didn't see the need to mention that nearly as much as I did... 

Sunshine for the Ears

Have you seen the movie Little Miss Sunshine?





















Great movie. I highly recommend it. For those of you over 18, that is.

I saw it with my family over Christmas when it came out a few years back and the whole row of us were laughing out loud. Had the theater offered milk it would have been shooting out our noses onto the unfortunate patrons seated in front of us.

Anyway, if you've seen it, then surely you remember the scene when they're almost to the pageant and Greg Kinnear honks on the VW's horn and it keeps making that hilarious honking noise foreeeeveeeerrr.

HI-larious.

Well, here at work, my office is near the side entrance to our building, where all the employees come in and out to the parking lot. We're downtown, so there is a lot going on outside that door. Last week I heard a very distinct sound coming from somewhere nearby... it sounded EXACTLY like the van's horn from Little Miss Sunshine!

And it hasn't stopped since.

Apparently it's this sign manufacturer across the street. I have asked numerous people around here if, number one, they hear the noise. Nope. No one has noticed it until I point it out. And number two, have you see the movie, do you recognize the sound??? NOPE. Not one of these so-called media people has seen this flick!! For shame! Then I'm left trying to explain the whole movie and scene while simultaneously trying to replicate the high-pitched, nasal-y sound of the horn. SIGH.

I feel kind of like I think a dog must feel when they blow those special dog whistles.. That pesky noise is never-ending and invading my thoughts! Ugh.

So I've been scouring the internet, trying to find a clip of the movie with this scene in it, to no avail. I need someone to feel me on this one! I can't take any more of these dumbfounded looks when I bring up the movie.

Sorry folks.

Here's the best I could do- the trailer, for your enjoyment. You can hear the horn at about the 1:15 mark.

Sitting Pretty

I don't know about you, but I always have at least two or three projects in the works at any give time. Mind you, any or all of them could still be rolling around in my head, but they're there none the less, waiting to be introduced to the world.

So now, without further ado, I present my most recent (completed) project:

I found this little gem on craigslist a few weeks ago. I had been on the lookout for a chair or two that I could repaint or stain and reupholster. This baby fit the bill perfectly. I loved the lines of the chair and thought that the upholstery didn't look too complicated for me to tackle. Plus, I really wanted to whip out my nail head trim kit one more time!

So hubby and I went to pick it up. I knew right away that hubby wasn't feeling my chair love when he pulled me aside and whispered "Do you like it?"

Translation: "Uhh.. we drove across town to possibly pay money for this old piece of crap? Surely this isn't the same item you saw on craigslist. Just give me the signal and we're outta here."

My response? "Yup!! Load 'er up!"

I did try to offer the girl less money for the chair but she stuck to her guns and I ended up paying the full $30 asking price. If there's one thing I hate it's haggling. It wears me out and really, I didn't think 30 bucks was too bad.

So home we went for a makeover.

I started by unscrewing the seat from the frame of the chair and ripping off the old fabric.

Holy crap, there were about a million staples in this thing! It was a very well made chair, to say the least.

Looks like it was made in 1980. I'm a product of the 80's myself.

Way to go 80's. You've put out some great stuff, if I do say so myself.

Apparently I was in such a groove working on recovering the seat that I failed to capture the moment in pictures. Sorry! You'll just have to take my word for it.

After the seat, I moved on to removing the fabric from the seat back. This baby has upholstery on the front and back sides of the chair and my fingers were feeling it!

After all the old fabric was removed, I sanded and stained the wood. I used a mahogany stain that I already had lying around. I liked the color it was just fine, but I wanted to freshen it up a bit. Again, no pics of this step!

After the stain dried, I started in on the seat back. Since I chose a fabric with stripes, I had to make sure they matched up to the lines on the seat. It just wouldn't do otherwise.

Decor police are hardcore.

I used my fancy shmancy nail head trim kit to tack down the fabric.

This wasn't as easy as I had hoped, but after a few small outbursts and about 10 mangled nails, I finished the job. And I have to say, I'm very happy with the result!

What do you think??

Go check out some other cool projects at A Soft Place to Land & Thrifty Decor Chick's Before and After Party!