Sunday, January 30, 2011

Subject: Project Progress & Painting

Hi-eee!

So, I hope you had a fabulous weekend! Guess what today is...PAINTING DAY! I'm taking the plunge and painting my kitchen Dunmore Cream by Benjamin Moore - the same color as our living room. I'm hoping to get my hands on a laser level this week so I can do the stripes on the wall, but we'll see. I'm a little sad about saying goodbye to the green paint, but I'm excited about the new look and heading in a new direction with my aesthetic and my "mature walls." So, no more this:

I'll send you an 'after' picture once I get the kitchen put back together again. Right now the walls are bare and kind of sad-looking!



I'll send you an 'after' picture once I get the kitchen put back together again. Right now the walls are bare and kind of sad-looking!

This weekend I also finished my mother-in-law's office chair. You might remember how it was before here:


Ugh, right? I thought it was just a random chair, but then after doing some research I learned that the style is a Chinese Chippendale chair that it is actually an expensive, well-known chair among decorators. Who knew? Here is the after:


Ahh! Can you believe it? Here is a shot of the back, which I think looks really, really good:

The challenging thing about this project was that the seat cushion didn't come off, so we had to come up with a creative way to hide the staples. Some kind of cording or trim would have been an option, but I love the way these nailheads look! I got the idea of doing upholstery nails, but had never actually used them before. After browsing around on one of my favorite blogs (thanks for the recommendation) and reading this post, I ordered nailhead trim by the yard from Amazon. I ordered two yards and then also ordered a package of 50 nails. The way it works is you can pick your trim where you nail it in ever third or fifth hole, so it looks like a series of nailheads, but really you didn't have to nail in every last one. Smart, right? It only came in one finish, which was kind of disappointing, but I think it works with this chair so no big deal. They also recommend using a rubber mallet to hammer in the nails, which I did not own and did not want to purchase, so I just used a regular hammer with a sock over the end. My MIL came over to help me hold and pull the fabric because in a project like this, you really need one person to hold the fabric in place while the other person staples.

I was seriously amazed at how well this project turned out. I'm super proud of it and cannot wait to find another project where I can implement the nailhead trim. The only problem was that this chair had been re-upholstered a few other times, so there were lots of staples already in the chair, so nailing go tricky because sometimes I would hit against an already-existing staple, which would make the trim crooked or the nail not go in straight. Thankfully my MIL is not a perfectionist and the back* looks really good, so no worries!

Okay, off to get my painting clothes on!
Kara

*One thing to remember when re-doing a chair that is going to be pushed up under a table or desk: pay particular attention to the back, because that is what is going to be seen the most. People are always more worried about the front, but they don't realize the back is what will be seen immediately upon entering a dining room or office. So, conversely, if the chair is filling up space in a corner, you need to pay more attention to the front because that is what will be seen.

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