Curtains for the Craft Room

This craft room has (and still is) been a work in progress for going on two years now. It IS looking pretty good, but has been very slow going, and has a bit left to go in my opinion. Most of the bigger stuff has been handled, so that's good!

I made curtains! It took me a full year to get both of them up. The first one was easy. There was already a curtain rod. The second curtain rod was purchased in August of 2013, but wasn't put up until my 2014 August Staycation. And boy did it feel good to put that second one up!

The curtains themselves are really just a rectangle of fabric. I don't sew anything all that exciting or complicated. I think their beauty lies in their strong graphic nature.

Here's the naked window. No central air in the house, so window units are a must. Kinda ugly. Gotta cover that up.

Much prettier!

Black Cat photo-bombing. This curtain was made, and went up in 2013. The window below...that one didn't have the curtain rod. The ONLY window in the house without a curtain rod.

And...since the corner of the wood was already broken, I was afraid I would end up breaking more of the corner off.

I didn't. Yay!

I should probably have cleaned off my work surface before taking the picture. Oh well. I was on a roll. There are several projects that got completed that day...on the table in this picture.

What do you think?

Small Metal Chest of Drawers Makeover

I've constantly got a list in my head (and a lot of the time on paper) of what is needed for the house, so I can keep an eye out for just the right piece to fit my needs, frugally.

I was in need of a "leg" for my work surface in my craft room. I'm always trying to re-use the things I already have. I already had the work surface. I have a degree in Interior Design, and the work surface is actually my old portable drafting table. I knew I wanted to save space by using the radiator cover as the other leg. I took a measurement to the top of the radiator cover, and it told me how high I needed to have the other "leg".

I found this absolutely hideous little 4 drawer metal chest at my local thrift store, on an extra 25% off Monday. It's the only day I shop there. Too expensive for a store that has 100% of their stock donated. ::gets off soap box::. I first wrote about this little bugger, here.

Why yes, that is faux wood grain. Ick. I can't find a picture of the price I paid for it, but I'm almost certain it was $4.99 (minus 25%). With the exception of the wrinkle on the top, it is in pretty good shape, and just the right height.

I did try to bang the wrinkle out, with a hammer. Didn't work, but that's totally OK. Drawer (pretty much) shuts, and for $5, I'm not really arguing. I did buy some new drawer pulls for it. I think I got the cheapest ones at Lowes, in the color I wanted. While I was there, I got a little 4 oz (maybe 8?) tester of black paint. There color scheme of this room is Black, White, and Tiffany Blue.

To start this project, I removed the drawers, and placed the shell of the chest onto the top of a Rubbermaid tote (to protect my floor). I was on my "Staycation" when I completed this project. I found (thankfully) an un-used FOB card. I work in the medial field. It was only partly funny that even on vacation, I can't get away from something reminding me of work.

  

I painted the front, the drawers, and the back, black. Paint covered quite well, so I think I only did one coat. I used the sponge brushes, kind of like a dabber. It worked, and was cheap! Now looking at these pictures (a year and a half later) I'm not sure if I did one or two coats on the back. I hate painting so much that maybe I just left it like that, since the only thing that will really be seeing it...is my knees when I'm sitting at the table!

Yeah. I hate painting that much. Sigh. Ok. Moving on. The outside! I had purchased some vinyl table cloths to protect my furniture from Fat Cat from peeing on it. Poor thing passed away, so I had a few of them left over (un-used). I happened to have picked just the right color for this room. Yay! They were on sale to begin with, and now I have a second life for them. I'm going to guess I paid maybe $1.57 for them at Target. I used one for this project AND the shelving project (you can see that here, after I write it up). That's one table cloth between the two projects, not one for each project.

I used the factory finished edge on the drawer side. I hot glued the table cloth to the metal. And...the above picture answers whether or not I painted a second coat on the back. I didn't. I don't even know why I thought I might have done a second coat. Painting. Meh. The back side is  not pretty at all. There was no point in making it pretty. I just folded the fabric over the back, and the bottom and hot glued it in place. As much as I hate painting, that's how much I love my glue gun!

Ahh, things are coming together so nicely in this room! And, it makes me SO happy that I'm doing this relatively cheaply, when possible, using things I already have. In the above picture you can see in the corner, the bookcase hasn't been painted yet.

This corner is looking pretty awesome! I kept it this way for a while. On top of the drawer units, those are little shelves. They're supposed to hang on the wall, but I never got that far with them. They are currently on the dresser, and a three shelf black bookcase (holding my fleece) is in it's place. I'm hoping once I get my fabric stash under control, I can put the bookcase somewhere else.

Side note, that laundry sorter came from the free section of Craigslist. I took the "bags" off and washed them. They also hold fabric. Mostly my scraps. The one closest to the plastic drawers has my rolls/bolts of fabric in them right now.

So, there we go. If I had to put a $ figure on this project, I'd say $1 for the paint. $2 for the pulls, $4 for the dresser itself, and $0.75 for the fabric. $7.75 total. I'm SO HAPPY with this little project.

What do you think?

DIY Bolster Pillow

As the name states, "Provident". In designing my living room I chose to re-use/and make some things in order to keep it frugal.

My furniture is generally hand-me-down, however, this chair was purchased brand new.

It was still discounted, but brand new at $150. Yikes. It's comfy and goes well with the rest of the furniture, so I splurged. Heck, the couch itself was only $200 because it was the floor model. I'm planning a separate blog regarding the couch, or more specifically the cat scratching post on the right hand side. You can read it here (after I write it, of course).

The chair itself is nice, but I wanted to tie it together with the rest of the room. In this blog I write about the chair makeover.

I chose to make a bolster pillow with the remaining burnt orange dupioni silk from the chair, and the curtain fabric (which you can see on the pillows above). But...who wants to spend the money on a pillow form. I'm fairly certain I got this idea from something Karen at Sew Many Ways posted ages ago. I re-used a regular old rectangle bed pillow! Cost=$0. Since I already had the fabric, the cost of this crafty day was a total of $0. If I were purchasing the fabric/pillow in anywhere near remotely recent history I would take a guess at the project costing a total of less than $10 all together. Not much fabric, and I know I get my pillows cheap at Walmart.

Pay no attention to the drool marks ;)

Once I knew the remaining silk fabric would cover the pillow, I just folded it in half and sewed a pocket. I hate hand sewing, so everything is done with my trusty sewing machine.

Fold the pillow in half and stuff it in the pocket. This was a PAIN! I had to get my legs into the action too. Hehe. Squeeze the pillow, and try to roll the fabric pocket over the pillow.

Now we're getting there! When I FINALLY had the pillow in the pocket, I pinned the ends together and sewed them shut.

It didn't look as fancy as I had hoped, so I had to accessorize.

I made a tube out of the curtain fabric (striped) and added some more of the trim that I have from my friends mom (see the chair makeover post for further explanation). This trim was a bit of challenge to sew on, because I'm not used to it, but I think it turned out well.

Here's the finished product as it sits on the chair.

What do you think?

Office Chair Makeover

I have a desk that I absolutely LOVE. It's solid wood, and probably is somewhere around 70 years old. I'm guessing it is from the 40's. It's HUGE! 3' x 5'. I'd love to have it in the craft room, but there's no way it's going up my stairs. That leaves me with having it in my Living Room. I really do love my house. It's also from the 40's ;) (1942) so the piece works well in the house, but I swear, this house is really crappy for space planning. Radiators. Sigh.

Having the desk in my Living Room means I have a desk chair in my living room. My beloved Fat Cat did a number on the back of the chair. I had plenty of fabric left over from my curtains, so I decided to give the chair a makeover, rather than throw it away. It was perfectly functional, just really, REALLY ugly. Black Cat decided to photo bomb :).

  

That wonderful black slip cover on the back rest, is left over from when I had the desk in my dining room. I had left over fabric from my black curtains, and whipped the slip cover up before a big party. I really do hate having ugly things in the house. It's embarrassing. When you remove the slip cover, this is what you see. Lovely, hmmm?

 

 

Let the adventure begin! I used a screwdriver and took the chair apart. I took the back rest off first, then turned the chair on its side to remove the seat.

 

 

 I left the structure of the chair in the living room, and just took the backrest and seat into the craft room to work on. No point in bringing everything upstairs.

I had known for ages that I wanted a "spicey" feel to my first floor. I have removed a wall between my dining room and kitchen, and have the outside wall painted red. I call it whore house red. Hehe. I found two remnants of this burnt orange dupioni silk at Jo Ann's YEARS ago. It really was my inspiration piece for the living room, and now finally it's getting used. I thought that would be just enough to use on this chair.

I used the larger piece for the bottom of the chair. I thought to myself, I'm going to be sitting on this part. Maybe I don't want to make this permanent, So I went with a fitted slip cover.

 

I laid the seat over the fabric, and kind of pulled up the sides so I would know where to cut. I really just pulled the corners and snipped the extra fabric away. It gave me nice rounded corners. I sewed a pocket to hold some elastic.

I have a spool of elastic that I purchased at a closeout fabric and accessories outlet store. A spool of a thousand or so feet cost me what one package of three yards would cost at Jo Ann's. I think this was probably meant for ladies panties or something like that, because of the weird edge on one side. What do you think?

 

When you're sewing the pocket for your elastic, make sure you leave an area of open seam so you can thread your elastic through it (hard to see). Do you know the secret to threading a drawstring through? Stick a safety pin on the end. It gives you something to grab onto while you've got the elastic in the pocket you've created on your fabric edge.

 

 Easy-peasy! It only took me two minutes to get the elastic all the way through. Of course, I had to stretch it out before I could get it over the seat.

 

I decided to leave the safety pin on, rather than hand sewing the elastic together. It just seemed to work better for me. When I attached the chair seat to the roller base, I just tucked the elastic up under the hem.

 

I think it looks pretty darn nice.

 

Yikes. This isn't so nice to look at. We're moving on to the back rest, and that is by far MUCH more beat up than the seat was. Fat Cat is lucky he was so lovable. I trimmed the threads off. I didn't want the fluff to show through the new fabric. Black Cat isn't big enough to use the back rest to scratch on. She likes to use my box spring instead. :/

 

OMG! What do we have here? A piece of his nail. Before you tell me, this is my fault, because I don't clip their nails. Yeah. I had two people that work at Pet Smart (friends) over to the house for a card game this past week. It took one sitting on Black Cat, while the other one clipped. She pulled them from one side of the room to the other, and screamed the whole time. They got three paws, and only part of the fourth. She was PISSED. I can't stand to hear her scream like that. It hurts ME to hear her so upset. She was only pissed at them though. She still loved on me, and cuddled with me after they left. Anytime I get the chance I GLADLY pay to have them clipped for me. There is NO way I'd be able to do it by myself.

Here's that second piece of fabric. SO close, but I didn't have enough to do the back rest. Good thing I have left over curtain fabric.

 

Oh Glue Gun, how I love thee!

I laid the back rest on the curtain fabric, and just hot glued the crap out of it. I then cut off the extra fabric.

 

I took another piece of the curtain fabric, and matched up the stripes.

 

Slowly but surely, I hot glued the crap out of that too! You can see the pucker line in the second picture, if you look close enough.

 

I then trimmed the excess fabric away. Not too shabby, but, definitely not a finished look.

Remember in one of my recent posts, I talked about my friends Mom passing away, and they offered my all her crafting materials? This trim was included in that. It's actually a few different kinds of trim all wrapped around one bolt. Not only do I have this cream color, but I have the same types of trim in burgundy!

 

I bet you can't guess how I attached the trim. Go 'head. Guess. Hot Glue? You got it! Oh, yeah. Don't forget to poke your holes for the back rest to attach to the metal structure. I just felt for them, then stuck my scissors in and wiggled them around, to make the hole. It worked pretty well.

 

 I *thought* I lined it up seam of the trim (cut on the diagonal in the picture below) to sit behind the metal frame. Silly me didn't pay attention to the fact the frame doesn't come directly down from where the screws attach the backrest. Good thing I did such a good job hiding the seam. Not that I think anyone is going to get up on my chair to look for it. I still want it to be invisible. I'm not completely in love with the trim job, but it definitely hides the fact that the fabric is cut beneath it. Really, if I had done a better job of cutting the excess fabric, I would have been able to make the trim nicer. My own worst critic, I know.

 

So there you have it. My office chair makeover. Back, and front. I may eventually take it back apart and spray paint the frame black, or maybe even brown to match the dark wood I have in the room. I'm okay with the grey for now.

 

Remember the burnt orange being my inspiration fabric for the room? Here's another piece I'm using for inspiration. It's a fleece/plushy throw I got at Walmart 2 years ago. I have off white/creamy walls, and we all know how much I loathe painting, so they're going to stay this nice and neutral color, and we'll just do some pops of color, from this piece. The red pulls in the "whore house red" I have in the adjacent rooms.

Well what happened here? I have an extra screw? Yeah. I know exactly where the screw goes, and I tried for about 20 minutes, and couldn't get ANY of the screws to thread into that hole. The chair felt plenty secure without it, so I just put the screw into the desk. I'll try again at a later date.

Here's the chair, back in it's home. MUCH better, don'tcha think?

There you have it. My office chair makeover. Have you tackled a project like this? Do you have a chair that needs a facelift? Go for it! This project, cost me, at the most $10, and that's estimating the trim being $5, if I had to pay for all the materials when I did the project. Because I already had all the materials, the project day cost was $0.