It's been a beautiful day here in Wisconsin. The birds are chirping, the sun is shinning, and it's hard to believe summer is almost over. I spent a lot of time outside today in my new "happy place".
I have a little story to tell you. A while back I was inspired by blogger Jill Flory over at Sew a Fine Seam, who took an old chair and painted it with chalk paint. It was absolutely beautiful. What a clever idea, painting what was already there instead of ripping it all to pieces and re-doing all the expensive and labor intensive upholstery.
I have been on a mission to find a chair ever since. So, one day I saw this wooden two seater bench in the trash heap. I drove by it every day for a week thinking, "I wonder what I could do with that bench?" Finally it dawned on me that this would be a good piece to try Jill's technique on.
Fortunately, no one else had discovered this piece in the trash, and it was still there when I went back. Actually, I sent my two teenage boys to pick it up for me. I love those guys!
So, with a little chalk paint and some muscle, I now have a new happy place on the deck.
The original piece had torn cushions on the seat, so I did pull those apart and recover them with some printed duck fabric from Hobby Lobby. I also fluffed them up by adding some old rather flat, bed pillows and then stapled the new fabric over them. I did not come up with this idea on my own either, brilliant blogger Jennifer Rizzo gave me this inspiration from her post on recovering chair cushions. Occasionally I do have my own ideas, really I do!
To make the burlap pillows, I reused my holiday pillows and covered them with scraps of the blue print and a bit of ribbon. I didn't even sew them, they are tied and pinned in place.
I love easy projects.
In my travels around town I also happened to find this wooden set of shelves in the trash. I knew right away it would look great as a coffee table, and when I was wildly painting the bench with chalk paint, I gave the shelves a coat of white to match.
Our boys love to play Frisbee Golf in the yard, and in a moment of inspiration, I decided these awkward grooves would make an excellent way to store the Frisbee Discs. I deliberately left the grooves unpainted. You perfectionist types will be annoyed by this. Have I mentioned I am not a perfectionist?
The coffee table is right outside the back door, an easy place to grab the Frisbees on the way out into the yard. We have a very serious game of Frisbee Golf after dinner each night.
And while the boys are sweating up a storm playing Frisbee, I am calmly relaxing, sipping my tea, sketching and brain storming for tomorrows blog post.
I must tell you that this is now the most comfortable seat on the entire deck.
Where is your happy place?
Jessica, that is gorgeous! I love it and I'm so glad you emailed me about it! Have you posted this on Hometalk yet? You should! I'll be sharing it on facebook!
ReplyDeleteThis is AMAZING! Great idea!
ReplyDeleteIt looks amazing! You did an awesome job! I hope you link it for FCF!!!!
ReplyDelete