Dining Chair Transformation: From Drab to White and Fab

I have a billion projects going at once.  I am so busy with them that have not been good about blogging about any of them!  In fact, today I went on a treasure hunt in consignment shops and forgot to take my camera!  I haven't posted in a week, so I thought I would share something that I am pretty excited about.

About a month ago, I was hunting around in a consignment store looking for all sorts of stuff, when I found these dining chairs.  Before we even closed on the new house, I knew that I wanted to make the foyer, living and dining room all in whites and neutrals.  Since my farmhouse dining table had red ladder back chairs, I knew I would have to switch them out.  Don't worry though, those red ladder backs are super happy in a new location that I might show you soon.

before

So back to the chair I found.  I knew the light wood was perfect for my farmhouse table and the wonderful shell motif across the top of the back added a nice tropical "I live in Florida" feel.  I didn't care about the fabric on them and it's a good thing because this fabric is u g l y!   I knew that I was most likely going to have them recovered.  I have the best upholsterer, Chris Green, so all I had to do was find the perfect chairs and fabric.  I knew these chairs were most likely pretty high end and after doing a little research, I found out that they were in fact, Bernhardt dining chairs that were originally about $425 each!  The gal selling them had marked them down three times and after speaking with her, she took $80 each for them. Steal!  

I checked out Calico Corners for fabric, but in the end used materials ordered through Chris.  Since white dining chairs can be a frightful thought.  I mean, what happens when Sloppy Poppy comes over and spills in his lap?!!  My solution?  White leather seat cushions, leaving the lovely white on white floral silk pattern for the backs.  The leather is easily wiped clean of any spills.

Chris just finished them this week and delivered them.  I'm in love! They look great in the dining room, which I will show you at another time.  It's still being re-designed.

After

After

One of the fun projects that is keeping me from blogging.  I am hoping to get better about this. I promise!

-The End-

Reminder: It's Summer!

Our son on the tube just off the coastline back in 2010

My hubby and I used to be avid boaters.  It is one of the reasons that we lived on the canal at our last house.  It afforded us access to the ocean.  We had many fun years as the kids were growing spending days out on the boat and even taking several trips down to The Florida Keys and over to the Bahamas for long weekends.  But like everything in life, things change.  Our kids became teenagers and spending a weekend day on the boat with their parents took a second seat to hitting the beach or shopping mall with friends.

So when we made this move miles from the coastline, we knew that in some way we still needed to be connected to the water.  Not in the sense of access to the ocean, just connected to some sort of body of water.  This is why we bought a house on a large lake or should I say, why we found this house more appealing than others.  It allowed us to perhaps keep our dingy.  Yep, a dingy.  Which for those of you who might not know what I am talking about, its an inflatable raft style boat that many boaters have on or tethered to their boats for mobility when docked in marinas.

We sold out boat, but we couldn't part with the dingy.  You see, the dingy was the center of many of our fun late weekend afternoons.  We would lower it into the canal, filled with a snack and a bottle of wine or pitcher of margaritas and crawl around the neighborhood canals.  I am sure that plenty of our neighbors got a kick out of us.  One neighbor use to say, "Hey there you are...the "canal rats!"



So yesterday after lunch out and picking up his Father's Day present, which was an electric motor for the dingy, we wheeled the dingy down to the lake for it's maiden voyage. 

We cruised around the lake, checking out a few of the houses that we looked at during our search to see if they had sold.  We saw several little turtles stick their heads up to look and dart down into the lake grasses.  We also saw several people fishing from their backyards.


We came upon this one man at the southern end of our lake sitting in his yard fishing.  As we approached his area, we over heard him call into the house to his wife and say, "Ya gotta come out here and see this boat!"  I guess canoes and kayaks are the norm.  An inflatable must be an unusual site.  


Oh well, I have never been a very mainstream normal kinda gal.  I'm not going to change it now.  We chuckled and motored on, but on our return past this fisherman, my eye caught something even more unusual than our dingy.  Check this out...

The Blue Heron looking like he is going to sit in the chair.

Look at the Blue Heron.  The big bird looks like he ran the man out of his chair and is intending on sitting down and taking a rest himself!  So I call out to the man, "Looks like you have a friend that is about to take your seat!"  He responds, "The only thing that big bird is looking for is the fish that I catch!"  He went onto to explain that we have three resident Blue Herons and that this particular one shows up whenever he is fishing hoping to get a hand out.  As we got closer, our dingy spooked the grand monster and he took off running.

Spooked bird taking a run for it.  

Guess this bird isn't use to such a watercraft in the lake as well!  I don't know if from the image you can get an idea of the size of this bird.  He would stand as high as my shoulder for sure.  I love seeing them fly.  It's such a loping, majestic glide.  Kinda 'lopey' like my hubby. Here he is captain of his ship on it's maiden lake voyage on his 18th Father's Day.

That smile is purely from happiness, the margaritas had nothing to do with it. (wink)  Hope you all had a wonderful weekend.  Remember, it's summer.  Time to slow it down a bit and enjoy the gifts around us.  Have you thought about how you are going to stop and reflect and just enjoy this summer? What simple thing do you have planned?  If not, get thinking about it! Life too short to spend your days unpacking boxes, err, doing chores, err fixing up that room.  Like I said...remember, it's summer...

-The End-

Favorite Furnishings Make For A Room With A Hug

More is...well, more. I had a sister in law who use to needle me with a less is more mantra. Yet, her house was cluttered with...well, clutter.  More is more doesn't mean too much is too much.  It means surround yourself with everything you love, not everything you have.  It's like a great big hug.

A room in my new house is done. It is the room with all my recovered furniture from last year. I talked about this furniture redo in my blog post Slipcovers Revealed.  In addition, I added all my little whatnots. This is stuff I have collected over the years including shells from vacations and such.  

Unpacking boxes can be a daunting task.  But it can hold a fun element.  As I was unpacking all my hoards of junk treasures, I found myself enjoying opening each ball of paper.  It was like re-discovering the joy of having collected these things all over again. Birthday gifts from....me.  I even found myself guessing what was inside before unwrapping them.  Remember that Halloween party game where you had to reach into a bag without looking and guess the contents?  Like that, only better because my ears were not being told that it was human brains as my hand was touching cooked, cold macaroni shells.  

Getting back to the point, this room is my little hug.  It has my favorite fall-into furniture along with my little loves. Not that this room is that little, I realize.  It has some lofty ceilings and a pretty amazing fireplace. Notice that awesome black glass top table in the middle?  Just picked that up in a consignment store for a song!

So, between the crazy combinations of fabrics, eclectic furnishings, this is one of those more is more spots that I love.  That old sister in law isn't in our lives anymore, but I bet she would agree that sometimes, more can be more.  Less is more....really?  What was she really saying anyway.  (wink)

-The End-
Linking to:
Show and Tell Friday