Renovating for the Lazy

Before we bought Sarah, I was obsessed with home renovation shows. I pretty much watch them all. It probably started with Trading Spaces and evolved from there. I love pretty much everything on the DIY Network, HGTV, and even the classic This Old House which made Bob Vila a household name.

With the advancement of technology came websites to entertain me with renovation ideas: Pinterest, Etsy, Better Homes and Gardens, Houzz, and my new favorite Hometalk. If you've never visited Hometalk, it's similar to Pinterest and Houzz, where you can have idea boards with links to stuff you like. The difference is that it's almost all idea boards that include instructions on how to do things for home renovations. They link to blogs that show you what they do and explain how to achieve similar results.

I decided to tackle a project. I chose the window seat in our bedroom.

I did two things to our window seat area. My first project was to trim the curtains to the right height. I'm not a great seamstress but with help from my handy-dandy-sewing-machine I was able to bring the bottoms of the curtains up to the point where they just brushed the bottom of the bench.

 Here's a picture showing the great storage that the window seat has hidden under the trap door. We keep all of our bed linens and extra blankets there. The colors are all washed out because I'm shooting these in direct sunlight. Paint is actually white and the front of the bench is a very light grey.

The second part of my window seat renovation was to build a seat cushion to cover the trap door and the painted wood (which p.s. my kids had painted with permanent markers - the little sweeties). I found several tutorials online but I went with a no-sew bench cushion. Here is a tutorial if you want to know how I did my bench cushion.  

And if you're curious, here is what the bottom of the cushion looks like using the no-sew method. I really liked this method because the cushion fits perfectly into the space. It's a little snug so that my kids can't get under the bench and get out all of the blankets (and make a huge mess). And see - the wall in front of the bench is light grey, not black like the previous pictures looks like.

 Here is a view from the side, so you can hopefully see what it looks like in my room.

And finally, here's a close-up of the fabric and Kitty (yes, so original, we named our cat Kitty) I guess she wanted to get in on the action and hopped up on the bench while I was trying to take these pictures.

So Long and Thanks (for all the Fish)

For those of you not geeky or nerdy enough to recognize the title of this blog post may I introduce you to one of my favorite movies. Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is one of the funniest movies and is based on a great book series of the same name.



On a semi-related note, my dear grandmother died in May. She left our family all of her possessions, including trying to give us her fish tank filled with guppies, which my father dropped of at a Petsmart since none of us kids wanted them.

We have been greatly blessed, however, to receive many great items: from family heirlooms, costume jewelry, to furniture. Sarah is now filled with vintage pieces from the 1950's and beyond.  We got end tables, dressers, desks, a rocker love-seat, and two upholstered chairs. I've been doing a lot of research on dying and painting furniture. I think I've decided to the chairs using chalk paint. Here's a great tutorial that I found on using chalk paint on velvet.

Step one, for me was to remove the dust skirt. That's all I've done so far, and I must say that I'm quite pleased with the results so far. I am a big fan of large pieces of furniture and clean lines. 

I've decide that I'm going to do one chair at a time, instead of both chairs at once so that I can show the progress of the transformation. This should be fun, stay tuned for the progress and final transformation of my Grandmother's chairs.

So long Grandma, and thanks (for all the furniture).