The Hizzy

 

I did a little sewing for our home before the shower we had last week.   I love the before and after feature on Design*Sponge, so this is my own "before and after" post.  Luckily I remembered to take before pictures.  We painted first.  J put in the tall baseboards.  The wall color is Guilford Green (Ben Moore).   We call this room the music room.  Not because we're fancy-- because up until this point, the only thing in our formal living room was the piano.  Now we've added the record player, so still the music room. 

 

  

 

Before. Though we had already painted.

 

 

After.  So hard to take a back lit photo.  Any tips? 

 We knew we wanted some seating in front of the big window.  Those are the curtains I made a while ago, still ahem, not hemmed.   I like how they settle on the ground anyway.   The bench had been there before but we moved it to another room.  We set out on a hunt for two armchairs but couldn't find anything we liked that didn't cost an arm and a leg.  Then, I discovered the dining room chair at a thrift store.  Eight bucks.  I thought,  I bet I could recover that!  Brought it home and realized that the wood was very similar to the bench we already had.  I thought, I bet I could recover that, too!

It is easy as pie to recover a chair or bench like this.  I unscrewed the base and took off the old fabric from the dining room chair.   It actually had been recovered at some other time.   I used the old piece of fabric as a pattern to cut a new one.  I was careful about keeping the zig zag stripe even.  The fabric is actually home decor fabric I bought a while ago to make a skirt, I believe.  It was a nice bonus that it came straight from the stash.   Then, I wrapped the new piece of fabric over the base and used a staple gun to attach it underneath.  I stretched it the same way I learned to stretch canvases, starting in the middle on opposite sides and working my way to the corners.   I kept the horizontal stripe even by marking the middle stripe on my piece of fabric and matching it with the middle of the base.   I pulled the last bit of fabric at the corners as taught as I could and stapled it about a zillion times.  It's not too beautiful underneath but that doesn't bother me one bit.  The round pillow on the chair is store bought.

 Before

 

 After

The bench is a really nice piece of furniture so I didn't want to remove the original cover. I stretched the new cover right over top of it so if we ever want to go back to the old one, we can. Then I made pillows. I bought some pillow forms, bright orange piping and zippers. I cut the fronts first. Then I cut the backs in two pieces so I could put in the zippers. The piping is my favorite part. I wasn't sure how to do a sharp corner so I just rounded the corners of my square. There I go again with a complementary color scheme-- orange and blue this time.  

 

 I needn't tell you who loves the newly covered bench in front of the giant window.  Great for bird watching.

 The mirrors were created by a series of happy accidents.  We found the two mirrors at the same thrift store for ten dollars each.  Just a traditional gold framed mirror.  Originally, I wanted to paint them a copper color or even burnt orange.  I used some of that hammered copper spray paint first.   No neat hammered effect.  I tested it on a flat piece of paper and it worked well, but I don't think the texture works right unless there is a flat surface for the paint to pool on.  After the copper spray paint, the mirrors didn't look too different from the way they looked before.  I decided to try a glossy white spray paint instead.  After I put on the first coat,  J sanded them a bit to get rid of some of the dust in the nooks and crannies and we ended up with a really nice, distressed result.  The copper comes through the white in places.  We haven't hung the second mirror yet.  It was going to go across from this one, but I'm not a fan of too much symmetry.

 The last addition to the room is this piece of furniture.  The photos of this are self-serving because I'm hoping someone can tell me a little about it.   What would you call this, a sideboard?  A buffet?  I have no idea how old it is either.   The veneers on the front make me think Art Deco (?) but the legs don't seem to match that.   I think it is beautiful and I'd love to know more about it.   It was a gift from J's mom (thanks!).  She bought it at an auction and had it in storage.   We cleaned it up and put a coat of wax on it.  A couple of new knobs, too. 

 And there you have it.  A brand spankin' new music room.    Now, we can sit back and enjoy our work.  I'm not painting anything else for a looooonnngggg time.......

 Another gratuitous cat picture though I do realize it makes us look a bit crazy.