Vintage Chair Yeti-Over

Long-time readers may remember this vintage chair make over from way back in 2010. Sadly, when I moved into my house, the chair sat in the workshop for a while and someone left something metal on the seat, where it promptly rusted and left a big stain on the cream chenille. I tried cleaning it and only made it worse. It was a sad, sad day at the Rosenfeld Cottage.

Until! I saw this awesome chair on Apartment Therapy.

Not surprisingly, it's super difficult to find a gorgeous skin like that for an affordable price. But West Elm sells these Mongolian lamb's wool pillow covers for slightly less than a fortune (and I had a gift certificate that covered a big chunk of the cost).

I don't know how well these will hold up, so I didn't want to go through all the pain of actually reupholstering the chair - plus I didn't want to cut the pillows up. Who knows what would happen with all that fur? So I basically laid one pillow cover over the seat, and loosely basted it to the piping on the upholstery in the front and back. Then I looped the second cover over the back and did the same thing. 

Here is the before (without the tragic seat stain)...

And here is the after...

Maybe not quite as luxurious as the original inspiration, but it's definitely fun and adds a lot of texture to the living room. What do you think?

DIY West Elm style pouf

I love these dhurrie poufs, at West Elm. I dunno why exactly, it's like all the fun of a bean bag, but with the sophistication of an ottoman. I mean, how cute is this?

But I don't love the $249 price tag. For that price, I could get a real piece of furniture!

So one day I was eyeballing my old memory foam mattress topper and wondering what the heck I should do with it, when it hit me - I should make a pouf!

I used my electric bread knife to cut the foam into 24 inch squares, and then layered them all on top of each other, like a layer cake (using spray adhesive where the frosting would go). I had to clean up the edges a little bit, as (much like my layer cakes) my 7 layers were a little lopsided.

Then wrapped the whole thing in a layer of batting, and used an old mattress cover to make a little pillow case for the stack of foam. This will keep it nice and tidy inside the final slip cover, and disguise any unevenness in the edges of the foam.

Finally I used a dhurrie rug that I got on sale from Urban Outfitters (only $89!) as my material. It frays like a maniac, but the texture is consistent with the West Elm pouf. And unlike those other poufs, I outfitted mine with two zippers on the bottom, so that I could easily remove the cover for washing.

All in all, it only took about three and a half hours. And look how cute!

My only regret is that I had but one mattress topper to give to this craft project.

A Very Chair-y Seating Situation

It wasn't very long ago that I was on a desperate search for dining room chairs. The two that I pulled out of the dumpster didn't quite cut it in my new, larger, dining room. And buying them new is expensive! So I did what I do, and went to the flea market.

There, I found a set of four chairs in reasonably decent shape, just needing new seats - piece of cake! That same weekend, my mom showed up with two more chairs, of a similar style but with higher backs, also needing new seats. Presto, I have a set of six dining chairs!

A few weeks later, I wound up the lucky recipient of four more dining chairs that had previously been owned by my grandmother, and were not only in perfect condition, but were also delightfully Mid-Century Modern. Now I have ten dining room chairs in two very different styles. I think this is what they mean when they say "an embarrassment of riches."

But while I had a plethora of indoor seating, I was sorely lacking in outdoor seating. That is, until I had the idea to combine three of the chairs into a bench for my back porch! Here's what I did...

First, of course, I removed the existing seats, gave the chairs a rough sanding, and cut down the legs on the middle chair a bit, to make the heights all even.

I'm going for a shiny metallic finish, and I read somewhere that a coat of black paint underneath the metallic will help it shine. They don't really make black spray paint primer though, so I just used regular black spray paint. We'll see if it works! 

Then I had Garrett help me cut a piece of plywood to the right shape to stretch across all three chairs, including the little notched out piece in the back of the middle chair. 

Looking like a bench already! There are some reinforcements under the seats that you can't see - the plywood wasn't a sturdy enough base to keep the chairs from wobbling around when you lifted the whole thing up. We cut wood blocks and used them to attach the bottoms of the chairs together with long wood screws.

Once the seat was cut, it was time for the fun part - upholstery! I bought the fabric on etsy, and ironed on this vinyl coating, to make it waterproof. I didn't want to simply use outdoor fabric as I knew it would get dirty really quickly, living outside. And I didn't want the foam to get wet and deteriorate. With this iron on stuff, you can just hose off the seat when it gets dirty! The only bummer is that the vinyl only comes in 18" widths, so you have to cut two pieces and overlap them a bit. It's not hard, just a little time consuming. 

I used three inch high density foam (also from amazon, which was way cheaper than Joanns), spray adhesive, and my trusty staple gun to attach it all to the plywood backing.

I attached the seat to the newly assembled bench through the original seat screw holes, and voila! A totally cute outdoor bench that seats three!

Now all I need is a cute outdoor space to put these in. 

Vintage Chair Before & After

After downsizing my living room furnishings from a couch and a love seat to a couch and an overstuffed chair, I found myself in need of some supplementary seating. I picked up a vintage Danish Modern chair at my favorite flea market for a bargain $75! Of course, at that price you know it required some TLC. The wood was dingy brown and the original 1970 fabric was worn and dirty. Observe:



With a little help from my wood-refinishing-zealot friend Adele, we stripped the old stain and varnish off and resealed with a lovely warm pecan color. As a nice contrast to the rich wood tone (and a much-needed neutral addition to my room), I chose a cream chenille fabric for the seat and back. I tried to maintain the chair's original charm by repeating the 5 1/2" squares of fabric that comprise the seat cushion, but vetoed the tufting.



I'm so happy with the way it turned out, this is totally my new favorite piece of furniture!