Furniture Makeover

How Not To Paint A Bathroom Vanity

July 23, 2016 by CORINNA HENDERSON

Hey guys. Yes, you read that right. I’m here to admit another failure in my decorating adventures. Well, not a total failure but it didn’t turn out the way I’d imagined when I started painting my bathroom vanity. Painting furniture is not the easy task that the internet can sometimes make it seem. There’s a lot of patience and elbow grease that goes into painting a bathroom vanity just like any other piece. Even after reading several how to paint furniture tutorials, I still made errors and I hope they’ll help you if you try to do this yourself.

When shopping last fall for a bathroom vanity, the color didn’t matter because I knew from the beginning that I wanted it a color I couldn’t buy outright. The folks over at HOMERIGHT provided me with their paint sprayer after meeting them at Haven Conference last year. And I just knew I was going to use it to paint whichever vanity I found for cheap.

I ended finding a vanity, it wasn’t cheap and it wasn’t solid wood. *smacks forehead* But it seemed perfect for me at the time. The weather was starting to cool and all I wanted was to get the thing painted fast so we could get it in.

Mistake #1

Don’t rush to paint anything. Seriously. Just don’t do it. I now have a ton of clean up on the inside of the cabinet because I didn’t take the preliminary steps to protect surfaces and remove doors, etc.

Mistake #2

I wasn’t 100% confident in my pre sanding abilities so I wanted to give it the best possible chance against chipping. On top of using Kilz primer, I also thought it’d be a good idea to seal with polycrylic. I used it in the paint sprayer and because of my impatience, I hadn’t been cleaning the nozzle very well so it was clogged and I wanted it sealed in 1 coat. The next day the entire piece was coated with drips.

So I had to go back in and sand back breakingly hard anyways.

Mistake #3

This was not a good time to go form over function. I should have bought a wood piece point blank. I’m now having to play surgery on the bottoms of the side panels where the cheap particleboard started to break up.

You can warn others of the mistakes I made by sharing this post. Here’s an image you could share to Pinterest/Facebook/Twitter:

At the end of the day, I’m still really excited with the piece that I have in my bathroom. I wouldn’t go back to a plain colored vanity any time soon. I just love the substance it gives the space. I would absolutely do everything to get the end product differently if I ever undertake this kind of thing again.

I have used my brand provided HOMERIGHT products for lots of projects at this point and I’ve loved them. I do think it pays to learn a hard lesson of impatience with practice pieces. I do have a good success story coming soon with these pieces so stay tuned for that.

Looking to paint a piece? Try these products:

Spray Shield
Paint Sprayer
KILZ Original Spray Paint
Latex Paint
Sand Paper

Knock It Off DIY: Upholstered Hairpin Bench

March 15, 2016 by CORINNA HENDERSON

For this month’s “Knock If Off DIY” challenge, we are taking on World Market. (I totally spilled the beans on that yesterday with the free printable I shared!) We all love World Market and their pricing is definitely on point with my budget, but there are a few things that they have that you can get creative, have fun and make yourself (you know, to save money to shop more ;)). Since I’ve begun working on my dining room, I thought I’d focus on that space as the basis for what I wanted to knock off.

We don’t have a table yet because I haven’t found one I love, but the seating situation I’m dreaming up is an oval table, 2 captains chairs, 2 chairs down one side and a bench on the other side. The piece I’d love to have in the space (but don’t quite have the budget for) is the Calypso Upholstered Hairpin Bench.

Since I’m not much of a builder (and if I’m ever telling you complex building instructions, know I’ve gone missing) I took a look at Craigslist to see if there were any benches I could customize to look more like the bench I wanted from World Market. I kid you not, there was a listing for a World Market bench. The fabric is much different but still has fun color and pattern. I think it matches the tapestry I’ve hung much better than the fabric of the calypso bench, too.

If I were going to reupholster it though, I would probably choose to go with something like these:

So I don’t have an upholstery to share (winning!) but I have covered a bench seat before and you can watch the video here if you’d like an idea of what to try if a bench you find doesn’t work well.

The only other thing I needed to do was replace the legs. I found these hairpin legs on Amazon of all places and they ship prime so I had them in 2 days. Then it was just a very simple matter of unscrewing the existing legs and whipping out the power drill to install the new legs. I did have to get a tad creative getting the legs and screws to line up where they could actually be drilled in, but it didn’t take much effort.

I can’t wait to find the dining room I’m imagining! It’s really hard to see a vision without a major piece like that, but you’ll have to stay tuned!

And now the most exciting part: There’s more! Yes, there’s a whole group of us working our way through the challenge every month. I am so heart eyes for these projects- I’m so impressed!

A Designer at Home // Casa Watkins // Up To Date Interiors

Monica Wants It // Vintage Romance Style

Iris Nacole // Pretty Practical Home // Domicile 37 // This is Our Bliss

Rattan Vanity Bench Cushion Reupholstery

October 23, 2015 by CORINNA HENDERSON

Hey Guys!

I’m really excited to share with you this little reupholstery project I finished recently. If you remember a recent thrift score thursday post, I chatted about how excited I was to pick up this rattan vanity. It’s in good second hand shape, and the rattan bench seat was recently upholstered. But I’m not loving the fabric they chose. It’s clean and in good shape, but the color and texture just felt… “old?” I don’t know. I wanted to instill a bit of my style into the bench and thought a shibori patterned fabric would do just that.

I’m trying to film a few more of these simple kinds of DIYs since pictures can be a little hard to follow and it’s just so much easier to trim down the video than edit pictures. I hope you find that helpful, and if you do feel any kind of way about it- I welcome you to leave feedback in the comments below!

How To Reupholster A Bench Seat

Supplies: (I’ve included links to products so you can complete this project, too. They’re affiliate links, so any purchases made will generate a commission for me and will help cover the costs of running this blog.)

Staple Gun – this one looks much easier to use than mine, and is pretty cheap!
Staples – Essential to the whole operation I’d say.
Fabric – Get $25 off your order of $50 with my refer a friend link.
Scissors – these are my favorite scissors!

Minted provided me with the fabric for this project. This post is not sponsored. The idea for this project is my own. The process is my own. It’s no secret I love shibori. I’m committed to only talking about products I can honestly stand behind.

And this is how the upholstery job turned out!

It’s so simple and easy. I don’t know why I’ve put off trying this for so long.

Naturally I love a lot of plants everywhere in my home. Because this little corner gets pretty great light most of the day, I chose to put a ponytail palm and philodendron. They’re pretty easy to keep alive and I enjoy their presence when I’m playing with my cosmetics.

I have a drawer by my bed where I keep most of my makeup. Here I’m keeping the products I’m currently using, as well as a few eyeshadow palettes (I like having versatility!).

The mix of baskets really brings out the earthiness and global feel of the set up. I say pick a style and then choose elements that emphasize it for maximum impact. Make sure they make you happy and that’s all you really need.

I like the shibori inspired fabric here because it adds a small dose of color without losing the earthy element. It’s a grounded pop of color. And the pattern is organic.

I hope you’ve found this tutorial helpful and interesting. I know I can’t tell you where to find an epic vanity like this one, but I hope the basics are something you are able to take away for a project piece of your own! If there is anything else you’d like to see via video, let me know! The more I film and edit, the better I can get at bringing you video content 🙂

Retro Wrought Iron Chair Makeover

September 30, 2015 by CORINNA HENDERSON

Hey Guys!

Last spring I was perusing Craigslist (what’s new?) and I found a listing for 2 retro chairs. They appeared to be bright green aluminum with a floral seat cushion. I thought they were perfectly vintage, even if there was some wear and tear. And, at $10 a chair, I would have hated myself if I hadn’t checked to see if they were still available. They were, the whole family crammed into my Fit and we picked them up. As soon as I touched them I realized they were not in fact aluminum, but rather wrought iron. They were badly made over with drippy glossy spray paint and fabric that was stapled right over the old green vinyl. (They were obviously so, so gorgeous in their prime).

Stripping all of the spray paint off was absolutely out of the question. I don’t have the time for all the sanding and dangerous chemicals I’m sure were necessary. Plus, there is the start of rust around some of the joining welds.

How To: Vintage Retro Chair Pair Makeover

So I started off by sanding the mess out of the whole chair. I used a sanding block with a medium grit to take down as much of the shine as possible without leaving deep scratches in the paint. After wiping the chairs down with a dust free cloth, I gave the coat of KILZ primer. I’ve heard phenomenal things about it so I made it a point to choose that one specifically. I’ll have to report back on my own experience. See, my concern with the whole ordeal is that these are chairs, there’s going to be a lot of rubbing on all that metal and I didn’t want my finish to go to shiz in just a few months.

I thought I’d give spraying them a go with my paint sprayer. I’ve decided to use chalkboard paint for that matte black, slate look. I think I watered the paint down too much. It was taking a lot of paint to cover the chairs and it seemed like it mostly ran off the round surface. I have another few projects coming up that I will give the paint sprayer a go at (not with chalkboard paint, since there seems to be a bit of a learning curve with such a thick paint).

I ended up going with a regular ol’ can of spray paint, still in chalkboard finish, meant for metal surfaces (I hope that was the right call since metal is beneath all that paint!). I won’t be repurchasing the brand I used because it was a nightmare getting opaque coverage, but it finally did the trick (almost) about 7-8 coats later. Matte slate-like black.

Because I want to really up the masculine factor with these chairs, I chose to reupholster the seats in leather. Because leather and wrought iron are “manly.” I love strongly masculine elements in my decor. It just is what it is (ie. amazing).

In between sanding and painting the chairs, I started to uncover the seats. And I was devastated to find the wood part of the seat was essentially mush. They were completely unusable. So the hubby and I did what every normal person does. We drove up to Home Depot, perused to lumbar department, cried when we found the cutting machines were out of order (remember, I drive a Fit), then decided on a 3/4 inch thick piece of MDF. It was $12, would fit in the car, and it doesn’t have knots and things to cut through. We were also buying our first Ryobi Jig Saw. Because we like to try new things when we’ve already dug ourselves this deep into a project. Luckily my hubby is pretty cool about trying new tools. I traced out the shape I needed and he cut it. SA-WEET.

So then I had the new base. I layered cushion and batten, traced out leather about 5/6 inches bigger than my seat silhouette, and cut it out. The leather I’m using is from a remnant piece from Leather Hide Store. I originally had planned on using a blue leather but the Leather Hide Store rep encouraged me to get samples. I’m so glad she did because a screen does this leather no justice. The color was off from what my phone displayed it and it wouldn’t have worked for what I was after.

The color of this leather is Nevada Distressed and it is frigging beautiful.

The leather folded nicely when coaxed, but is thick and structured enough to hold it’s shape. I think these will be perfect for our dining room since they’ll be easy to wipe clean.

So I did as the internet told me and pulled the fabric over the cushion, stapled in place and reattached to the chairs. There are pegs in place at each of the points of the legs, one was snapped so hubby came to the rescue and used a black screw to hold them together.

Seriously, making over and reupholstering chairs is one of the easiest “firsts” I’ve ever had (suprisingly with all of the roadblocks we ran into). Unless you want to layer on a lot of drippy and thick layers of spray paint and improperly reupholster a cushion (and please don’t do that because you just make the next guys time that much more terrible), I think this is something everyone should try. I plan on using my chairs in our dining room (the room that shall never be photographed because I can’t get my life together enough to make the room look like a dining room.)

Get A Similar Look In Your Next Chair Makeover:

Chalkboard Spray Paint

Upholstery Leather Fabric

Possibly- MDF Board & Ryobi Jig Saw

I know it takes me ages to get around to actually making over some of the pieces I thriftily score, but when I do, I really love the result. It helps that I’ve got space to store these things until I get around to working on them. And when it comes to pieces for a space like my dining room, I don’t give myself a deadline because it’s not a space I’m running towards a finish line for any particular reason (hello bathroom makeover!).

Moral Of The Story: Buy The House With The Big Garage.

So anyways, to make a short story really long, I made over these chairs and I’m pretty proud of all the things my hubby and I did to make them happen. We’re always excited to try new things and new products and this time included a lot of those things. Leather Hide Store was so cool to reach out to see if we were interested in trying out their fabric and we agreed because it’s beautiful and the nicest leather I’ve ever worked with. If you’re looking for leather for your next upholstery project, you definitely ought to look into Leather Hide Store. Asides from sending the fabric to us to use for this makeover free of charge, we’ve received no other compensation. I hope you’re cool with that!