From Entertainment to Booze Containment

A phrase that Scott hears all the time around this house.

"I found this on the side of the road".

Sometimes it's little things and sometimes it doesn't work out. This was not one of those times.

This time turned into one of our coolest furniture pieces ever, but I'm getting ahead of myself.

About a month ago, Beth and I were driving back from one of our many shopping adventures when we saw an old TV carcass on the side of the road. We both saw it and while the words, "Did you see that?" left her mouth, I was already pulling a U-turn. Five minutes later, it was loaded into the car.

"Scott is going to kill me".

When we first picked it up, I didn't really have an immediate use for it. I thought it might be a pretty cool microwave stand with storage in the interior portion, but we wouldn't know until we got it home and took a good look at it. Once we had it out of the car, I began to doubt my original intention.

I decided that the only way to know would be to try it out. I gave it a "dry run". Anything would work better than the collapsible plastic table we've been using since we moved in two years ago.

Blingy.

I gave it a try.

Not quite. It wasn't wide enough for the wall and it seemed like it was awkwardly floating in the space.

This also happened to be the weekend that my parents came into town with the mantel, so we thought it over and decided that it would be much cooler as a retro TV bar instead. We would switch it out with the old bourbon bar and put the old one into the kitchen to hold the microwave and toaster oven. The end result for the TV would hopefully look something like this inspiration picture from a Redo, Recycle, Renew article online.

Honestly, Dad had half this project done before Mom and I even got home from picking a few things up from the store. The hardest/most expensive part of the project would be finding an old TV without the television actually mounted inside, and since I had found that for free, we were only a few steps from a cool mid century bar display.

We started by removing the backing and cleaning up the inside a little.

The speakers possibly still work, so we didn't cut the wires. Scott thinks he might want to try hooking them up to our old record player someday, so we just tucked the wires away where they wouldn't get damaged.

Dad measured the inside and used pine boards to make shelves. The two support slats in the back weren't removable, so he figured out a way to screw everything together once all the pieces were inside the TV itself. He refers to this as his "IKEA method" because all of the holes were pre-drilled and just needed to be attached.

Once everything was fitted, I took the shelves out again and stained them with a honey-colored gold stain. We thought that it would go with the honey color of the bourbon and the exterior colors of the original television shell. Once they were dry, they were brought back inside and reassembled back inside the TV again.

In the above picture, Dad is trying to make sure that the shelf height is correct before the shelves are stained. This is when Mom and I started working on the rear curtain. As a stand in, Dad used an old towel, but we thought that we could do a little better.

We used a tension rod and some upholstery fabric (seamed, with a curtain pocket on one end) to hang behind the shelves. We really liked the fabric in the inspiration photo, but we didn't expect to find the exact same fabric. I think it fits perfectly with the retro feel of the TV and gives a nod to the television test pattern.

When it was finished, we moved it into place. A little rearranging turned this:

Into this:

Since we were working on the mantel at the same time, you may recall the story in a previous post about the positional switch-a-roo that occurred between this guy and the fire place.

One more thing had to happen before I called this project completed. I found some lights around the house that had a dimmer and installed two of them into the "ceiling" of the interior of the bar. Now it has three light levels to choose from to really give it a fun, "working TV" glow.

Yes, I know some bottles are backwards and sideways. We aren't getting paid ad monies, ya know.

Overall, I'd say this is one of the coolest, most unique things we have in our house. It's a fun throwback to the times of I Love Lucy and Gunsmoke. A reminder of how far media has come in the last 60 years.

Most of all, it was yet another fun reason for me to tell Scott,

"I found this on the side of the road".

Let me know if you have any awesome furniture make overs and I might feature it on the blog!

Have a Seat...Or Six

When my parents were here in Thanksgiving, my mom and I decided to check out the new location of Another Man's Treasure, which is one of our consignment stores here in Lexington. When we walked in, we found 6 matching chairs, wood and upholstery, for less than $200. Needless to say we jumped on the deal. The only issue was that they needed to be cleaned up a little.

We loved being able to snatch them up right before Thanksgiving because it meant that we would have plenty of seating for the meal. We still had to use some folding chairs, but only 4 rather than the 9 we would have had to have used otherwise. When we went to set the table, though, surrounded by the chairs and with the leaf extension, we realized that our tiny dining area right off the kitchen wasn't going to cut it.

Instead, we switched the room configurations and put the dining table in the front room. We not only had plenty of space for chairs and the extended table, but we also could use my old desk/sideboard and another table to set out the food. It all worked out so well, we even switched out the lights a week later (more on that in another post).

The table was pretty inviting and the room switch worked out well. The only problem was that the chairs that we bought were a bit lackluster compared to our awesome new table. That's when the O'Leary family went to work on an upholstery mission.

First, we detached the seat of one of the chairs.

Then we used a flat head screwdriver and pliers to pull out what felt like 10 billion staples.

We were then able take off the old fabric and cushioning, both of which was being replaced.

Then we were able to start working on taking the back portion off. This involved getting the staples out of the crevasse up underneath the back piece of wood. There were about 40 thousand more of them hiding in there and they were by far the most difficult to remove.

When the first chair was bare, it looked a little something like this.

We eventually got an assembly line going to remove the rest.

Mom and I had checked out a LOT of upholstery stores in Lexington, but ended up at Hancock Fabrics. We also bought the new foam for the seats so that they would be nice and comfortable for the many meals and board games that they would host (as well as butts....lots of butts, lol).

Of course, some living things in the house were more helpful than others.

We used the seat boards to mark out on the foam where to cut.

Thankfully we were then able to use the electric knife that Patrick brought with him for the turkey to cut it out. It made the job pretty easy because foam can sometimes be tricky.

We were then able to use the dining table to cut the fabric that would cover each seat and back.

We also cut batting to cover the sharp edges of the wooden seat to make each chair a little more comfortable. Leela was very helpful.

Then it was time to staple. We were able to use our Christmas present (an air compressor with staple gun/nail gun attachment) to make the job go easier. Moooore Poooower!

(You see a regular staple gun here. We started out with it, but quickly realized it wasn't as efficient.)

Mostly finished with one, we were looking much better than what we had started with.

Then we continued the assembly line to finished the rest. The backs were a little more difficult since they had piping around the edges. We replaced the piping and wrapped the fabric around it, then just directly stapled it in place. Thankfully we were able to keep the piping and not have to do any sewing.

The old piping 

The backs were then wrapped in batting (no foam was really needed for the backs), which got a couple of staples to hold it in place.

The fabric was then wrapped around. We used tacks tucked under the folded fabric around the sides to hold it in place right up against the piping. The extra was tucked under and stapled multiple times into the guttered area at the bottom of the wood itself. Mom, Dad and Scott did most of this since I was sick (what terrible timing!), but they really knocked it out of the park.

As you can tell, the assembly line was a very important part in this three-day makeover.

In the end it was totally worth it. Dad even took the first finished chair for a test run.

Once they had all been moved back into the dining room, they really helped bring some color and interest to our dining space.

Before:

After:

What a difference!

(Sorry that the updates have been scarce lately. We have been traveling a lot for the holidays and I was having some issues with getting images on the site. Hopefully now that Blogspot seems to be fixed, I can get down to some bid-ness!)

Stool Pigeon

This may not be a 'knock your socks off' post, but it still is a change around the house, so I figure it should still be counted.

I'd wanted to do something to our bar stools. We've had them ever since I moved into the old apartment with Scott, so they've seen better days. They aren't in terrible shape, but they were a little lackluster. I figured that some new fabric on the seats would do the trick. I started with these.

They were $13 each from Target when we first got them, but I haven't seen them in the store since. They are pretty simply designed, I just really didn't like the plain pleather dark brown tops.

I found a remnant at Hancock Fabric for $5 for 2 yards, so I picked it up. It is made for upholstery, so it's pretty hearty and I know it will stand up to being sat on frequently (people use these stools all. the. time.)

I started by flipping over the first stool and taking it apart. This step might not be exactly the same for every type of stool, but the main principle is still there. There should be four screws that come out and release the seat portion so it comes right off. It makes the entire process a breeze.

Then, I just used a staple gun to staple the fabric up under the cushion so it was snugly pulled across the top of the seat. Reattach the cushion to the legs and you're done! Here is a close up of the fabric I chose.

And here is the first stool next to the second. It's not a huge difference, but the texture adds just what they needed.

There you have it! A quick fix for the stools that you might have just chilling out at your home. You can go crazy with the fabric, or even take some paint to the legs and change the look entirely. With just recovering the tops (because I didn't take off the original pleather), this update only took about 15 minutes. Imagine the possibilities if you wanted to get super creative!