Bold(er) & Beautiful(Ler)

Calm down, calm down.  I know beautifuller ain’t a word.  Well, unless you ask Anna because she definitely tossed the term of endearment at Elsa without a fuss being raised so…

Switching gears and stories…

Once upon a time, I bought some secondhand furniture, like I often do.  I nabbed a pair of end tables and matching coffee table off a secondhand resale sight for $30 for all.  I added some fun to the coffee table and sold it and the end tables have been living here ever since – one out on the screened-in porch and one on the front porch.  You can see one in the upper corner of this shot post-stenciling the porch floor:

Rewind a couple of years to a Goodwill trip whence I stumbled upon this set of four bamboo chairs for $40 and grabbed them as quick as I could:

It always takes me much, much, much (add a few more much’s) longer than anticipated to rehab furniture and bring my ideas to life that I originally intend but most of the time (with the exception of this love seat), I get ‘er done.  And I did…well, mostly.  Before we listed our house, I really wanted to add to the curb appeal by recovering a pair of the bamboo chairs and repainting the end table.

So, whaddya think?

Better?  I’m so sorry, but you’re crazy if you don’t think so.  ;)

Our house sits back from our street a ways and so recovering the chairs with a large-print, bold outdoor fabric was the way to go so they’d be seen from the street.  I don’t think I’d necessarily go with this fabric in a room even though it’s fun.  I’ve got something else up my sleeve for the other two bamboo chairs on the screened-in porch that I’ll share when I get them done.  As for the end table, I spray painted both of them white and left the glass top as is.  But, I hated them.  Anthony hated them.  They looked plastic when in reality they’re wood and metal.  So, I went out on a quick whim and took a sander to the bottoms of the legs.  I debated on painting a clean line between the wood and white but then decided I kind of liked the jagged, imperfect look.  We’ll call it ikat and call it a win, yes?  Or maybe you think not but either way, I like them better lighter than darker and better sanded than plasticy.

But how?  Well, for the end tables, I used spray paint because I love the ease of it.  After cleaning the tables, I primed them with Rust Oleum’s Clean Metal primer and then gave them each two thin coats of satin white.  I recovered the seats of the chairs the same way I recovered our dining room chairs and this desk chair – first I removed the old, stapled-on fabric and then just stapled on the new right over the existing foam.  Or, if you’re sure the old fabric won’t be seen under the new, you could always staple new over old like I did on these bamboo chairs.  I swapped out the old back cushions for pillows and gave those pillow some new pillow covers.  (PS, I had enough fabric to make one more pillow cover and it’s available in my shop if you’re interested!) 

The arms of the chairs need to be sanded still as a good scrub and washing didn’t clean them well enough but I’m saving that for another day.  I definitely won’t paint them, even though I thought about at one point in time, because their bamboo color is so pretty and is a good way to add a natural element into whatever space they occupy.  I now love the end tables so much that I might upgrade them to indoor-living-room status in our next house…except I’m not sure that I like the idea of glass tops with tots around.  But maybe we could swap out the glass for wood or tile or something crazy like that for a few years until those tots head to college but we’re not going to think about either right now because our kids will stay little forever, right?

And speaking of staying, we are not.  I’ve got an update for you on the status of our house. 

Stay.

Tuned.

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*affiliate links to products I used are included in this post  :)