Posted: May 14th, 2012 | Filed under: DIY, Furniture, Our Projects | Tags: danish modern style dining chairs, DIY, Keller chairs, Keller furniture for family dining and entertaining | 12 Comments »
The Keller chairs were finished up this weekend and I think they turned out great. To those who thought I should have kept the pink velvet, the photos didn’t really show how stained they were. Trust me on this one!
The pink was truly gross up close and I’m sorry I didn’t capture it better.
There were a lot of staples in these babies (aren’t there always?) so I made a magnetic sculpture out of them to amuse myself amid the drudgery of removing them.
These were in great shape structurally, so a little fresh batting and fabric was all that was needed. THAT makes a nice change.
We don’t need them, so I’ve listed these on Craigslist. I’m not putting them on e-bay for a few more days. While I haven’t seen any currently for sale by Keller in this particular style, I did see this Keller chair for sale:
Here on Etsy
I’m offering two for the price of her one!
Posted: May 8th, 2012 | Filed under: DIY, Fawn Love, Furniture, Puppy Love, Treehouse | Tags: lightcube, miscellaneous | 8 Comments »
I’ve been Instagramming, but not blogging…again. That’s why I set up the tweets to import a weekly post, so those Instagram photos are available here as a post instead of just in the sidebar. Do we like this, or notsomuch?
Would you rather I perdiodically post the photos as a recap on the blog, or is the weekly tweet recap good enough? This is a poll, without my having to activate a poll plug-in, so I’ll be looking for some piping up from you fine people.
Here’s just a very little of what’s been going on…some have been on Instagram and some never quite made it.
We had another evening of treehouse glamping, where there might have been a jedi lightsaber show.
I don’t know anything about editing and resizing video, or I’d show you some moves, but the file is too big to upload here.
The lightcube glowing through the treehouse window was our nightlight.
Otto spent half an hour staring down this deer one day, and will watch them as long as they hang around. He seems cool with them, and doesn’t bark often. It’s the chipmunks that seem to piss him off.
These are two projects currently in progress. The CC is building a firewood shelter/shed which will also hide our ugly air conditioning units when finished.
I am working on a pair of Keller chairs. The CC doesn’t think I am we are ready for the living room chairs yet, since the bottoms might be a bit complicated for newbies like us.
Otherwise it’s been cooking, digging, mulching, weeding and hanging by campfires. Y’know, springtime stuff.
One of our favorite farmers markets opened today, so that makes us happy…but the humidity started to roll in this week, which makes us sad..and sweaty.
Don’t forget to let me know what you think about my attempts to integrate the different media. If you want to follow me on Instagram, I’m @modfrugal, same as Twitter.
Posted: April 30th, 2012 | Filed under: DIY, Furniture, Our Projects | Tags: faux fur upholstered chairs, faux sheepskin chairs, vintage chairs reupholstered | 10 Comments »
They’re done, and they have attitude.
Let’s take a step back to see where we started.
If you remember, the frame was broken, so the CC cobbled it back together like a pro.
How many celebrities have furry chair namesakes?
You’re welcome, David Beckham and Justin Bieber.
Becks
…and Bieber
Otto photobomb!
They are for sale here. Once it gets too hot to work outside much, we’ll get started on those other chairs.
UPDATE: I have heeded your advice and re-shot he chairs in the dining room…and raised the price to $300. It was a LOT of work, for the CC especially.
Posted: April 19th, 2012 | Filed under: DIY, Furniture, Shoppin' and Junkin' | Tags: Baughman era chrome director's chair, dissolving rust with cola | 9 Comments »
While Craigstweeting today, I found something I couldn’t resist.
WHAT?! More chairs? Ummm…Yes.
*holds head in shame*
As for rehab- it’s mostly surface rust, so I brought out my trusty and crusty friends to help.
Once I got to work, I found a few spots that required the cola treatment. Sigh. That just added another hour to the job. The not-leather, but pleather had only one tiny nick on the backside, so yeah for that!
They cleaned up pretty well!
Currently, they are in the dining room heading up the table. I’ve now got my Burke/Saarinen knock offs as side chairs ever since the galvanized ones have moved outside.
I’ve been hunting for the perfect set of 8 Baughman beauties for almost 2 years now, but those don’t come cheap, so patience is been a virtue I must pretend to have.
Have a great weekend!
UPDATE: I forgot to mention that while I was in Brimfield last Summer, I fell for a pair of these, but they were $495 for the pair.
Posted: March 6th, 2012 | Filed under: Furniture, To Do List | Tags: dining room, dining room table, parsons table sandrift gray | 13 Comments »
I have table woes. One of the only pieces of furniture in this whole entire house that was purchased new, has failed me.
Am I shocked? Not really.
Am I resentful? Absolutely.
Our dining room table was bought on sale at Pottery Barn, and I think I know why the clearance price was so good. The finish has the life span of a fly. It’s called Sandrift Gray and it started chipping only 6 months after we got it. Now, this is what we see all over…little nicks and chips.
I contacted Pottery Barn right away when the first nicks appeared to see if they sold a touch up kit or something that would match the finish…NO. So now I throw a canvas dropcloth over it if I have guests coming because it’s at the point now where it’s just looking…shabby.
I love the lines…I wanted a Parson’s table, and still do, plus it has a leaf, so that we can seat 10-12 for special occasions. I want to fix the table finish, but how? The “finish” is textured, as you might be able to tell in the photos. Because of that, an opaque paint color might highlight the chips in the texture. If I did some kind of overglaze, would that be enough to hide it? I don’t know that I have it in me to sand off the finish completely and start over…but it’s a last ditch option. I tried a silver paint pen on one spot that I promptly wiped off…sigh.
This will be a big project either way and I’m open to suggestions on how to hide these blemishes…I don’t want to have to live with tablecloths forever.
Posted: March 1st, 2012 | Filed under: DIY, Furniture, Our Projects | Tags: DIY upholstery, tufted klismos parzinger chairs | 4 Comments »
Things are really boring around here since all our projects are mid-stream. On the upholstery front, I haven’t started my new chairs, although I’m dying to, until I can finish these chairs to sell. This is what all that mess was from.
We forgot to take pics of the chairs before taking them down to the frames, so I tried to dig up a few snaps of them from days of yore.
They had button tufting on the back. Yikes… my dining room when we first moved in! Ew!
Terrible shots, but you get the idea…a pair of upholstered tufted klismos style chairs from the 40′s-50′s I’d guess. The only ones I found like them online are attributed to Parzinger, here.
So, the Things were a little rough with them, and the frame snapped on one, so up to the attic they went to await repair. I had planned to reupholster them anyway, but knew we’d have to fix the frame first. Once we got them stripped down, both frames actually needed some structural repair.
The CC likes the woodworking repair aspect…*yawn* and now that he’s almost done, it’s time for me to get to work and sand down the legs, paint them and start upholstering them. I’ve decided to go a little crazy, OK a LOT crazy with these chairs.
Behold what I plan to cover them with….
Scary, huh? That’s several yards of faux grey and white Mongolian fur, and if it ends up looking like a pair of ugly trolls, I can just redo it. THIS is the fun part of trying to tackle this on my own-the risks aren’t so risky. Would I do this if I were paying someone else to do it? Probably not, I’d go with something “safer”.
So that’s one of the many unfinished things happening around the house…I’m hoping for a full reveal sooner rather than later.
