Friday, August 20, 2010

Spray Paint! Fabric! Cup Hooks! Oh My!

You ever have one of those days where your eight year old comes home from a sleep over party at 9:30am and announces that she stayed up until 2am? And hearing that information, just the act of that knowledge passing through your ears and into your brain makes you want to get back into bed and hide because you know the ugly which will emerge from said child?

Me too! As a matter of fact, that exact scenario played out this morning. At first I sucked my thumb and whimpered. Then I came up with a solution.

TV all day long! Brilliant!

Can I just take this moment to make a plea to the parents of my kid's friends and beg them to never have sleepovers? Or just don't tell Lily. She has been a weepy mess all day and that was with eight hours of television to distract her from a full onslaught of exhausted tyranny.

Once I had the children plugged into the TV and I had stopped crying I decided to try to get a few things done that have been on my list for a while.

I garbage picked this chair a few weeks ago. It was just sitting out on the curb like a damsel in distress awaiting rescue.


Good lines. Ugly seat. Great potential.

Thank god for spray paint. Here it is getting ready for its beauty treatment.


I chose this fabric for the chair seat. I used my staple gun to attach it.

Three tools I cannot live without: glue gun, staple gun and drill.


It took two cans of high gloss spray paint.


Not bad huh? The whole project cost about $15. The moral of the story? Don't be too proud to pick through your neighbors trash.

While the paint was drying on the chair I decided that it was high time to hang up a chandelier.


I found this old chandelier while out junking about five years ago. It gets moved around the house quite a bit, but my vision has been to hang it on the porch. I considered putting electric candles in it and doing it all proper, but it seemed hard. And expensive. So I improvised with fairy lights. First I wrapped white fairy lights all around the chandelier. Then through the magic of a sturdy cup hook, an S hook and some cheap white chain I made some lighting magic!





It's so satisfying to get these projects done. Neither took very long to do, but felt like much bigger projects than they really were.

The most satisfying part of my day? Getting Lily into bed at 7:30.

9 comments:

Lori E. said...

oh. my. goodness. I LOVE THAT CHAIR!! And I too love picking up "trash" from the curb. It mortifies my husband which on some bizarre level makes it even more enjoyable... hee hee

Pom Pom said...

The chair! I love it!

Left-Handed Housewife said...

First, re: the day after the sleepover: I feel your pain. I had that with Will yesterday. Wave after wave of emotion, all of it negative. And tonight, Jack's having a sleepover here. Yeesh. Yeah, the TV will get a good workout this weekend.

The chair--what a transformation! I love it! The chandelier--magical! Really, Sara, you should write a book.

I'm waiting.

frances

P.S. I'm coming to Attleboro at the end of October--they're reading my book Shooting the Moon as part of a community read thing. I don't know where Attleboro is in relation to Boston, but it can't be that far, can it?

LMMB said...

LOVE THE CHAIR!!!! Great Job!

Tracy said...

Ahhh yes. My 14yo went to her first footy game last Friday night. Oh how we paid for that one. All. Week. End. A 12.30am arrival home is not what that girl should do. She was all kinds of a nasty mess.

That chair is stunning. I must keep that in mind. Staple gun, glue gun, drill. OK! Our hard rubbish collection season is affectionately know as "Neighbourhood Swap". Though none of the local Councils want you to pick someone's stuff up, we all do it. It's pragmatic and eco-friendly. Just not very tidy!

Tracy said...

Hey Sara ~ How do you clean around all your cute little bits and pieces? Your house always looks like dust wouldn't dare to settle there. And you have so many things dotted around. Don't you get sick of picking up stuff and wiping around them?

Julie said...

Oh Sara! *sigh* They should just put this post on a Hallmark card because it will just woo all the women. I envy your ability to see the book beyond its' cover.

Gumbo Lily said...

Oooooo. Nice chair. Nice chandelier.

Jody

Anonymous said...

Love the chair. xo Mari