Furniture | Bella Grace Home

Aug 04 2011

Dining Table Delight (aka the how to for a new look)

(Before)

(After)

The Inspiration

When I saw Centsational Girl’s whitewashed trunk in her big patio reveal I knew that was the direction I wanted to head toward in refinishing our dining table.

To Begin…

I sanded the “leaf” in the table, just in case I knocked a crater into the wood due to my inexperience with the sander. Happily, no craters resulted.

A Couple of Hours Later (I had to take some breaks, ya know)

I had this…

After sanding the table top down to the wood grain (oh, yeah, fun times, no really! I love sanding: it’s therapeutic for me) it was time to prime the legs, which would take care of the adhesion for the paint.

Note: I roughly sanded the table edge because I wanted to create a bit of a rustic look.

Primed Legs

Whitewashing

Next I whitewashed the table top & painted the legs of the table. For a great “how to” on the whitewash technique check out Centsational Girl’s tutorial.

Final Step

I sealed the table with four coats of polycrylic…this took a lot of time, patience, waiting & repetition. But since we use this table every single day we felt it would be important to seal it properly (especially with two precious boys around!).

Now the Chair Dance, Won’t You Join In?

It was quite a process to paint & seal the chairs, but totally worth it.

I started with the chairs outside…

(From Left to Right: Painted Chair, Primed Chair, Plain Chair)

I primed the chairs, then painted them, then sealed them with two coats of polycrylic. I should note that the chairs had to move indoors for the sealing portion because I bird had pooped on one of them overnight. I thought it was a leaf and “wiped it off” with my hand! It was g.r.o.s.s. to say the least. Thankfully no birds could poop inside the house.

The Before & After Shot

(Before)

(After)

If you missed the first part of this Dining Table Reveal then you can check it out now. Oh yeah, the paint that I used on the table is “Cool Gray” by Valspar & the paint on the chairs is “Tropical Surf” by Glidden.

Now I wonder what will be my next sander victim…hahahaha!

Happy Creating!
Jen

Psst! For more inspiration check out Funky Junk Interiors SNS and the Weekend Wrap Up Party…Addicted2Decorating…

Tagged chairs, dining table, whitewashing

Aug 02 2011

7 Comments

DIY, Furniture, Restyling

From Run of the Mill to Runway! (aka my dining table restyle)

For the “how to” and more pics check out part 2 of this post.

Well, last week my dining room was turned upside down, quite literally. With the purchase of my new sander (yay, I love you Mr. Sander!!!) I was able to create this new look for my run of the mill dining table…

Before (circa summer 2010)

After

I am so excited about this new look! My hubby & I purchased this dining set at SAM’S Club during our first year of marriage…eight years ago. I knew back then that I would one day paint it white. Why I waited so long, I do not know, but I love it!

You wanna see more?

Is there a painting project you’ve been putting off for years? I hope this restyle has been an inspiration for you to pull out the sanding supplies, paint & some elbow grease (because you will be needing it!).

I’ll be back later this week with all the details.

Happy Creating,
Jen

Psst! I’m joining the “Before & After Party” at TDC & Miss Mustard Seed today!

Tagged dining table, painitng

Jul 30 2011

1 Comment

Furniture, Kids

A Little Sanding Going On…

This week I’ve been working, working, working on this project:

sanding project

Yup, that’s right, I put my new sander to use and got to sanding our diningroom table and chairs. I love it! This pic is after I got the table top sanded to the wood grain. Soooo fun!

Sanding is kind of addictive.

I can’t wait to show you the finished product! But that will have to wait until Monday.

You see, I’m kind of insane in the membrane because I took on this sanding project just a few days before my youngest son’s 3rd birthday. Which is this weekend…two parties and one trip to Sea World will be sqeezed into the next 48 hours or so.

This means I need to decorate for his party, bake his cake, wrap gifts, clean the house, cook, look halfway decent at some point, charge the video camera and clean off the backporch…like, today.

Gabriel - Newborn Pic

But it will be worth all the work to see the delight on little Gabriel’s face. He is my angel!

What are you up to this weekend?

~Jen

Remember to enter the awesome giveaway I’m having this weekend: win a 16″x20″ rolled canvas printing!

Jul 22 2011

12 Comments

DIY, Furniture, Livingroom, Paint

Would you paint this?

Do you see that hutch in the far left corner of our livingroom?

Well, if it were your hutch would you paint it or leave it in its current state?

Would it make a difference to you if I told you that I inherited it from a family member?

Here are some inspiration photos for what the hutch could become.

So what would you do? Leave it alone or give it a paint job? Do tell…

Happy Creating!
Jen

(If you wanna see what I ended up doing with the hutch click here).

*Sources for each hutch photo can be found here.

Tagged Hutch, Painting

Jul 19 2011

5 Comments

Before & After, Furniture, Home, Livingroom

Name Five Things

Okay, let’s play a game: Can you name five things that are different and five things that are the same in these two photos? The winner gets the pure satisfaction in knowing that she is awesome. Very awesome.

So, let’s get started!

Photo 1

Photo 2

Did you find your five things? If you’re still working on it, I totally understand because there are so, so many changes to our livingroom that it would be hard to name them all. But the big main deal is that we got NEW FURNITURE!!!

Yup, after 8 years of marriage we took the plunge and bought furniture. But we did it a super smart way: on craigslist.

You see, we like to pay cash for our purchases and forking over $1000+ on a couch and chairs just isn’t something we were wanting to do. I guess that’s why it also took us EIGHT YEARS to buy any new pieces. (However, our new-to-us furniture is only 2 years old & cost just about $300…woo-hoo!)

And I it could also do something with the fact that I’m really frugal and if it (kind of) works then I’ll use it. The sweet leather couch was given to us from a couple at our church for our first apartment. Before that I just had that gold vintage bench (which I still love by the way!).

Old Couch

New Couch

Now, there’s still work to be done with the bench turned coffee table. Like, my hubby wants me to recover it. And I’d like to find a large tray to add to the top of it for our drinks and whatnot. But we love, love, love the clean lines and awesome fabric on our couch and our two chairs.

Old Chairs

New Chairs

I loved those vintage green chairs, but unfortunately I did not love sitting in them. Once you sat down there was no getting up (and that’s not because they were oh-so-cozy!). The springs and inner-workings of the chairs were just falling apart. They needed to be completely gutted and reconstructed and everything. Poor things!

Our new chairs, however, are big and soft and you can actually sit in them without feeling like you’re going to drop through the bottom. They are a-mazing!

There are more changes to share with you, but for now I’ll leave you with these happy shots…

Have you found your five things by now? If not you will be able to by the end of this week!

Happy Creating!
Jen

Tagged furniture, modern, Shopping

Mar 25 2011

2 Comments

DIY, Furniture, Livingroom, Restyling, Thrifting, Ugly

A Rockin’ Restyle (No Paintbrush & No Sewing Required!)

If you don’t already have a rocking chair like the one pictured on the left in the above picture then I’m 99% sure you could find one on Craigslist today. These chairs come a dime a dozen and ours was a hand-me-down waiting for some love, hiding out in the garage.

I pulled it out of the garage last weekend and brought it to the front porch. It wasn’t quite the look I was going for to welcome guests, so then I pulled out the spraypaint primer and got to spraying.

It took the entire can…but was totally worth it. I let the paint dry (and in the meantime I worked on the garden…yippee!!! Pics to come next week on my flower babies).

After the primer dried it was time to spraypaint it Valspar’s Glossy White (then I let it dry).

Now onto the cushion cover. I took a ruffled bedskirt that I found at Goodwill a couple of years ago ($3-4) and simply wrapped it around the existing cushions. I tucked in all the edges and it draped nicely over the chair.

For the pillow I used a bedsheet that I had cut into thirds. This was another Goodwill find from a couple of years ago ($3-4). I wrapped the sheet around the pillow, tied a knot in the back and tucked in any loose ends. Ta-da! A no sew-recover.