5$ Chair Updo

I got this chair at a thrift store for $5! I love the shape and thought it would be an easier chair to reupholster due to it having wood arms. I have wanted to try drop cloth on a chair for a while so thought this one would be the perfect project! {drop cloth $10 at Home Depot}. I painted the wood white and love the results! So here is the before and after my friends!

Living Room {Before and After}

Hello! I am one of the two sisters from The White House Boutique. I wanted to share some of my home makeover with you all! My hubster and I moved into our {1st} home a little over a year ago and I've just recently FINISHed my wallpapered fiascled living room. It is a 1890's house with no straight walls and or straight windows {so it made re-wallpapering quiet difficult}. My living room was covered with this pink flowery not so cute stuff (see picture below), that I couldn't paint over it. After several painstaking months upon months of taking this flowery stuff off, I realized I couldn't paint the wall as well, due to all the imperfections this old house blessed me with. Wallpaper my friends {which I now believe should of never been invented} is tougher than it looks. Every wallpapered room I now enter I have a lot more respect for. So lets get down to it.

Here is the before {like the waaaaayyyy before, previous owners that is.}

The During

I do have to admit I'm a bit embarrassed by this photo. Our house looked like this for several months!

 Although the wallpapering may not be perfect. I do love my new living room. And all the imperfections of my old house.

One of the downfalls (as seen in the two pictures below) of a old house is the wiring. My husband or I aren't electricians and the closest we know of one is my father (whom can literally do everything I swear). He said the best way to get my chandelier in the room is to hang it from the ceiling and plug it in. So now I have this ugly cord thing in the center of my wall (we are planning on fixing it) but for now I'll take the chandelier glistening in the room any day even with the ugly cord!

 

 The fun thing about this room (which is the same in all my rooms) is that I got 98% of this stuff at a thrift store (and I'm proud to say  I am a cheapy) and or DIYs. My favorite thing in this room is the yellow couch, I scored it at a second hand store for $275! The rugs? Wal-Mart for $30 each! The chandelier? 50$ at a garage sale! The piano? FREE! The chevron chair? $2 at a thrift store and I reupholstered it for under $7! Book shelf?- 10$ at garage sale! Owl lamp?-$5 garage sale! Map wall art?-$1 garage sale! I could go on and on my friends (it makes me so excited) haha. :) 

Toy turned Glam

We got a box of these little plastic cute horses, a couple bulls, and a couple donkeys at a sale. We wanted to glam them up.

So with a little spray metallic spray paint (got paint at Menards) they turned out glitzed!

This poor little horsey that was once sad and lonely.

Is now a gold stallion for everyone to see!

Dumpster transformation!

So we mentioned before that there is a wonderful week in Fargo/Moorhead that is called clean up week. I would consider it a holiday that we celebrate. We wanted to share some of our dumpster transformations with you. Yes, people threw goodies out in their trash.....but no need to worry.....the White House Gals rescued several treasures before there time was done. Each has their own story..........

This little chair I saw great potential in.

My mom got this a while ago at a thrift store...and it didn't take much in talking her to give it to me.....haha...I fell in love with the tribal print. Who would actually wear this awesome vest in the first place? Might as well give it some love.

So put it on a chair. Add some pen painted free handed arrows and you got yourself a pretty dang cute little chair.

How cute would this be at a cabin or in a deer shack? They can be pretty too right?

See inspiration here.

Dresser Transformed

In a blog post before We speak of Multiple Design Personality Disorder....this just happens to be one of our many cases.  This is my 3rd t.v. stand in 3 years.  I just could not seem to find the perfect one.  Until now. Our first one was just one of those wood ones from Walmart {we needed one quickly} but for me it lacked character and not enough space.  The second one was a large and mustard yellow with fun newspaper print on the doors. This had the space I wanted plus the character but then it was just too loud for me...It became the focal point of the room and I was looking for something that was pleasing to the eye.  So I was on the hunt!  My husband was just thrilled that I was on the look out for yet another T.V stand {men just don't understand......plus I told him He's just lucky I don't trade my Husband like I do my furniture....{hehehehe joke of the day!}} 

   I came across this dresser which was a great size, loved the detail and character, & it had lots of storage... but ....{there is always a but} I knew I had to find something that would hold all the guy stuff such as the receiver and dvd player.  I just had to have it and I was going to find a way for it to work.  I brought it home and introduced it to my living room and got to work.  I'm going to do that trick where you remove the top drawer...never done this before but lets figure it out together!  I began by painting the dresser....Being it had so much character already in the wood I just wanted to go with the simple beautiful color white...I knew between the dark wood and white I would have a great contrast to rough it up a bit! 

• I added two coats of interior latex paint; I removed the top drawer and also painted inside the drawer area so that too could be freshened up!
• Then I grabbed a piece of sandpaper and started to rough up the edges and the detailed doors to give it more of a pop!  
• I gave it an Annie Sloan Clear Wax to seal the deal!  
• I kept the original hardware because I liked the chunkiness of them!  
• I removed the "track" that the drawer rolled on so I could have a nice flat surface to work with. 

•  I grabbed myself a tape measure and wrote down the dimensions of the inside of the removed drawer.  I thought that I could just hand an employee my measurements at Menard's and receive the board I needed cut just right but that wasn't the case.  They only cut lumber such as 2x4's so I guess that leaves me to cutting it! Oh Boy!  I was able to find a smooth thin piece of wood in their plywood area.  This board was roughly $6.  
• I brought it home measured and penciled it out on where I would be cutting.  I grabbed my husband's electric hand saw/ and safety goggles {this was an interesting sight} in the end of all the cutting I had myself a board that was going to be my electronic platform!  
• I inserted it and the fit was perfect!  I bet I couldn't do that again if I tried!  I just left it the natural light wood color because I liked the different elements being used but you could also paint that the same color as the entertainment center so it all blends!  
• Another tip is to cut a small hole through the back of the dresser where the open compartment is....this will help with cords from one electronic to another!  

I was so happy with the ending result! AND so is My Husband...I think I impressed him with the whole using the electric saw thing all by myself!  It is a perfect addition to our family room.....I think this one is going to stick around for a while!  Thanks for Stopping by our Blog! xoxo The White House Girls

Painted Couch Reveal!

Check out our new website! www.thewhitehouseboutique.com      
 Yes the painted frenzy doesn't stop at chairs {see here and here}. We painted this couch and the results were AMAZING! So amazing we fought over who could keep it....It literally looks like leather! I cheated on the reveal though by not finishing the seat cushions but couldn't hold it in anymore and wanted to share.

BEFORE

2 parts paint to 1 part fabric medium {the fabric medium softens the fabric}

THIS IS SO MUCH FUN!  Love watching the transformation!! Ahhhhhh....this poor little couch just sat there all lonely....It was in amazing shape and I LOVED the wood detail!  After painting the matching chair {which went so smoothly} we decided that it had to be ours!  I am so glad we rescued this lovely!

AFTER

It truly looks like an expensive leather couch!  love it!  Now it's just time to finish the cushions!  Hope you all enjoyed our HOW To!  I bet you are all looking around at your furniture wondering what you can paint! 

Warms my heart....

Click here for chevron how to.

Fabric painting frenzy!!!!!

     Yes our mom caught the bug. The chair painting bug. We are so proud of her because this is a bit daring for her. (Even though she painted it white, we always tease her because she paints everything white and we always try to tell her to paint something with a little color). hahaha. She did awesome and all by herself! It turned out beautiful! She ran out of paint medium and is planning on painting the cushion as well (Thief River Falls doesn't carry the paint medium). Last night she was looking around her house to see if she could paint anything else. hahaha....So if you do this BEWARE you might catch the bug yourself.  We wanted to share the beautiful chair with you. Click here for the how-to.

Before

After

We've got a first timer!......Reupholstered Chair

My sister and I got these chairs last winter....and had to get them ($20 for the pair). There was two of them...and since everything is better in pairs we couldn't pass them up. Not to mention we loved the shape and size as well. But what and how should we make these a bit cuter? They were a peach color and had no holes but lots of stains on them. We contemplated painting them perhaps? I just wasn't quiet that daring....yet..(see our painted chair here)...my sister got this awesome fabric that she put onto this fabulous bench. As soon as she showed me birds started singing in my head and butterfly's fluttered in my heart......

 I then knew that I HAD to do or try to reupholster these chairs in this fabric....BECAUSE I WAS OBSESSED! Heres were I got the fabric. So here I go....I googled and searched for a day on how to reupholster a chair. So I attempted and somewhat succeeded I think? I love the way it turned out...I just hope it stays put? So here's how I did it. * Note: I advise to use home decor fabric because it is easy to work with.

I read on one blog to reupholster a chair in a spot that is in your way (example: the middle of a hallway) this way you get it done faster haha (it was great advice that I followed and oh so true). First I started ripping! I took off the piping all around the chair (I used a pliers to help me out on this). Then I started to rip off the fabric. Some staples came out with the fabric and some stayed on the chair. I read on some blogs that the individuals took each staple out (which would take forever) and on others that they didn't worry about taking the staples out so I decided to take the easy way out and not worry about taking the staples out and it still worked out great. On blogs I read to start with the inner arm cushion first and work your way out from the chair, doing the side arms and the back last.  Make sure when you are ripping off the fabric to keep it in the original shape that it is stapled on at as much as possible. You take the pieces off and lay them onto the fabric and cut out the shapes.

When disassembling the chair fabric just try to remember how it was put on and you just put the new fabric on exactly how you took the old fabric off. A tip *Take pictures of every angle of chair...that way you can remember how it was assembled. 

 Next after ripping off the fabric I painted the wood frame. I chose black. I had to put two coats on.

 

Then I took the pieces of the fabric and started to staple them on (the way the old fabric was on). (sorry don't have a good picture of this). I stapled all around the fabric with a heavy duty stapler and had my staples about a quarter of an inch apart from each other.

 After completing the staples I went back and trimmed off the fabric.

Here was a tricky part. I had to fold over the fabric in the corner (as seen). I just pulled it really tight and folded it over and stapled it down. I hid the seems later with piping.

 Next I took maxi piping and glued it all around the edging of the chair with hot glue. And here is my finished project. I LOVE IT! I am now in the process of chair #2! So cute so fun.

Fabric (about 2 yards) $20
Chair $10
Piping $4
Total cost of chair $34

 Before

 After