Diary of a Dive, Part 6 - Rehabbing a multi purpose bench seat

~By Michelle Portesi

I found this bench seat some time ago at the local Home Goods/TJ Maxx. (Don't you just love that place?) As I mentioned in my previous post, 2 of the chairs to my thrift store dining table were falling apart and finally imploded entirely.  I needed some sort of replacement to make the table useable for more than 4 people, but even more importantly, I wanted something that would be primarily used as a coffee table/ottoman as well. The apartment is tiny, so anything I bring into it needs to have multiple purposes if at all possible, and this was just the ticket.

bench seat with lower shelf

That being said, I hated the fabric on it, (It looked like a bunch of baseballs!) the wood's stain didn't match anything I owned, and as you can see, it's pretty obvious where I put my feet up on the thing.  Fabric is notoriously hard to keep clean when one's personal outlook for interiors is casual and you believe its reason for existence is to be used. My furniture tends to get heavy abuse - and it shows.

Gee, who would want to sit on this dirty thing?

My intention was to paint and reupholster it and the original plan was to make the top section a slipcover with an elastic hem that could be easily taken off and thrown in the wash. Heck, I could even make a couple of them and change them out when they got too dirty or the spirit moved me. (I did mention that I've got way too much fabric I've been carting around for years that needs to be used didn't I ?...)

Bench Seat, Ottoman, Coffee Table- AND it has extra storage!

Anyway, I cleaned the dirt off the fabric as best I could and since I didn't want the old fabric pattern (and remaining dirt discoloration) to show through the new fabric, I just painted it along with the frame to match my other furniture. I was going to cover the top with a red fabric to coordinate with the striped fabric, but I already have a lot of red in here, (as you'll see in a future post) and as a little red goes a long way, I decided it was just too much.

Yes, I know. Now I have to go through all of those magazines and pitch some.

I really liked the lightness of the top, but let's face it, any shade of white in this application was going to be filthy in no time. And I certainly DID think that a painted fabric would be a cracked hot mess if I used it as is. So I was very pleasantly surprised to discover that the new painted top was not only 'leather like', but was very easily scrubbable...and what dirt that eventually would not scrub off could just be repainted. Since it's a latex based paint, the fabric has some elasticity and  bounces back from any dents left by feet propped up on it - AND, without cracking.

Who'd of thunk it?


I'll probably eventually make the elastic top slipcover as I originally planned, but as I haven't decided what to cover it with yet, this will do just fine for the time being.

Diary of a Dive - Part 4 - Updating Old Furniture

By Michelle Portesi
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I found this lovely hutch in a second hand store for a mere $200 over a decade ago. I loved its overall shape and style, but I confess, I really hated the stain color. Kind of a dark ashy brown that had yellowed with age. Emulating the hinky look of that period, their idea of 'antiquing' it was to take a black paint crayon and make little squiggly marks all over it. (You can't see them in the photo, but trust me, they're there.) I also wasn't wild about the wired open doors either.

I originally bought it to
put my TV in. The center section fit the older style 24" TV perfectly width wise, and the VCR tapes fit perfectly in the drawers.

This was before flat screen TV's were affordable, and the old style TV was super deep, requiring that I cut a hole in the hutch's back to shove the rest of the TV's hind quarters through,

 in addition to needing a hole for the electrical plug. I admit, I did a sloppy job of cutting the hole, but since you couldn't see it when the TV was in it, I grinned and ignored it.  I always knew that eventually I'd get around to refurbishing it, and I vacillated for years as to whether to strip it down entirely and re-stain it a nicer color, or give in to my 'cottage look' proclivities, and just paint it white.
Guess which idea finally won? LOL  

Now that I no longer use it for the TV, I wanted to turn it back into the hutch's original purpose, which was for your typical dining room dishware and accoutrements storage. I had some mirror cut to size for the back of the hutch, which nicely covered my sloppily cut hole.  I pulled out the wired inserts from the doors, with the intent of replacing them with beveled glass...that is until I priced them out...  


 YIKES! Just those two small glass door inserts alone were going to cost over double what I originally paid for the hutch!  So I may need to rethink that option and decide if I just want to eventually put in some less expensive antique patterned glass, or live without until the day I can afford the beveled. (...and that could be a  l-o-o-o-o-n-g wait...)

I painted the old, turn of the last century, vintage, Windsor desk chair while I was at it. Yes, call me a blasphemer for painting it. The current finish was completely trashed, and I had already stripped it, sanded it and re-stained it once already when I had first bought it oh so many moons ago. It was a hot mess even way back then. One could even see all the hues of the chair's former transformations on the bottom of the seat.

The desk chair was the first piece of furniture I purchased when I moved out on my own and I still love its petite and delicately bended shape. It's had several decades of hard use and many moves - and that's in addition to the many years it had already racked up long before I bought it. Oh, all the stories it could tell!

But I digress...

The hutch has quite a bit of elaborate routing and carving, and I wanted a vintage feel, so I got some light grained sand paper and gently rubbed some of the edges so that the previous stain underneath would show through and showcase all of the hutches intricate detail. The handles to the hutch were beautifully shaped, but they were made of ugly colored, cheap pot metal, so I painted those white too with spray enamel. Originally I was going to seal the whole thing with water based varnish, but it really yellowed the white paint, so I bought some high quality furniture paste wax and sealed it that way. It only slightly darkened the white paint (and with no yellowing) which left the hutch with a lovely satin sheen that wasn't too glossy.

 

Next up, I'll be re-upholstered and painting a bench seat that doubles as my coffee table and extra dining table seating. And being hopelessly creative, I've got lots of fabric I've been carting around for years that needs to be used.

Reduce . Reuse . Recycle

In a small studio apartment, everything has to be multi-purpose!