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 5 - Dining/Desk Area

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If you've been following along, I'm fixing up an old, run down studio apartment. It's 266 square feet to be exact, and not only is it my living space, I do freelance design and crafts from here as well. (What can I say, I'm hopelessly creative...)  What furnishings that fit have to be multi purpose.

(Click on the photos for larger views)

BEFORE

AFTER

Towards that end, my dining table gets pressed into service as a desk more than it does as an eating area, hence why there is a table lamp on it. (The table is usually pressed tighter to the wall as a result, but for photos - or dinner guests, it gets pulled out.) 

Dining/Desk Area

The broken mini blinds got pitched and they were replaced with inexpensive 2" vinyl blinds from a home center. I already had the toile fabric to make the top part of the valance and sewed it in a scalloped pattern. As nice pearl colored buttons are pricey, (and I needed quite a few), I instead found a clearance, costume jewelry pearl necklace (Target) and just took it apart and sewed them on like buttons. (A plethora of pearly buttons for the same cost as 2 buttons! Bargain!  And they don't droop like the 1/2 round buttons do.)

Waverly Country House Toile Red Fabric

 The curtain panels themselves I also had from a previous apartment, but they were made from...

...wait for it...

This:

Cost Plus World Market: Indian Gauze Canopy

Oh Yes I Did!

I love the tightly pleated and crimped gauze, but it's hard to find as a curtain panel...or even as fabric by the yard. So I stumbled across this Canopy from World Market, and just cut off the muslin from the top of the canopy and kept the crimped gauze.  I had a mucho % off coupon, so all together, it was cheaper than buying curtain panels -or even just fabric!  As it already had curtain ties that had attached to the bamboo hoop, I just tied them around a standard $3, white curtain rod. As the canopy is very long, I cut off the excess and used it for the second tier of the valance.

The rest are all things I had. The lamp was my mom's, and it was in our house when I was a kid.  However, it did have a beat up frilly brown, circa 1960's shade on it, which may have had something to do with why mom didn't want it anymore. The shade got ditched immediately and replaced with something more elegant. 

The hurricane lamps I bought ages ago from one of those internet 'Everything is 12 bucks' stores. The red bows were actually just for Christmas, but I liked them, so they stayed up. The little vase of fake flowers are actually pens. A friend of mine's daughter made them for my birthday one year. Pretty AND handy! 

And of course, my vintage style poster of a Jules Cheret print. Ice skating, natch. 

 The dining table and chairs were a thrift shop find for some ridiculous price, like $45 or something. In fairness, the table was in good shape, but the sets original 6 chairs were already in some form of falling apart

Thrift Store find...with new fabric seat

 Two chairs imploded almost immediately, but for the remaining four, I recovered the seats. I found this beautiful fabric (Raymond Waites, Abington Ruby Red) which is sadly discontinued. I did the armchairs in the red floral with what I had left, but the side chairs all had to be done in a coordinating solid red fabric. 

And if anyone ever comes across that fabric in their travels, email me!!!

At any rate, the remaining chairs will need to be replaced eventually. I'm thinking these Overstock.com chairs.

Of course, the seats will be recovered in red. Hence, why I'd love to find more of that fabric someday.

All good things in time...

~ Coming up: Working our way through the other side of the apartment. Sofa/bed, How I incorporated my obvious book fetish, created a reasonable closet and the bathroom.

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!

Rental Transformation: Diary of a Dive...Part 1

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I'm finally in a position to rent my own place. It's been awhile, and I want to thank all the people who have kept a roof over my head for the past couple of difficult years who made it possible. But now it's time to move on...and move in.

It's still tough out there job wise, and in an effort to keep my debt load down as low as possible, I've rented an old, tired and worn studio apartment. (And in renting a studio, I also wanted to indulge my Tiny House obsession to see if I could really tolerate living in such small quarters). Although in all honesty, I have a penchant for renting run down habitats even when times are good. Never one to spend beaucoup dinero on antiseptic white apartments with one window in it, I opt for old places because they usually have more charm, windows and light. More importantly, when the owner hears I'm a designer, he usually lets me do whatever I want to it, on the premise that the place is so beat up, there isn't much I could do to it that wouldn't be an improvement.

This place is no exception.

Cracked drywall, broken mini blinds...so much to do...

Beaten and battered wood floor. It's still better than carpet in my book...

The photo is a bit deceiving, as the paint on the wall is all a grey white color, but the flash against the semi-gloss on the wood wainscot makes it appear lighter than it actually is.

I love wood floors, but there is no mistaking that these are original to the building (Circa 1940 maybe? It smacks of being a summer motel originally).

You can see the cracks in the wall I've started spackling and the floors definitely need some help (...and I much prefer that to carpet. I'm not a fan of wall to wall in a 'dirt intensive' area such as the mountains, as I've stated in a previous blog post. Carpet is near impossible to keep clean here.) The drywall is uneven, and has obviously been patched and patched again, for which no amount of spackle will repair. The floors speak for themselves. If I owned the place, I'd do it right and re-plaster the walls and at the very least, sand the floors down to bare wood...but I don't, and I'm not. So the best this place is going to get is some inexpensive cosmetic changes and some elbow grease.

And why? - oh WHY? - do contractors insist on doing this?

Cabinets had been set at 66" off the floor instead of the standard 54"...and with that, even the bottom shelf is 5" taller than I am . Seriously sir? Do I really need to get a ladder out just to have a glass of water?

I admit, this penchant for ramming a 30" high wall cabinet up to the ceiling drives me freaking nuts! And not just because I'm short. (5'1" to be exact). Cabinets are supposed to be 18" off the countertop - NOT 5 1/2 feet off the floor - for a reason. So you can actually reach them!  Not to mention all the (not optimum) storage space it robs you of on top of the cabinets if they had been set properly. In a small kitchen, every storage inch counts.

Now I'll grant you, these were obviously used 'Habitat for Humanity' store finds, and weren't originally designed for this kitchen, so I get that this is just a rental, and they made do. My point is, one sees this being done even in expensive homes and new construction.  Either the contractor assumes no one actually uses the kitchen - or only 6' tall guys cook in it - or the women are amazon's. Either way, it renders the work space relatively useless.

 And of course, I've got another issue to deal with as well...

Note the lovely plumbing pipes for the unit above that no one felt the need to install where they belonged? (Must be interesting if they need repair work done. They've got to come and ask permission to turn the water off in my apartment. Craaaaazy....)


Fortunately, I specialize in kitchen design. I can fix that!
Stay tuned to see what I do, with what I got.

But my first priority is to paint the walls and work on the floors. It's just easier to do those projects before I move my 'stuff' in.

The biggest challenge however is going to be the closet...or more accurately, lack thereof-

30" wide closet.  The ONLY closet. * heavy sigh*

Seriously? Are they kidding me??? I'm a woman. This isn't even big enough to store our shoes...