Furniture Projects Archives - Bigger Than the Three of Us

How To Update A Mid-Century Chair

March 1, 2017 by Ashley Mayes 1 Comment

*Originally, I published this post back in 2012 but wanted to revive it a bit. Since this makeover, the chair has had another makeover, so I’ll make sure to share that at the end. If you’ve ever seen a beautiful mid-century or vintage chair at a flea market, garage sale, estate sale, etc., but weren’t sure how to refresh it… then this post is just for you. New upholstery can transform a chair but there are other things you can do as well. Follow along and learn How To Update A Mid-Century Chair!

I spotted four awesome chairs on Craigslist. They have a Mid-Century/Danish/Vintage feel to them. The guy wanted $10 for all of them ($2.50 a piece). Crazy cheap, right? I thought so. I asked Luke to go with me after work one night to pick them up.

*I checked online to see if I could find anything out about the chairs. They were stamped on the bottom and I was able to see that they usually go for $30-50 a piece. Impressive!

The chairs came home with me (of course!). They have been well-loved yet still have lots of life in them. The upholstery was stained and the wood had nicks, but to me… that just adds something to the piece (when you are buying vintage anyways).

Here’s what they looked like.

BEFORE:

I took all the seat cushions off and I was hoping to find gorgeous wood underneath, but no such thing happened. I knew I would have to recover the cushions so I started looking for some fabric.

My Grandpa said he would help me fix the chairs up a bit. I hauled them in my car to his house. Only one of the chairs had a connection (not sure what to call this) issue. We put some wood glue in the corner and then put the corner bracket back on. We then clamped it together until the glue dried.

We used sanding pads to sand the chairs down where there were major issues. We didn’t bother sanding down the scratches throughout, just the big nicks.

Updating in Progress // How To Update A Mid-Century Chair

We then put on a spray stain in places where we had sanded. It was close enough to the original that we could just spray it on very lightly.

*With stain, make sure to test your color in an nonconspiculous area first.

After the stain dried, I brushed on poly.

While the poly was drying, I grabbed the old chair cushions and found some fun fabric to reupholster them in.

To reupholster, flip your fabric right-side facing the ground. Put your cushion on your fabric so that you know where to cut. Give yourself two inches on all sides when you cut your fabric. Using a staple gun, staple a few staples in on all sides and then go back and forth, pulling each side and stapling tightly.

The chairs had tons of life and character after those changes.

When I transformed the dining room for the One Room Challenge, the chairs just didn’t fit the space with the upholstery that they had on them. I still love the blue fabric but I was ready for a change.

eclectic-classic-mid-century-dining-room-reveal

Just a simple change in the fabric, gave the chairs a whole new look.

I guess the moral of the story is, look for the diamonds in the rough?!

Originally, these were beat up but with a little, or a lot, of love… they turned into quite the beauties.

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Simple DIY Fur Bench

September 30, 2016 by Ashley Mayes 30 Comments

Woohoo, we made it to another Fri-yay! This week wasn’t bad at all, but I’m just always ready for the weekend. I’m especially ready for this weekend. Luke and I are escaping for a LONG weekend to Pittsburgh. The Chiefs are playing there so we are road tripping. It’s a pretty good drive from us, but I don’t want you to worry because I have a list of places to stop at. I’m hoping to have quite a bit of fun at some flea markets. A few readers suggested some mid-century stores between Indianapolis and Pittsburgh and I can’t wait to stop. We are driving our SUV (just in case). =)

Today though, I want to share a fun Simple DIY Fur Bench. I don’t know about you but when the weather starts to feel a bit crisp, I’m ready for chunky blankets, a little fur and sweats. Definitely sweats.

$Make this Simple DIY Fur Bench for a fraction of the cost of buying one!$

Doesn’t it just bring all the good winter feelings to you?

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Rustic Modern DIY Wood Bench with Hairpin Legs

September 12, 2016 by Ashley Mayes 25 Comments

Hi Guys! Hope you all had a terrific, football-filled weekend. =) Our weekend included lots of football, but lots of relaxing around the house as well. It was definitely a much-needed reset from the past month.

Today, I wanted to share a project that I made for the cabin… a rustic modern DIY Wood Bench with Hairpin Legs. I knew I wanted to do something with the leftover wood from the trim install. I thought about it for a bit and then decided to make a bench.The rough-cut cedar is exactly that… rough-cut; which gave me all kinds of issues. BUT, you should totally use this bench tutorial to make yourself a fun bench sized to whatever you want. A word to the wise though, it’s much easier to use wood that’s exactly the same size. I’m probably making it sound worse than it was. Actually, nope, it was bad. Take my advice and use boards with the same dimensions.

Enough jabbering though…

Don’t you just love that grain?

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DIY Planter Pot Table Combo for the Patio

May 16, 2016 by Ashley Mayes 23 Comments

Are you the type of person that’s glad it’s Monday or not? I’m not really sure where I fall. I definitely like structure, so if the weekends lasted longer they might bother me. But, I could take a three day weekend every week with my boys at home. I could definitely handle that. Random thoughts for Monday, right? How was your weekend? Do anything special? We spent most of the weekend moving my mom (she just bought a new house) and moving some our furniture back in from the sunroom. It was definitely a full weekend.

Have you been catching up on Snapchat? I love snapping and chatting over there (I’m biggerthan3ofus). There’s no pressure for anything to be pretty – it’s just real life. Anyways, pop over there if you want to see more of us; or more of my crazy, weird personality; or just more of what I’m thinking about and doing. Today though, I want to share a tutorial that I did for eHow. I made a DIY Planter Pot Table Combo for the Patio.

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DIY Plywood Plant Stand On Wheels

April 5, 2016 by Ashley Mayes 10 Comments

It’s the second week of patio spruce-up on a budget. Check out the first week of patio spruce-up if you missed it. Today, I want to share a much needed but SIMPLE project – a DIY Plywood Plant Stand On Wheels. We have a few larger planter pots and need to be able to move them around a bit on the patio. Those suckers are heavy, so we needed a rollable plant stand. If you’ve been a reader since last year, then you know that we created this DIY Plant Stand:

Today’s project has the same idea but is made using scrap wood. We tend to have scrap plywood around and I was curious to see if I could solve a problem and use some of it. The outcome isn’t quite as cute as the DIY stump roller, but it’s functional and definitely more heavy-duty than the plant stand rollers that you find at the hardware stores.

Ready to see?

Before we get into the tutorial, how sad is our money tree? I could never find a good home for it over the winter and it just lost more and more leaves. I’m hoping it will perk up over the summer.

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COME AND GET IT!