New Stools

I know I should be updating on The Handbuilt Bedroom, but it’s too grey to take pictures in my son’s room right now.  Instead I thought I show my new kitchen acquisitions…I have stools!

Although our previous home did have a bar of sorts, we never had any bar stools because it would have been too crowded with the table right next to it.  In this home, though, the island is perfect for some extra seating.

I scoured Craigslist for some stools I could paint, but never did find anything with enough “pizzaz” for me—or that came in a set of three—or that was the right price!

I had about given up on the hunt, when I walked into Pier 1 and saw these beauties:  the Weldon stools. 

They come in both bar- and counter-height--although I personally think “counter-height” ought to be 26” rather than 24”—and they come in a whole bunch of great colors!  I fell in love!

I couldn’t choose a favorite…can’t you tell??

Thanks to a 20% off coupon, they came home with me.

The kids love them, and even I will take advantage of the extra seating now and again…especially when there are warm cookies on the counter!

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Not a paid advertisement…I just like the stools!

The Handbuilt Bedroom, pt. 2

So the goal is to build all the furniture for my son’s bedroom, as explained in Part 1. 

Here’s a reminder of where we started:

I listed all his bedroom furniture on Craigslist:  headboard, frame, mattress, bedding (including the pirate quilt I made—that was hard to part with!), dresser, desk, and chair.  It sold all as a set, so he ended up with a bare room pretty much overnight!

That was OK by me, though; it’s much easier to paint an empty room!

My boy wanted stripes, and this was the quilt we were able to agree on for the basis for his room.

The first thing to get painted, though, was the CEILING!  In this house the walls AND ceilings are all the same beige.  I am NOT a fan of beige ceilings, so someday they will ALL be painted!

It’s amazing how much a just changing the ceiling color lightened up the room (I used Sherwin Williams Eminence Ceiling Paint in Creamy).

We decided to pull the green out of the quilt for the wall color.  Again, we were trying to lighten things up a little (color is Sherwin Williams Super Paint in Rice Paddy).  Sorry for the cell phone picture here!

Next step was the give the walls a little character.  I taped off a wide stripe and painted it the same white as the room trim…

…the I used MORE tape to divide that large white stripe into some smaller stripes.  I looked really good climbing around the room with three rolls of tape on my arm, like bracelets!

And this is how it turned out!  I have to tell you that the paint bled LIKE CRAZY on the red and blue stripes, and I have no one to blame but myself.  You can get good results if you really seal the edges of the tape well with a plastic scraper or credit card.  You get GREAT results if you do that AND paint over the edges of the tape with your base color.  You get lousy results if you skip step one, even if you do step two.  Ugh.  I had a lot of touching up to do…

…but you can’t tell now!

Next step….I promise I actually BUILD something!

The Handbuilt Bedroom, pt. 1

We’ve been in our new Washington home for almost five months now.  Our home has four bedrooms on the second floor, and one bedroom on the main level of the house.  Looking forward to the day when my parents will visit, I knew that I wanted the main-level bedroom to also function as a “guest room,” even though my teenage son occupies it most of the time.

This is what his room looked like for the first few months after we moved in.  Not too special, is it??

The furniture was transferred out of the never-quite-completed “pirate” bedroom in our Utah home (below), and it was put together for a different son!  You can see, though, that a thirteen-year-old boy might not be as excited about the same decor.!

So I had a brain-storm.  Obviously I have been on a bit of a furniture-building kick (that may be an understatement), and I said to myself, “How would it be to build all the furniture for my son’s bedroom??”

Oooh…challenge extended….

…challenge accepted…!

There has been some tricky navigation going on between me and my son…I want him to have a room that he can enjoy, but something that also will be suitable for guests…AND it has to be something that I can get excited about working on!

So one of the first steps was to decide on colors so I could tackle the painting.  Stripes were a must, as well as healthy dose of red.

I bought and returned three quilts/comforters before I came across this one at Home Goods, which we could both agree on!

With that as a start, it was time to start painting! 

Stay tuned for part 2!

Woven-back Bench

A few weeks ago, a new plan appeared on Ana White’s page for a Woven-back bench, and I was smitten!

I promptly e-mailed my friend for whom I have built a table, buffet, coffee table, and the gray bench, knowing she was on the look-out for a bench to put outside at her new home…I’m nice like that.   She fell in love with it too, so I had an excuse to build!

The construction of the body of the bench is pretty straight-forward.  One tricky part is that the back pieces are cut out of a 2x4 to have an angle to them, which makes the back much more comfortable!  I traded homemade bread for another go at the band saw, like I did for this project. 

I’m thinking a Mother’s Day band saw sounds nice…

Sorry I forgot to take a picture of that piece, but I was pretty proud of myself for cutting them, so you at get to hear about it anyway!

The beautiful woven back was challenging, but fun!

I’m learning that for these angled pieces, it’s easiest to cut one angle, hold the piece in place, and then make a pencil line where the other angle goes.

Everything fits better, and I make fewer mistakes that way!

I had NO desire to drill ninety-eleven pocket holes to hold all these short pieces together…

And that may be (in some measure) due to the fact that while drilling pocket holes, I caught a still-spinning drill bit in my jeans just behind my right knee.  I was left with a good-sized hole in my jeans, but thankfully a much smaller one in the skin behind them!

…so after dry-fitting everything, I used glue and 2” brad nails to hold it all together.  Then I could slip everything back in place.

Ta-da!  I took a picture of it and sent it to my friends!  I’m geeky like that.

The most frustrating part??  Running out of boards to finish the seat!  But I still posted a sneak peak on Facebook!

My friend wanted a dark walnut stain.  I learned another lesson…staining all those short pieces BEFORE assembly would have been a good idea!  There were a lot of little corners to get in to.

One change I made to the plans was to add a 2x4 cross brace under the middle of the seat (it runs perpendicular to the seat slats, and attaches by pocket holes to the front and back frame pieces).  When my 100-lb son sat down and it made an ominous creaking sound…I decided a little extra support was in order!  Now we can both sit on it, and it’s quiet as can be!

It looked so inviting, I thought I’d “break it in” for my friend and have a little snack out on the bench on a beautiful day…

…but I took too long snapping pictures, and one of the local wildlife got to my snack first!!

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Thanks to Elizabeth & Co. for featuring this project!

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Linking up here:

Domestically Speaking	Elizabeth & Co.
Primitive & Proper	Thrifty Décor Chick
Friday Remodelaholic
My Simple Home Life’s Simple Creations Friday	Miss Mustard Seed’s Furniture Feature Friday
Funky Junk’s Saturday Night Special	The DIY Show Off
Beyond the Picket Fence	Coastal Charm
Knick of Time Mod Vintage Life	My Uncommon Slice of Suburbia
Perfectly Imperfect	Sawdust Throwdown
Common Ground	My Repurposed Life
From My Front Porch to Yours	All Star Block Party A Little Knick Knack
The Scoop!

How it all began, & a Red Hen version of a Pottery Barn Dining Table

In case you were wondering how I got started on my table-building spree…I’m here to tell the tale!

Our new home has an actual dining room, and I’ve spent WAY too much time dreaming and wondering and imagining what kind of table I’d like to put in there…

I fell in love with this look first…

Traditional Dining Room by Seattle Kitchen And Bath Warmington & North

…as well as this one.

Pottery Barn

The Pottery Barn table (above) particularly made my heart go pitty-pat.  I love the fact that it is large enough to seat eight people (since there are that many of us), and it also extends to seat even more.  What I didn’t love was the price—anywhere between $1700-$2500, depending on if you were in store, on-line, or standing on your head (meaning…there is no rhyme or reason to it). 

I just couldn’t bring myself to do it.

I’m just too cheap frugal. 

So I decided to try building my own table.  I had wanted to try building something for a long time, and surely this was my golden opportunity!  It wouldn’t extend, but I figured the money I would save would make me feel better about it!

So I started with this one:

…and then I sold it. 

Then I made another:

…and another:

I sorta-kinda joked with my husband that if I could only build and sell five or six tables, I could afford the Pottery Barn one!  But really, I was having so much fun building tables, I couldn’t bring myself to stop!

After building three of the same style table, I decided to make some small changes to get closer to that PB one I loved.  And this is what I came up with.

I followed the measurement of the PB table almost exactly.  I wanted the maximum possible room between the legs for the people sitting on the sides.

I swapped out the super thick top with breadboard ends for a thinner version.  I used three 1x10’s and two 1x8’s, and skipped the breadboard ends. 

I liked the pretty little brackets that detailed the legs on the PB table, so I made some of my own.

I don’t have a band saw, so I had to be nervy and make my husband ask a new neighbor if *I* could borrow theirs 

…but I made homemade cinnamon rolls for payment!

Here are my pretty little brackets…aren’t they cute??

You may recognize the bench from here.  I liked how its curves complemented the table, even though I didn’t choose to keep it! 

The chairs were purchased from World Market when they were on sale.  The kids are jealous that their dad and I get the GOOD chairs!    Especially since they don’t actually have chairs yet; I’m still on the hunt for those!

So that’s my version of the PB Solomon dining table.  It doesn’t extend.  But it’s solid wood and cost about a tenth of the price to make (and that’s on a good day). 

I’m sure you’re all dying to know…are you keeping the table??

Well….no.

Oh, go ahead.  Roll your eyes if you want to.

But remember how I said it was fun to build tables??  Well, it IS!  And I keep having new ideas I want to try out, and you can’t just keep building tables if you also aren’t selling them at the same time…

So I sold it.

We got to eat Easter dinner at it first.

But now it’s gone.

My husband thinks we should put a revolving door in the dining room.

He may be right!

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Linking up here:

Domestically Speaking	Elizabeth & Co.
Primitive & Proper	Thrifty Décor Chick
Friday Remodelaholic
My Simple Home Life’s Simple Creations Friday	Miss Mustard Seed’s Furniture Feature Friday
Funky Junk’s Saturday Night Special	The DIY Show Off
Beyond the Picket Fence	Coastal Charm
Knick of Time Mod Vintage Life	My Uncommon Slice of Suburbia
Perfectly Imperfect	Sawdust Throwdown
Common Ground	My Repurposed Life
From My Front Porch to Yours	All Star Block Party A Little Knick Knack
The Scoop!