Here is my latest project... a birthday present for my sister who is soon planning on moving out. It was my first time using spray paint of furniture. I think the finished project looked great... but it took 4 cans of paint, so a more expensive option then buying a can of paint.
I just bought these chairs and I love them! The wing back style looks so regal, comfy and classic... perfect for my house! (Well I don't know about the regal part) I bought them thinking I would recover them, but when I got them home I realised two things. One: the fabric is in really good condition. Two: it would take a ton of work to recover these properly. So I think, at least for the first while, I am going to keep these guys as they are. The fabric I am planing to use for the dining room chairs has this teal/forest green color in it, so I am going to make two rectangular pillows to sit on the chairs to try to tie them in. (The fabric on the left is the dinning room chair and pillow fabric, the middle fabric is for the couch, and the fabric on the right, was for the chairs, but I think it will be drapery now... we will see)
Then if I can find one more fabric with the teal color and the blues, greens and browns to just tie everything in a little bit more I think this new color scheme will work... especially with hits of coral.
I have accumulated four tables in three weeks. My glass coffee table, a small round wood and metal table, the dinning room table from the home we are moving into and this table... my 20$ table. I gave him a two good primer coats then used less then one can of spray paint... he's sexy, no?
It's true, I have a crush on my newly painted and upholstered chairs and I don't care who knows it!
(You may recognize some of these chairs from a previous post.... click here to see.)
In the summer of 2007 I purchased a small bench-couch. (It's not really a bench and it's not really a couch so I am going with bench-couch for now.) It was an experience... mostly working with the back tack... that's the stuff you use to wrap you fabric around the hammer on to the furniture. It has about a half inch nails running along it every inch... 
I'm describing this to you in detail so you can imagine my pain when I, with full force, stepped on a strip. But besides that minor set back everything worked out fairly well. It had one arm on it, but I decided against using it. I stained the wood darker, and re-padded it, and upholstered it.
I inherited this mirror when my parents remodeled one of their bathrooms. It was just a large rectangular mirror but to mount it we used a 1 x 4 and beveled out a ledge on both pieces to hold the mirror... painted it black and voila! It looks pretty happenin' on our barn wall.
When ever my friends praise me for something I've created and ask "Where does your creativity come from?" (and now is the part where I stop sounding concieted...) I think back to my upbringing. I grew up with a crafter for a mother. My mom always facilitated crafts when we were young. She taught me how to sew, upholster, bake and cook and always encouraged my creativity. So when I did the last two upcycling dressers blogs I thought I should give a "shout out" blog to my momma. These are two dressers that she upcycled. What an amazing lady... in crafts and so much more!
This next dresser you can see had a pretty rough start.
I had an inspiration for this piece... (I saw it in a Winners) I incorporated a lot of this dresser into mine, I took the two toned colors, although I chose to use a light brown stain I already had instead of buying the honey brown color, and the framed rectangle top. In the beginning I hated the drawer pulls, I want something to make it look more modern. It tried so hard to find something else, but alas the vintage dresser had, of course, vintage pulls with an odd measurement between the two screws. 
So over the months of failed searching for new pulls I fell in love with the old ones. They kind of look like an old airport symbol.
I love upcycling furniture. My favorite type of furniture to do is the dresser. I find that dressers made decades ago are more sturdy then the veneer-covered mdf products commonly found nowadays. This one I bought for 30$, sanded it and stained it cherry red. It looks pretty hot in our green bedroom.
My parents did this same thing in their basement, but they left theirs the light color and drew lines on it... like hardwood lines, then varnished it five times. It looks pretty cool too.
We decided to either spend a good amount of money on something, and plan to keep it for years to come, or buy something cheap that would be temporary until we could afford to replace it. One item that got the short end of the money stick was our dining room set. We ended up buying mis matched chairs from thrift stores. (I'm only at three... still on the look out for chair number four) I decided to go with a crazy fabric for the seats, because the seat cushion is such a small space and I wanted to make an impact. This fabric is actually vintage 1970s. I'm not too crazy about the different colors of chairs, they are fun for now, but I'm think once chair four comes along they might all turn white... we'll see. But totally cheap to do, and upholstering chair seats is super easy if they are the type where the seat just screws off. It also makes it easier to paint the chair.
As of the moment this chest of drawers is my favorite customized piece. (I stole the picture from Design Sprout) Customizing will always cost more then the generic products offered, but it is almost always worth it. One gets a sense of pride knowing their piece is the only one and usually it was made for that specific spot you put it in and it'll look so sharp... well this is how I feel about our computer desk and wall cabinets.
We have a weird indent where we wanted to put our computer, so to use all the space possible custom was just the way to go. My husband does wood works as a hobby, so together (I did the glueing... of course, and the standing, staining and varnishing) we made this custom piece. So to sum up, customizing will maximize all the space its designed for, look sharp and make you proud as a peach to own it.
