Customized IKEA Barstools

I got a CB2 catalog in the mail a few weeks ago and immediately fell in love with these barstools. They are just a perfect mix of modern and rustic, with their rugged seats and crisp white iron legs. I wanted them badly. But unfortunately I didn't have $378 to spend on the most wonderful barstools I'd ever seen.

Thats when my wheels got turning to DIY something. I knew the first place to go- IKEA of course! The gigantic store with all kinds of goods just waiting to be "hacked". There I found the unfinished birch BOSSE barstool for $39.99. I had been wanting to experiment with stain for some time now, and this was my perfect chance.

I bought two of these guys, along with some Krylon white spray primer and
Fusion spray paint in satin white. I also got a little can of Minwax Wood Finish stain in Jacobean.

The first step was to just take everything out of the boxes. I laid out the chair frames on top of bricks and just got to paintin'. The primer and paint dries REALLY fast, so this took just a few hours for one coat of primer and about 1.5 coats of paint. I can't recommend highly enough that you don't skip the primer stage. The paint goes on so easily and covers so well after.

The scary part was the seats, since I haven't ever used stain before. Let me tell you if you haven't either, the stuff is messy. I would recommend latex gloves if you have 'em, because that stuff was in my fingernails for days. First, you want to sand the top of the seat REALLY WELL. I put my husband to work on this job after I realized I hadn't sanded hard enough. I'd recommend a pretty rough grit sanding block. The fine won't really do much. Get it really nice and even though, because you don't want any scratch marks showing up on the seat once the stain is on. Also make sure that after sanding, the item is free and clear of dust and debris.

I then put a coat of stain, using a foam brush and going in the direction of the grain, over the whole seat. I let it set for about 15 minutes, and then just buffed out the excess with a rag. It was tricky though, because by 15 minutes it's already starting to get gummy. I found the solution for that to be applying another coat of stain the opposite direction, and then only leaving that on for about 5 minutes or so before wiping off.

A few days later I applied two coats of Minwax Polycrylic with a nice brush. I was debating whether I even needed to do this step, but I'm glad I did because they look so much more finished now. Don't skip this step! It seals the stain and makes the wood look very finished.

 So maybe by now you'd like to see the finished product?

Total cost for the pair: under $100. I know my version isn't as cool and organic looking as the CB2 version, but I love mine, and my favorite part is the DIY :) I'm looking for other things to stain now too! 

Updates!

Phew! It has been over two months since I last blogged. I thought for a long time whether or not I should even write another post on this blog or whether I should just take the entire blog down. I decided, at least for today, to write another post if for nothing more than to just document some of the many changes that our house has undergone in the last two months. After all, that is what this blog is about!

I got so busy this semester with school that I just couldn't justify spending time to blog. It was a fantastic semester though, and at the risk of being prideful, I am extremely satisfied with my 4.0 considering the sheer amount of work I had! I actually had fun for the first time in school, largely due to actual interest in the topics I was studying and making some friends with people I worked on projects with. I anticipate that I will have time to blog until mid-January, when I go back to school. This coming semester will be my last, but I have to take 18 hours at three different campuses. So needless to say until I walk across that stage on May 11, I don't believe I will be blogging much ;)

This semester we spent our free day (Saturday) mostly working on home-related things. So I thought I'd just round up some pictures of things that have changed in our house over the last two months. So here we go!

We rearranged the furniture in our living room. We also got a new couch at World Market- for a killer deal. We switched the rugs in our living room and bedroom so the new one in the living room ($20 from Ross) is a much bigger, better size for this room. I recovered the ottomans in painter's canvas. (ignore the mismatched blinds in the dining area behind)

The sofa is the luxe sofa with the charcoal velvet slipcover. Love it. It's so comfy and soft!

You can also see, we moved the dresser from our bedroom down to the living room and it is storing serving pieces and table linens.

 The new arrangement has the television in the corner. It really opened up the room a lot.

Over Christmas we were at Aaron's mom's. She has a large acreage and there are old family buildings on it. We found some pieces to bring home that I'll post about later. This is a piece of cedar we found, I installed metal brackets and put it on the wall above the dresser. We aren't sure that the wood is super old, but love the character of it. Still need to accessorize it (I just put it up this morning)!

 We also finally purchased and put up faux wood blinds on the three windows in the living room, which also allowed us to hang the curtains higher and wider. The blinds sure were an ordeal, involving three trips to Home Depot. The cause for all of the struggle was three windows that varied slightly in dimension.

Perhaps the biggest change and the one that has made the most impact is our painted cabinets! I am so in love with them. They make the entire downstairs feel lighter and brighter. I'll be sure to post our method and before and afters soon.

What makes them look even better is the brand new (convection!) range and microwave that we got on Black Friday with Christmas money from family. Aren't they just great? Cooking is a joy on appliances this pretty- and I love the features on this awesome range so much that I want to cook all the time. 

In September we (well I should say Aaron's awesome aunt and mom) added above cabinet lighting to our kitchen. It looks so great and warm!

We discovered a leak in our faucet so we had to buy and install a new one. We opted for one with a separate sprayer since the sprayer part was what was leaking on our old one, and if this one leaks we can just replace the sprayer. We weren't too upset about the leak though, because our old faucet wasn't totally our style and also spit out foamy stuff every time you turned it on.

One of my favorite additions to the kitchen is the addition of the shelving that Aaron built from scratch! We painted it in the same color as the cabinets and put the shelves right up against the cabinets to help them appear built in. I love to put my dishes on them and it cleared up some cabinet space!

Also found at the family property in a tiny little house that Aaron's grandmother lived in was this galvanized top. It appeared to be used as a top for some beekeeping contraption! I just hung it up in the kitchen for a magnet board and put a few of our Christmas cards on it.

Well, that's been our months in review. I'll post more details soon! 

Deal of the Century

So I might be a little too proud about this deal that I scored a few weekends back at the Crate and Barrel outlet. I was shopping with my husband, mother in law, and aunt in law and Aaron and I went ahead of the others into Crate and Barrel, where I happened upon a large selection of “final sale” dining tables and various furniture. They had some beauuuutiful wood dining tables at some pretty amazingly deep discounts. I didn’t believe it when I saw the Pranzo II extension dining table, a $1699.00 table, for … yes, $249. That is an 85% discount.

 

What I loved about it:

• Too good of a deal to pass up an 85% discount on a very high quality piece.
• The wood table is so lovely. The black legs go perfectly with our already owned chairs.
• It has THREE extension leaves. Yes, THREE. So that means that it can seat 14 people. How amazing is that?! This gives us an opportunity to host both big and small groups of people without even having a formal dining room.
• It was made in Italy.

Why my husband thought we shouldn’t get it and how I convinced him otherwise:

• We already have a table. Why yes we do. We got it off Craigslist for $60 including chairs and it badly needs another coat of paint. It also collects and shows EVERY speck of dust and dirt and makes cleaning it impossible.
• He didn’t wait to buy new chairs. Well guess what, we don’t have to! The ones we have go perfectly. Just need a coat of fresh paint.
• We pretty much only bought it because his mom and aunt kept telling him it was such a great deal.

After we paid for it and left I remembered that I had a 10% off coupon for Crate and Barrel from changing my address on the catalog when we moved. I examined it and it didn’t list any exclusions for final sale/clearance items. We went back to get $25 back and they said it wouldn’t work on final sale items. After I politely pointed out that it does not say that on the coupon, they said their computer just wouldn’t accept it. I knew that customer service would come to my rescue. Not sure why they didn’t call customer service to ask for support in the first place, but alas, customer service said there shouldn’t have been a problem and promptly refunded $25. So the total was only around $240 with tax!

    

Framed File Folders

Our guest bathroom was missing something…..



Enter some framed file folders from World Market…



I was at World Market today when their display of notecards caught my eye. They have so many beautiful prints! I was about to purchase a box of small notecards to frame when I saw these suzani file folders. I liked that there were six of them, in varying colors, and that they would fit in an 8x10 mat. They were $7.99, and I had a 25% off coupon, making them $5.99!



I already had two frames just waiting to be used. All I did was center the file folder on the mat and tape… no cutting required! I like that if I ever decide to use them for their original purpose, I can.



 

Garage Sale Scores

There was a garage sale down the street from us last Saturday, and we drove by on our way to our church’s Partner’s Brunch. I spotted these white chairs with pretty lines. We decided to see if they were still there on the way back, and they sure were. So- score #1: we got two upholstered dining chairs with great lines for $10 total. Score #2: We met some super sweet neighbors, the ones who were having the sale! (and they told us that one of the neighbors has a built in margarita machine in their backyard- we really want to get invited to one of those parties).
The chairs first made their home as the two head chairs on our dining table. After a few days I wasn’t sold on the combination of four black chairs and two white chairs at a black table. I felt it made our kitchen look too cluttered. Too many finishes going on in there!
So they made their way up to our master bedroom, on each side of the dresser.

Of course, I had to reupholster that red stripe fabric that was stained and in bad shape. But don’t these chairs have great lines and curvatures?

So I turned the chair upside down, and got to work on reupholstering, which took about five minutes and doesn’t really require an explanation here…

I used some fabric I already had.


I like that we can sit on them when we put on socks, shoes, etc. Other than that, they don’t serve much purpose other than looking pretty, but I don’t mind that.
Total cost : $10! Can’t beat that.