Living room chair - after!

I hope you all had a great weekend...mine was pretty relaxing with a big highlight: we picked up our re-upholstered chair this weekend...and it looks AMAZING! I wanted to wait to post it until I had the right pillow for it (remember I posted this gorgeous one? Yah, still can't justify that cost), but I just can't wait to post it. It is gorgeous.

If you remember, we nabbed this chair off Craigslist:

 

I commissioned the lovely Lindsey from Recreated to re-do the chair for me. She moonlights in reupholstery at Re:Style Studio and did a wonderful job on our chair...here's the finished product:

Fabulous, non?

Here are some more shots of the details:

That double piping around the foot is perfection...

 more amazing double piping details...so nice...

Isn't it handsome?

Sources:

Chair: craigslist

Re-Upholstery: Lindsey from Recreated

Fabric: Eurofab

We found a chair!

And I do mean found...craigslist style...woot!

First things first...how was your weekend? Ours flew by AS USUAL. Seriously, what is up with that?

Friday night we went to Lahore Tikka House for dinner...this place is..."rustic" but the food is GOOD! If you're in Toronto and not super picky about restaurant decor, go there.

Saturday we ran all over town - first to pick up the chair in the east end, then to the west end for an appointment and a trip to Designer Fabrics, then to Costco (yes, we survived). Saturday night we had a wonderful dinner with a friend, and then Sunday we did a bit more running around (Rogers finally cooperated so I could get my new iPhone5...wooooooooooo! It is such a novelty to have a phone that does what I ask it to...on the first try...without a hissy fit. Amazing, my friends), had a great workout and made a delicious dinner. Oh yah...and hung a curtain rod in the living room only to discover I didn't like it up. Right..sometimes you don't know until you see it drilled into the wall! Busy but lots and lots of fun.

Ok...onto the chair.

If you remember my post about re-doing my living room, a chair was on my wish list. Last weekend we went to no less than 10 furniture stores and we didn't find anything we liked. If we did see something that we liked aesthetically, it felt wobbly and cheap when we sat in it. So, the hunt was on for a used chair to re-upholster. I had been looking on and off but hadn't seen anything that I liked. Then I saw this...for cheapsies ($25) so we picked it up less than 24 hours after it was posted.

(Sorry for the bad light)

I like the classic shape of the char, curvey arms, and not-too-deep wing back. I think it's a classic that we will keep for a long time.

I am crossing my fingers that my friend Lindsey from Recreated will work her re-upholstery magic on this piece :)

I'm thinking a classic fabric, and then I'll liven up the whole space with fun pillows that I can change at will. Here's a nice herringbone I found:

Bertrand from DesignerFabrics

I love the gray on gray herringbone as opposed to white and black, but am thinking I need it in a bigger scale. Anyone have any good fabric sources for upholstery projects?

Hope you all had a great weekend, and a good start to the week...tomorrow's Wednesday, let's hope the rest of the week speeds by!

Fall decor with my wine crate

It is officially fall now...we have cool nights (and cool days for that matter), my basil bit the dust after a night that was too cool for it, and we have had the heat on for a couple of weeks now. Instead of worrying what comes next (shhhh...winter...eek!), I wanted to zhush up our front porch for the season and I thought using my wine crate would be perfect. In yesterday's post I gave some before shots, and today I'll debut the afters - I think it was the perfect little vessel for my front porch zhushing!

Here's hoping the squirrels (a) do not like gourds or (b) are starting to get verrrryyy sleepy and won't disrupt my crate of plenty.

Vintage wine crate makeover

You've probably seen vintage wine crates popping up here and there - I like the look of them for storage, and one of my favourite inspiration pics of one way to use them is here:

via Cozy.Cottage.Cute

Doesn't that look great in the nursery? I have also seen crates used as mini-gardens among other things. I have seen them at antique shops / fairs, but they always came with a hefty price tag ($40 for an old wooden box is a bit much in my books). As luck would have it, I was coming home one evening after work and saw a wine crate sitting on a neighbour's recycling bin, ready for the next day's garbage collection. The neighbour was outside, so I asked her if I could have it, she said sur,e so I grabbed it and took it home! I'm pretty sure she thought I was a little loony taking her wooden wine crate, but so be it. All in the name of DIY I tell ya.

I decided to stain it and figure out what I would do with it later....here's what it looked like:

Notice it's from France. Score.

I scraped off all the stickers and removed the nails and staples that had held the top on the box. Then I broke out the Walnut stain and got to work.

That's what it looked like with one coat...check back tomorrow to see the finished product and what I decided it's premiere would be!

Curb find stools -DIY'd and finished!

I know, I KNOW. These stools took me forever to finish...between chosing fabric, spray paint blunders, and any other excuse I could come up with they took a llllooonnngggg time (read: all summer) to get to a point where I could show them.

But. They are ready.

I can say that they've been done and displayed for a little while now, but I've only recently found / made the time to write about them.

Say helloooo to the new stools:

 

These will act as extra seating whenever we need it, and potentially as side tables without the cushions if needed.

Thanks to my amazing mom who made the round cushions - no easy feat. And, to beat that? She took pictures of the process. See, I told you she was amazing.

 And to recap....

Don't you think with the black spray paint they look a lot like this puppy:

via Pottery Barn

Except the PB one retails for $192.98 each ... without a cushion.

Exciting finds at Homesense

When I went shopping for the bags I mentioned in my last post, I also popped into Homesense and was floored by some of the amazing stuff in stores right now. All of this was found at the Leaside location in Toronto, and I am seriously drooling over some of this stuff.

What do you think?

That royal blue velvet settee is just gorgeous! At $550 it doesn't seem like a total bargain, but when you consider that is cheaper than most chairs, it's a great deal. I think it would look amazing against a marble or penny tile floor of a foyer (that is, if I had a house that could make room for a foyer to fit a settee :) ). The little chevron poofs and stool were just adorable for student living or a kids playroom, and the Ikat pillows were large, and down-filled for $40. You couldn't make them and buy the inserts for that price!

Homesense has really stepped it up in the lighting department in my opinion. They have so many reasonable and trendy options, including a good number of hanging pendants, drum shades, and chandeliers.

 

This is just a mish mash of cool stuff. The equestrian influence was loud and clear with the artwork, and a black horse head lamp below it (see what I mean about lighting??). The orange and white duvet cover could really punch up a room, and the mustard yellow and gray apron brings an old school 50's vibe back to your kitchen. Finally, the rug at the bottom is a great find for $199 - I think it would look perfect in a modern living room or in a nursery.

 

Sadly none of these things made it home with me this trip, but I kept wishing I had a place to put them all!

 

 

Full disclosure: This post just represents my inner love for HomeSense - I can spend hours in there! I was not compensated for this post (I wish).

 







Back to school, back to blog

Hi friends!

I know I have been...hmmm...here and there, let's say, over the last month or so. It's just that with the summer weather being as spectacular as it was (is??) I really have relished outdoor unplugged time. It seems like that was a bit of a trend amongst my bloggy friends and really - summer only lasts so long so I decided to soak it all in.

This past weekend was no exception. The Mr. and I stayed in the city which is lovely because you do not need to fight traffic. My weekend started with an early escape from work where I did some shopping and picked up these beauties:

The plan was never to keep both...cause I don't think I NEED 2 ostrich bags this year...but the winner of this duo is the teal bag to the left...I wasn't sure about the size (it's pretty big), but I like the size with the structured shape and I LOVE the teal, and how it will look with my trench in the fall. Hooray for back to school shopping!

Another hooray - that couch you see in the background is no longer in my living room...it has been replaced with a similar, but larger and more loungey version...will post soon, promise.

 

Aside from this little shopping expedition, the Mr. and I spent about as much time outside as we could over the weekend. We logged serious km's on our bikes: Saturday we biked out to the Scarborough Bluffs (GORGEOUS), Sunday we biked to the west end of the city for a picnic in High Park, and Monday we biked not too far to our friends' rooftop pool. Great way to spend the weekend in Toronto. Here are some of my photos from the bluffs - who said Toronto doesn't have beauty??

 









 

 

Happy September, y'all!



Spray paint fail

Well...I didn't think you could really screw up spray painting...but I managed to! Ok, so it wasn't really my fault (obviously I can work a can of spray paint), but the paint colour did not turn out like I imagined...

Remember those stools I found on the curb wayyyyyyy back when? (Way, way back when in March...yikes). Well, my amazing mom made some cushions (which I still owe a how-to post on since she was so good with taking pictures as she went!), and then I decided to spray paint them navy.

I bought the paint, and even primed the stools, and yet this is what happened after one coat:

Yah...does that look like navy? No. It looks like DENIM.  Denim stools were not what I was going for.

2 cans of spray paint later and I get this:

Less acid-washey, but still denim.

Argh.

I do not take blame for the colour - this is clearly more of a royal blue than it is navy (or Levi's1992. Can I become a paint namer?). What I do take blame for is the fact that I chose glossy finish by accident...yikes.

These stools will be getting a few coats of matte black spray paint, stat. THEN you will be able to finally see them in all the glory I pictured 5.99 months ago (eek).

Before & after: Cast iron pan

I am pretty excited about this post (the Mr. is at LEAST "pretty excited").

As you may remember from my Aberfoyle post, the only thing we left with from our exursion was a rusty cast iron frying pan (for a $5 bargain thanks to the Mr's negotiating skills):



eww.

I have to say, I was doubtful at best about this little project the Mr. was undertaking. But, he went to Canadian Tire and got the steel wool attachment for his drill and got to work.



After a lot of elbow grease (but thank god for the drill), and "seasoning" the pan with oil on a 500degree BBQ here is what he ended up with:



We could barely see the writing on the bottom of the pan before!

Pretty amazing isn't it?!?! I did ask if the Mr. wanted to write a guest post for this, but he said that the hard labour and elbow grease was more up his alley. I'm happy to take that and do the writing instead!

Speaking of guest posts...if any of you are interested in guest posting on Interior Groupie let me know! Contact me at interiorgroupie@gmail.com if you're interested (I would need it by July 27th).

My first Aberfoyle adventure

On Sunday the Mr. and I ventured out to Aberfoyle!! For those not from 'round these parts, Aberfoyle is a huge outdoor antique market near Guelph ON and until Sunday I had NOT YET BEEN. There were definitely some amazing pieces there and a whole range of prices (some ridiculously good, some just ridiculous!). All in all it was fun to spend a sunny day there looking around.
I'll get to some of the fun stuff we saw in a second...but first I'll show you what we bought:

Yes ladies and gents...that rust sodden pan is all ours (and the only thing we came home with). There is a little story to go along, obviously :) It starts with the Mr. wanting to cook everything on the BBQ, and me being concerned about ruining our pans. Our compromise / conclusion was that we needed a cast iron pan, one that can withstand anything! Well...new cast iron pans are expensive, so we tried searching for them at garage sales with little luck. The Mr. spotted this beaut at Aberfoyle and decided we had to have it. He was excited about the project that lay in cleaning it up and de-rusting it, and excited about bartering for it at Aberfoyle. So, he knocked the seller down to $5 from $10 and the pan was ours.

Excitement reigned until this:



Why, yes, that IS a pristine cast iron pan that you see (same size)...it was priced at $15. With the steel wool attachment the Mr. has to buy for his drill to clean up the rusty one this one would have been CHEAPER. We had a good laugh about that...but the end of the story is that we have the rusty one...so keep an eye out for a Mr. before and after guest post :)

In the meantime, here is some of the fantastic stuff we saw at Aberfoyle. To be honest I expected more furniture, but there were mostly small trinkets. There were also a TON of doors, banister posts, and some smaller furniture (e.g. vintage crates). I'm sure it changes from week to week or month to month as well. If you haven't been I recommend it as a fun afternoon!

Thinking back, I can't believe I didn't buy this squirrel nutcracker. You put a nut in its mouth and then move the tail to crack it. How funny is that?

One man's trash is another's treasure...

Just last week I was reading Emily A. Clark's post 5 Things to Grab at Yard Sales. It's a great post with tips on items to buy at yard sales that will ALWAYS be useful. Pre-Blog Podium, the Mr. and I wandered Saturday morning for a coffee and pain au chocolat, and on our way back home a part of our street was having a yard sale! I looked around quickly at a few houses - focused on finding things that I actually liked AND were a good deal, not just clutter. We saw a bunch of junk (cassette tapes, anyone?), and a few treasures (to me) that I picked up:

How cute are those? A gold owl (seriously on-trend), and a (real) silver cup that I would love to use for a little vase for big flowers like peonies or hydrangeas. Can't go wrong with a unique / vintage take on a trend, and a high quality item. By the way...the owl was $4, the cup $1.50 - I obviously bargained to $5 for each because they were from the same seller.

Here's a pic of the owl in action:



I also bought this:

I know, kind of creepy to have a portrait of someone else, but I obviously bought it for the frame...and because it cost this much:

I heart deals, what can I say. But seriously, where else can you find a frame, of any size, for $2? It's begging to be spray painted (one of Emily's tips) - I'm thinking gold? Depending on what I put in there the existing finish could work too.

My next mission will be out-of-the-way antique markets...surely they won't have much for $2, but it's a fun treasure hunt none the less!