Between the Rafters

Monday, May 6, 2013

60s Mod Couch Reupholster -- Installment 1

It has been a very polleny spring here. I'm not even sure if that is a word but I don't know how else to describe it. For example, an extreme pollen count is any over 1500. Our pollen count was over 8,000 one day! Cars driving through the parking lot were kicking up pollen like it was dust. For that reason I have been unable to do any painting. Can you imagine all the little pollen grains sticking to wet paint? Ay yi yiiiiii. BUT my mom has been promising to teach me how to upholster so we thought now was the perfect time!

I feel in love with this awesome mod looking couch I found at Goodwill. I consulted with the expert (my mother) and we decided that would be a good starting piece since it was mostly straight cuts. This couch is huge. It is well over 7 feet long. Here are some before pictures.

I decided to do this as a series since we are having "class" one night a week. Join us next week as we take off the old upholstery!

Friday, March 15, 2013

DIY Drum Shade With Crystals Tutorial

I'm sure you've all seen the drum shade lights with crystals hanging from them. I love them! They are everywhere right now. I've seen them priced all the way from right under $100 to right under $1,000. The one below is priced at $199.99 at Lamps Plus,.

I was determined that I could make one for much cheaper than that. It took a while to work out the details, but with a little help from my mom we were able to come up with an idea using common materials.

Below is what you'll need.

Pendant Light Kit
Plastic Embroidery Canvas
1 10" wooden embroidery hoop
1 8" wooden embroidery hoop
Metal Chain
2 Flat Washers (not pictured)
Thin wire (not pictured)
Drum shade (not pictured) -- I used a 14" drum shade
*There is also a double light socket pictured and some small hooks but we didn't end up using those.

Here are the Steps to make your own DIY Drum Shade Chandelier with Crystals.

1. You'll be using the inside piece of the embroidery hoops. In other words, the solid wood piece. Take a flexible tape measure and measure around the inside of each of your hoops. Divide the measurement by 3 and place a mark at each division.

2. Cut your plastic embroidery canvas to the height you want. I cut to the height of five squares. Then cut to the length you need for the outside of each of your embroidery hoops.

3. Staple your cut plastic canvas to the outside of each hoop. Remember you are stapling to the outside of the solid wood piece of the embroidery hoops.

4. Determine the length of your chains. You will need 3 chains of the same length for each hoop. The SMALLER hoop will have the LONGEST chain. The chains will be attached to your embroidery hoops with the plastic canvas. Your crystals will be attached to the plastic canvas so the length of your chains will depend on the length of your crystals and how much of them you want showing from underneath the shade. Once you have determined the length of your chains attach them to the INSIDE of the embroidery hoops on each of the the marks you made. When you cut your chain be sure to give yourself a little extra in case you mess up.

5. Take the three chains and tie them to one of the flat washers with string. Do this for each hoop. The painters tape is holding the extra chain down.

6. Take the cord of your pendant lamp and put it through the washer with the smaller hoop attached. Next take your cord and put it through the washer that is attached to the larger hoop. Then you'll want to put the cord through the middle of your shade. You'll want your light to be hanging at this point (not on the ceiling though). We had ours clamped to a board hanging between saw horses.

7. Take two of your chosen crystals and attach to the respective hoops so you can make sure the lengths are where you want them.

8. Once you have the lengths where you want, you'll need to disassemble your creation. Take a piece of thin wire and attach your chains to your washers. Cut off the excess chain and your string.

9. Reassemble. Small hoop, large hoop on the pendant cord. (Here is a picture without the shade.) Add the drum shade to the assembly.

10. Hang your pendant assembly from the ceiling at your desired height.

11. Hang your crystals from the plastic canvas. We used Christmas decoration hooks to make things easy.

12. Sit back and enjoy your creation!! When the light is on you can see a slight shadow from one of the hoops. I don't think this is a drawback as it's not very noticeable unless you are looking for it. In some of the shots below it looks like the hoops are hanging crooked but this is just the angle of the pictures. If you divide your hoop measurement into three, make your chains even, and hang your crystals around so the weight is evenly distributed, they will hang straight.

** After we got all of the crystals hung from the plastic canvas we discovered that the weight of the crystals had brought the hoops down farther than we originally desired. We solved this by taking a few lengths of the chain and tying them to each other with a piece of the wire.

I estimate the total cost of the project was a little over $30.
Pendant Light $15
Lamp Shade $3 (from Goodwill)
Crystals $6 (from a different lamp bought at Goodwill, pictured below)
Embroidery Hoops $1.30 each
Plastic Canvas $1.30
Bead Chain $5

I'm partying here:
Nifty Thrifty Sunday at Nifty Thrifty Things
Fridays at Redoux
Simply Creations at Simple Home Life
Spring Thing Party at Debbie Doos
Nifty Thrifty Tuesday at Coastal Charm
If it's not Baroque Tuesday Link Party
Transformation Thursday at Shabby Creek Cottage

Friday, March 8, 2013

Pet Door Install

I don't know about you all but I am ready for winter to be over! I'm tired of getting shocked when I touch anything. I'm tired of the cold. This past weekend it didn't get above 40 degrees. And I live in the south! I can't even imagine how my northern friends are feeling. Since the weather was a bit too cold for outdoor projects I decided to take care of some things on my to do list that didn't involve me being outside. First on the list, install a pet door for the cats.

I decided to install a pet door on the door that leads from the finished side of my basement to the unfinished side of my basement. The cats love being on the unfinished side of the basement so I had been leaving the door propped open for them. Only problem is the finished side of the basement is heated and the unfinished side isn't. So as you can imagine I was losing lots of heat this way.

First thing we did was mark the height where the cat door would be. The instructions tell you to stand your cat up against the door and make a mark at their shoulder height. The instruction writers have clearly never tried to hold a squirming cat while marking the correct height. It's definitely a two person job. Needless to say there are no pictures of this step. That would have made it a three person job.

After you've got your door marked, take the door off the hinges and set it on a pair of sawhorses.

The pet door came with a template. You take your template and place it in the middle of the mark on your door. We then taped down the template and traced around the edges of the template with a pencil.

Next is the fun part. Ladies you can do this yourself! We used a Dremel Multi Tool to cut out our template. It was a hollow core door so I'm not sure if the Dremel tool would be the tool you would want to use if you were cutting through a solid wood door.

After you've cut around the edges of your template use a flat blade screwdriver to pop out the piece you've just cut.

Then use the Dremel tool to clean up your edges. Once you have nice, clean edges flip the door over and cut out the other side.

Next you actually install the cat door. The instructions provided were not very helpful here. This step was rather frustrating. This step also probably took the longest time. Nonetheless we managed to get the cat door installed. So far the cats haven't figured out how to use it, but I've been shoving them through each side of it. I'm sure they'll get the hang of it eventually! :-)

Thursday, February 21, 2013

Poppy Pictures

When I first bought my house I set a budget for myself for furnishing every room. In both of my guest bedrooms I set an artwork budget of $50. In the first bedroom I made my own with some poster-board and fern prints. I originally set out to make my own in the second bedroom but wasn't happy with the results.

You can imagine my pleasure then when I discovered the red poppy pictures below at my local Goodwill for $11.91 each. They match so well with the comforter in the room!! And best of all they were well under budget. I know I've said it before but I'm such a HUGE fan of Goodwill!

Friday, December 28, 2012

A Map of the World

Finally I have finished the project I previewed some time ago. I know you all thought I had disappeared. Here I bring you my Map of the World Chest!

This is a piece I bought at Goodwill for $20. It was in rough shape when I bought it but I just fell in love with its size. It was nice and petit. Definitely an older piece. (It also smelled like an older piece!) I had to drag it outside for many days to let it air out in the sun. Finally once it lost the musky smell I started working on it. First thing I did was fill in the missing veneer pieces with wood putty. One drawer had 4 pulls while the others only had two so I went ahead and filled those in with wood putty while I was at it. Then I got out the sander and went to work.

It was around this time that I decided that I wanted to turn this piece into a Christmas present for a special someone. I needed it to be manly, something a guy would be proud to display. I brainstormed ideas for quite a while and finally decided to decoupage a world map on the drawer fronts. I had no Mod Podge experience so I had to take yet another break and practice on some coasters.

Lining up the maps and trimming around the drawers was a tedious project. Actually the process of applying the Mod Podge was tedious.

I added a non-slip product to the paint to give it texture. It is made by Rustoleum, it is a very fine, sand like substance, giving the paint a subtle texture. I will admit, adding this product made the piece harder to glaze. The glaze didn't want to come out off all the little microscopic grooves. It is worth it though for the texture. Before I glazed the paint sort of looked like chocolate milk but the glaze gave it that little extra something.

Without further ado here is the final product. I'm very pleased with how it turned out. Oh, and the recipient loved his Christmas present!