Dining room set complete!

 And now it's complete!  I couldn't be happier with how the whole thing turned out...

 I was able to sand most of the stains off the top and I stained it with a dark walnut stain...which I decided to go ahead and do to the bottom also...

 We actually gained quite a bit of table space but somehow the whole thing seems to take up a lot less space...

 Chairs are nice and low and the legs of the table are really straight and simple....

$5 for the whole set...even with the leather, paint, & stain we're still way under $200 total.

Just a little reminder of how they looked before...

And...

to this...

$5

Recently while I was out jogging with the kiddos I spotted this cute little 60's style dining room set....

I went by on my last lap and was all ready to knock on the door but there was a gentleman in the driveway :)  I took that as a "sign"!!!!

Anyways I asked him what was going on with the furniture and he said they'd had it in a yard sale and no one wanted it....he asked if I wanted it.  So I offered to pay him for it and asked how much he wanted...."oh I don't know...$5????"  A table and 4 chairs.  $5...

Then I started pulling staples and kept pulling....and pulling and pulling...

Originally I was going to recover the chairs so I left the webbing and went ahead and painted.  I loved the shape of the chairs...and had a fun paint color in mind for them.

It's kind of a mustard yellow but it's got more green to it than the photos really show....it's called "Gecko" 

Then I was thinking about what to use to cover them with and I remembered something my husband and I had seen...

This seat is in a hot rod ---a car that was completely built by hand and is a real work of art.

Anyways I decided to go back and pull the rest of the staples and get rid of all the upholstery so we could weave some leather seats....

we bought a 3-5 oz 1/2 hide of tooling leather

After alot of measuring and remeasuring we finally laid out all our strips on the back of the hide and cut them out.  (They were 3" wide and we needed 36 strips)

Then each was hand rubbed with the dye and sprayed with a sealer.

Next came the fun part :) finishing up the chairs...

My husband drilled pilot holes, screwed the strips in while weaving the strips....

And now these

Look like this....

 My husband actually said "Wifey, this might be the best idea you've ever had..."

 I'd say I've had a few better ;) but that's high praise coming from my perfectionist husband---

 Doodlebug---STILL celebrating his birthday:) Notice the one shoe on one shoe off...

 two finished, a third almost finished and one to go!

I'm still trying to decide how to do the table.  I'm leaning towards staining the whole thing but we have the dark wood flooring so I thought about painting only the bottom and refinishing the top...but we'll see....

Placemats

 This was yesterday's little project.  I think our table has a wax on it.  We have to have something to protect it when we have hot things on the table.  The numbers are my newest stencils I just bought, and I have already used the tar out of them!

 I wanted placemats that I could wash :) and something square as our table is a little bit narrower than most.

These are made from some of the left over drop cloth I used for my slipcovers.  I have washed both slipcovers by the way and they held up great!  Also washed my floursack slipcovers on my dinning room chairs and they have washed up great too.  

Love that I can throw them in and bleach them and they come out looking new. 

Posting a new photo on the Pickers page....

Table is finished!

Been thinking about my kitchen table and wanting to get it finished up....I started it a few weeks ago and then kind of got stuck.  I didn't really like it.  That post is here.

So one before picture

Then I painted it a light grey which was ok....but I still wasn't really digging it....even after I started distressing it.

So I let it sit for a week or so....and decided to tackle it today.  I used the paint color from the kids' room (Valspar 's White Ballet).

Then I decided to use a black glaze over this before I started distressing this time.  You can see the unglazed part on the right.

Then time to start sanding.  My favorite part ;)  I use an orbital sander and because my husband has a huge air compressor I get to use that as well.

I have a butcher block topped island and it's got the real patina from age so I wanted this to have the same feel.

I'm really loving it!!!  Here's a few final pictures of it in the dining room...

Our humble home tour

Our house is "officially" up for sale.  This past Tuesday the photographer came and took pictures of it inside and out.  People ---my house has never been this clean and never will be again!!!  I decided to save the photos for days when I look around at all the toys and crazy crafting mess....and just want to remember how it CAN look--know what I mean?!?!?!?  Maybe it will bring me that nice calm feeling that you get when you walk through your house and see everything in it's place and it smells just wonderful....

 We have tried to make it as nice as possible without spending too much.  I put a fitted red sheet over our box springs, used two quilts I had on hand.  One had a bleach stain so I flipped it over (green under quilt) then the top white quilt is also flipped over (a blue star pattern quilt that had faded quite a bit too).  Used some curtains I already had.  Made the "tie backs" for the curtains.  I bought some cheap cylinder vases ($1 apiece) and wrapped ribbon around them to get a little more red...filled them with river rocks stuck in some decorative sticks...

 Our hallway bathroom...tub inserts are not my favorite but they are clean and new.  And a huge improvement over the tub from the 50's.

 This is why we're moving.  Working on ideas for a "shared" room for Doodlebug and Mighty.  I have some good ideas floating around in my head so if nothing happens I really want to paint it this summer.

 Some pictures of the FINISHED kitchen and dinning room!  The ice box of my great-grandparents,  the breadbox was probably theirs too.  My dad found the silver wash tub on the fridge out on the road somewhere.  These photos even have the beadboard in them...

See my $6 locker boxes from Target in the cubbies along with our lunchbox collection???  The toys fit great in the boxes.  The little highchair in the bottom left corner was my husband's grandpa's.  The airplane rib hanging above the doorway is to our future Pietenpol project....

 This is our living room.  Under the TV there is a tool organizer which is now pictured on the Pickers page.  This came from the trash.  It was nasty brown with green drawers so I spray painted it.  It stores all kinds of little goodies.  And I painted the brick fireplace a few years ago...it was bright red brick...so I thought hmmmm it would look alot better if it was a stone color....my husband came home from work one day and it was already done.

 Another of my new "favorite" items is the radio in the bottom right of this corner with our lamp on it.  It too belonged to my great-grandparents.  It still works!  And you can also see the little white cabinet which is also pictured on the Pickers page.

 The curtains were white cotton twill tab top curtains from Wal-Mart ($17).  I used some fabric and grosgrain ribbon to cover the tabs and add a little more "character" to them.

 Here's our master bathroom.  Same color as the hall bathroom....my brother in law remodeled these about 3 years ago and I totally concocted the color from two other colors to get what I wanted.

Last photo.....this is where I usually blog from...the Hoosier Hutch (My first major antique purchase) which serves as our "desk".  This is my home.  And there are so many other things I'd like to do...a new front door, a new porch railing, a new sink and faucet in the kitchen....Spring does this to me.  I'm trying really hard to fight it.  And if I do get into something it will be the kids' room for sure....

Ahhhh Haaaa moment

So today  I was thinking then about God being our Father.  He wants to bless us.  And I've mentally known that for as long as I can remember.  But have you ever just had one of those moments where it totally dawns on you that you didn't COMPLETELY understand it until that moment??!??!?!?!?   I just realized today how I must look to GOD ---ever been there??????  Thinking about your own kids and how sometimes you just wish they'd be a little appreciative of what they've already got before giving them something more?  GOD'S love is truly a miracle....

Here are the pictures of the pantry we decided we might as well go ahead and build while we had everything torn apart.  I'm SOOO glad we did this.  I love my pantry.  It hides all sorts of craziness in the kitchen!!!

We also decided to wall in the 'old' doorway between the dining room/kitchen area...I had plans for this involving chalkboard paint.....and now on to the good part....pictures of the semi finished kitchen and dining room!  I am so glad we tore out the soffits.  It really opened everything up and made it feel really huge!

 I  painted the cabinets a creamy white color and then glazed them with my own little concoction.  I'm really bad for this.  I'm always doctoring paint to get the colors I want.  Mixing and what not....Then I sanded them to distress them a little bit.  My drawers are plastic people.  PLASTIC!  And I sanded them too...they turned out great...

Here's my chalkboard wall-- Doodlebug gets the bottom half and I used a silver sharpie to lay out a calendar for the top half.

I made the slipcovers for the chairs.  And this is also a pretty good picture of the floor.  Which I am proud to say I laid MYSELF!  Before you get too impressed by my DIY skills --it's linoleum.  Pretty cool huh????  The look of hardwood at a fraction of the cost.  I can't say I'd choose this if we were planning on staying but I have to say it looks pretty nice and has actually held up better than expected.

New side doors which both open up to screens.  This is so nice when the weather cooperates!  And the finished pantry so now the refrigerator has a place to go.  It used to just sit out in the middle of the wall.

This is a nice full view of the cabinets...and the new back door.  I decided not to put that annoying little cabinet over the stove back up....who uses that?!?!?!?  Here's another reminder of the "old" kitchen..

And this is from the back door looking into the dining room...For those of you who've seen other posts you know there is now beadboard running around the bottom half of the dining room walls.  These photos are prior to that because right about this point in our remodel we discovered a huge leak in our roof and had to reroof our house.....yeah....when it rains it pours...ha ha

just to remind you here's the before again...

And I'm sitting at the Hoosier hutch on our laptop typing this.  It makes a great computer desk since we only have a 2 bedroom home and we have two kiddos...which brings me back to the reason we have to sell it!  GOD has blessed us and we are out of space....it went on the market last week.  Stay tuned to see what happens!!!!