makeover – Wisconsin Magpie

September 26, 2018October 15, 2018

Bathroom remodel | A do-it-yourself farmhouse-style makeover

textured wallpaper being covered by tongue-and-groove pine

When I left off in my last post, our downstairs bathroom looked something like this:

We had just tiled the shower — and it looked fabulous — but the rest of the room was still stuck in a 1995 time warp. We wanted to update the room with modern materials but also make it look like it belonged in the vintage farmhouse that it actually resides in.

The first thing we had to address was the yellow textured wallpaper, which was covering a layer of blue plastic paneling. And the blue plastic paneling was covering a layer of very old, very cracked plaster. None of the layers was pretty.

We’ve swallowed enough plaster dust in DIYs past that the idea of demolishing the walls and hanging new drywall didn’t sound all that appealing.

We figured it would be easier — and less plaster-dusty — just to cover the old walls with another layer: this time, tongue-and-groove pine planking.

The boards we used were reversible, with narrow strips of beadboard on one side and wider planks on the other. We decided to use the narrow beadboard side vertically on the bottom of the walls and the wider planked side horizontally on the top.

This is the wall where the sink and the medicine cabinet normally hang. Jim took them down to install planks there. (The hole in the wall was already there; it had just been hidden behind the medicine cabinet. That’s where the vanity light hooks into the electrical system.)

On the shower wall we decided to use the wider planks. Just because.

We covered all the raw edges with trim pieces.

After we had all the boards installed, we painted everything white — it took three coats to cover and to get paint into all the nooks and crannies. (Let me tell you, beadboard is nothing but nooks and crannies.) Then when we were finally done painting, we had to fill in the cracks between boards with caulk. (And there were lots of cracks.)

After painting and caulking, it was time to start re-assembling things.

As you may have noticed, this bathroom is really tiny. It’s about 6 feet wide by 6 feet deep — with the shower literally 3 feet from the door.

Our old sink was a compact 20 inches wide by 16 inches deep, which was the right size for the space — plus, it was still in pretty good shape — so we decided to keep it.

The pop-up drain assembly wasn’t functional anymore, but that was an easy fix. We replaced it with a brand new old-fashioned rubber stopper on a chain. I didn’t know they even made these any more, until Jim brought one home after one of his many runs to the hardware store.

Like the textured wallpaper, the old medicine cabinet (which had a built-in Hollywood-style lightbulb strip at the top) also had outstayed its welcome. I wanted to replace it with a vintage mirror and put a black barn light above it. Jim wasn’t feeling the vintage mirror. He thought a medicine cabinet would be more “practical.”

I may have treated him to one of my signature passive-aggressive eye rolls when he said that, but I let him get his way. Mostly so I could use it as leverage when it came time to choose a light fixture.

I’d been ogling black barn lights online for months before we started this project and had an entire Pinterest board full of them. I was willing to give in on the mirror, but the black barn light was non-negotiable.

Here’s the light fixture I ended up buying.

You may have noticed it’s an odd shade of black.

Home Depot was sold out of black barn lights on the day I went to buy one. They had this red one in stock, though, and I fell in love with it on the spot.

Apparently I’m fickle that way.

Jim actually liked the red barn light, too, so maybe I should have fought harder for the vintage mirror. Sigh.

Anyhoo, Home Depot sells this light fixture in their outdoor lighting department, not in their bathroom lighting department, but electric lights are electric lights. There’s no reason you can’t use an “outdoor light” in an indoor bathroom.

Our old chrome towel bars were still in good shape, so we re-hung them.

Then I turned my attention to the closet door that I had been passive-aggressively ignoring because I didn’t know what to do with it. My original plan had been to paint the door black to match the black barn light I was going to buy. But when the light fixture ended up being red, I had to reassess the situation. My gut said I should paint the door red now, but the cautious part of my brain said a red door might be crazy.

As I dithered about what to do with the the door, I decided to pull everything out of the closet to redo the inside.

The 1980s called. They wanted their shelf paper back.

The wood underneath the shelf paper was pretty rough — but I figured a good sanding and a coat (or three) of paint would make it look like new.

Here’s the inside of the closet after it was all painted.

And here’s the door, just as I was starting on the first coat of primer, which was followed by three coats of …

… red paint. Now that I look at it, I don’t know why I dithered.

We bought a new handle for the door to replace the little knob that had been there before.

We decided not to reinstall the upper cabinet door, which wasn’t so much a door as it was a piece of plywood with a handle on it. It didn’t match the lower door in style, and once I had the inside of the cabinet painted, I thought it would look better to leave the top two shelves open.

I looked all over for baskets that would be the right dimensions for the shelves. The best option I could find were these galvanized steel tubs that were on Walmart’s website. They were sold out online, though, so I had to go store to store looking for them. I found one at the Beaver Dam store. Then I struck out at the Monona store, the Sun Prairie store and the Portage store. Finally I found a second one in Baraboo (and it was the last one they had left). Apparently these were a popular item.

I had plenty of red paint left over, so I painted our old garbage can to match the door.

Here’s the whole room today. (Or at least as much of it as I could get in a picture.)

And, as a reminder, here’s what it used to look like.

We still have to redo the floor. We just placed an order for black cement tile. It’s supposed to come in in the beginning of October. This will be our first time laying floor tile. If it turns out OK, I might blog about it. If it doesn’t, let’s just pretend I never mentioned it.

Thanks for reading. As always, let me know what you think. Unless you think my red barn light sucks, in which case you’re already dead to me, so don’t bother.

September 20, 2018

Bathroom remodel: Installing subway tile in the shower

Today’s post is about home decor, which, if you’ve been reading this blog for any length of time, you know is a topic I don’t write about very often. If you’re wondering why, allow me to introduce Exhibit A: “My Downstairs Bathroom, circa 2017.”

About the only good thing I can say about the room is that it’s slightly less ugly at the time that this picture was taken than it was when we first bought the house 20 years earlier. Back then the walls were covered in shiny robin’s egg blue plastic paneling.

We wanted to pull the paneling down as soon as we moved in, but the plaster walls underneath it were cracked beyond redemption. In order to avoid a full-on, down-to-the-studs remodel (which we were already doing in several other rooms at the time) we decided to just hang wallpaper over top of the paneling and call it done. (I believe this is what technically is referred to as “a half-assed job.”)

The wallpaper was supposed to be a short-term fix, until we had the remodeling finished in the other rooms and had saved up some cash to tackle the bathroom properly. But somehow two decades went by and we were still living with that “short-term” solution.

Then last fall a pipe sprang a leak, and we had to take down the plastic shower surround to access the plumbling in the wall.

Here’s what we uncovered behind the shower surround. Those aren’t ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics you’re looking at; they’re dried glue trails. Apparently the DIY’ers before us wanted to make extra sure the plastic was adhered securely. They succeeded. That plastic put up quite a fight as we pried it off the wall and wrestled it to the ground. By the time we got it down, it was ripped and cracked and destined for Shower Surround Heaven.

We figured the ruined surround was a sign that it was time to finally get serious about making renovations. So after Jim fixed the leaky pipe, we pulled the crumbling plaster off the wall and made plans to hang subway tile.

Here’s the old lath that was behind the plaster. Pretty, right? Unfortunately, we had to remove it, too, so we could hang concrete backerboard.

Here’s the backerboard, partially installed. You have to use this stuff (as opposed to regular drywall) in places like shower stalls because it’s mold- and mildew-resistant.

Once we had the backerboard up, it was time to start tiling.

When it comes to Cestkowski family DIY projects, our general division of labor goes something like this:

Things that require brute force and/or the use of power tools: Jim.

Things that require patience and/or attention to detail: Lisa.

Ergo, most of the project up until this point was on Jim. Tiling was on me.

For the most part, I just worked from the bottom up, setting the tile in a “running bond pattern” so that every other row lined up. To ensure that the tiles were equidistant from each other, I wedged these god-awful spacers in between each one.

In all fairness, our spacers were probably no worse than any other spacers out there, but I had tiled once before — in our upstairs bathroom — and the tiles I had used then had bumpouts on their edges. The bumpouts made spacers unnecessary. I didn’t know how much easier that made the tiling process until I started working on this project.

The plastic spacers were my nemesis. Every time I would nudge a tile one way or the other, the nearby tiles would shift, and all of the spacers around them would drop to the floor. Then I’d have to bend down, pick up the fallen spacers and replace them before I could set the next tile.

I wish I could tell you I eventually figured out a way to stop the spacers from falling, but I didn’t.

Despite the cursed spacers, I eventually made progress.

Jim helped out by trimming the tiles to fit in all the spots where I needed partials, drilling holes for the spigots and shower head, and, most importantly, nodding sympathetically every time I went off on a profanity-laden rant about the evils of plastic spacers.

When I got to the inset shelf, I had no idea what I was going to do. Then we found this 12-inch-by-12-inch mosaic tile at Menards. It filled the niche almost perfectly. Maybe that’s what these tiles are designed for? I don’t know. I could write a book, or at least a blog post, about what I don’t know about tiling.

Eventually, I got the tiles all adhered — hallelujah! — and it was time to grout. This was actually my favorite part of the process. There’s something really satisfying about smooshing grout into the cracks between the tiles and seeing what the finished wall is going to look like.

I was more than a little surprised to see how straight all my lines ended up. It almost looks like I knew what I was doing.

With the grouting complete, Jim installed a new shower head …

… and new hot and cold water taps.

Ta-da. This project was a pain, but we were very happy with the results. In fact, we were so happy with it that we decided to keep going with the renovations. More on that in my next post.

And if you’re interested in seeing what became of that beautiful lath that we pulled down, check out this post.

January 28, 2018July 22, 2018

Makeover | Giving a dark, dated curio cabinet a new look

I had some leftover milk paint after last week’s jewelry box redo, so I decided to use it on a sad little curio cabinet I had stored away in my basement waiting for inspiration to strike.

The cabinet was a thrift store find — although calling it a “find” might be a bit of a stretch.

1970s curio cabinet before being painted

It was dark. It was dingy. It was dated. Literally. There was a stamp on the back that read

“Enesco Imports 1979.

And get a load of the felt glued onto the back of some of the cubby holes. Ooo-la-la. 1970s chic.

Fortunately, the roof section was separate from the rest of the cabinet, so the first thing I did was remove it. Then I pulled up all the felt squares and sanded off the glue residue left behind.

I took off the one handle that was still on the cabinet door. The other one had been sheared off previously. I wasn’t able to remove the portion of the metal screw that was still embedded in the wood.

So instead of screwing in new hardware, I had to glue a couple of wooden knobs onto the door. It’s not ideal, but it will do the job. The door isn’t going to get opened real often, and the knobs aren’t going to have a lot of stress on them, so I’m sure the glue will hold.

curio cabinet makeover by www.WisconsinMagpie.com

Next I broke out the milk paint. Just like with the jewelry box I redid last week, I didn’t use any primer or bonding agent in hopes that the paint would peel off at least a little, leaving me with a nice chippy (faux aged) finish. But just like with the jewelry box, the paint didn’t chip at all. Maybe I need to invest in better milk paint? Or maybe I’ve just been using it over the wrong kinds of finishes?

curio cabinet makeover by Wisconsin Magpie

Except for the lack of chippy-ness, I have to say I’m happy with how the milk paint looks. It’s got a nice flat finish, and it’s a definite improvement over the original dark stain and felt.

decoupaging newspaper into curio cabinet cubbies

I decided to decoupage newspaper onto the backs of a few of the cubbies, because everything looks better with a little newspaper decoupaged onto it.

Then I decided the newspaper was too distracting, so I whitewashed it with a quick coat of paint. Now a hint of the type peeks out, but it’s very subtle.

I also screwed hooks into a couple of random cubbies, so I could hang things off of them.

Here’s the cabinet with the doors closed, all ready to be put to use.

With Valentine’s Day coming up, I rounded up some heart-shaped items, like this little frame, to put in a few of the cubbies.

These hearts are metal cookie cutters that I backed with newspaper-lined cardboard (proving once again that everything looks better with a little newspaper decoupaged to it).

I found this sweet heart-shaped lock in the bottom of a thrift store bin a while back.

I also put a couple of keys in the cubbies. None of them fit in the heart-shaped lock, but they were the right size for the cubbies. I’ve had this rusty old skeleton key forever.

This one has an old-timey skeleton key look to it, too, although it is definitely not old; it came from Michael’s craft store a couple years ago.

I filled some of the cubbies with newspaper flowers.

I blogged about making the flowers here.

I filled a few of the other cubbies with some random treasures from around my house.

You might think this is a vintage pocket watch, but it’s not. It’s actually a lip gloss compact that I bought at Urban Outfitters about 10 years ago.

Anyhoo, here’s the new, improved curio cabinet.

Anybody else have experience with Folk Art brand milk paint? If you’ve got any advice, leave a comment below. I’d love to know if there’s anything I can do to get it a chippy finish with it. Or what brand would you recommend?

Continue reading “Makeover | Giving a dark, dated curio cabinet a new look”

January 14, 2018September 4, 2018

Makeover | Mini chest of drawers

Here’s a little chest of drawers that I redid this week. (I think it’s supposed to be a jewelry box, but I’ve been keeping it on my desk to store office supplies in.)

This is what it looked like when I first got it. I picked it up for a dollar at a garage sale a while back. I thought it was a cute little chest, but I wasn’t wild about the orange-toned stain, which is why I decided to paint it.

Before painting, I wanted to distress the chest a bit to give it some character, so I added a few “wormholes” and scratches with a hammer and nails and then worked a little dark stain into them.

I painted the chest with some white (technically, the color is called “Petticoat”) Folk Art milk paint. Milk paint is supposed to flake off if you don’t apply any bonding agent or primer, giving the piece a chippy/aged sort of look. Unfortunately, my milk paint didn’t flake. At all.

After one coat of milk paint, the chest just looked streaky. And sad. In a non-chippy sort of way.

mini chest makeover by wisconsinmagpie.com

So I applied a few more coats. The extra paint made the chest look better, but it also filled in all the wormholes and scratches that I had made.

To make the holes and scratches stand out again, I traced over them with a pencil. I also sanded the corners of the chest (and a few other spots) and worked some stain into those areas.

Then I Mod Podged some newspaper onto the bottoms of the drawers.

I brushed some watered down white paint over the newspaper to give it a faded, washed out kind of look and then added another coat of Mod Podge over the top to seal it.

I liked how the bottoms looked so much that I decided to add newspaper to the sides of the drawers, too.

mini chest of drawers makeover by wisconsinmagpie.com

Next, I dug through my stash of craft supplies until I found some label holders for the fronts of the drawers. The ones I had were the right size, but the wrong color.

So I painted them with some black chalk paint.

I nailed the label holders onto the fronts of the drawers and printed out some labels to go inside of them.

wooden organizer makeover by wisconsinmagpie.com

Then I filled the drawers with office supplies and called the project done.

jewelry box makeover by wisconsinmagpie.com

I didn’t get quite the chippy look I was hoping for, but I’m happy with how it turned out. I definitely prefer the white paint to the orange stain.

And the labels are a great addition. No more blindly opening and closing each drawer when I’m looking for ink or tacks or a thumb drive.

The newspaper sides are a sweet little detail, too.

November 9, 2017September 5, 2018

Makeover | Decoupaged jewelry box

Here’s my latest makeover project: a jewelry box.

Here’s what it looked like when I found it at a thrift store:

The grey pleather and the plastic handles were a little sad.

But when I opened the box up and saw the beautiful blue velvet interior, I knew it had to come home with me.

I figured I’d decoupage over the pleather and see if I could find replacement handles, or at the very least, put a fresh coat of paint on the old ones.

When I dug through my crafts cache to see what I could decoupage over the box, I unearthed this roll of idea-ology tissue paper that I had bought a few months earlier just because I loved the design on it.

I basecoated the box with white paint to make sure the grey pleather wouldn’t show through the semi-transparent tissue paper. The blue inserts popped out easily so I was able to get paint into all the nooks and crannies inside.

I decided to remove the white plastic handles to make the box easier to decoupage.

Most of the pegs on the backs of the handles broke off as I pried them out, so I wasn’t going to be able to reuse them. I wasn’t sure at that point what I would use for replacement handles, but I figured I’d cross that bridge when I got to it.

In the meantime, I started decoupaging.

I used watered-down Elmer’s glue for decoupage medium, painting it onto the box one side at a time, wrapping the paper around the corners as I went along.

smoothing out wrinkles while decoupaging

I used a plastic scraper to smooth out wrinkles and bubbles.

The drawer was the last piece I decoupaged.

I couldn’t find any replacement handles with the pegs the right distance apart to fit into the holes in the box, so I ended up having to use some screw posts I found at Menards.

I didn’t like the silver color they came in, so I painted them before I screwed them into place.

The black knobs match the box’s new vintage/industrial vibe.

By the time I had the last piece of tissue paper adhered, my glue bottle was empty, so I finished the box off with a couple of thin coats of matte-finish polyurethane for protection.

Here’s what the jewelry box looks like now when it’s open.

Here’s the bottom drawer opened.

And here the box is filled up.

November 4, 2017September 1, 2018

Makeover | A new look for an old chair

Old, unwanted chairs have a way of finding me. This one was waiting for me on the curb outside of my son’s apartment building in Milwaukee.

Here’s what it looked like when I found it. The hunter green was a little dated, but otherwise the chair was in great shape, so (much to my son’s embarrassment), I threw it into the back of my Jeep and took it along home with me.

I gave the seat a quick once over with a sander to get some paint spatters off it. I didn’t try to sand it down perfectly because I wanted it to have a kind of worn, uneven finish when I was done with it.

Then I grabbed the darkest color of stain I could find in my basement stash. When I opened the can and saw it was a hardened glop — grrr — I grabbed the second darkest color of stain I could find (Varathane American Walnut) and applied it to the seat.

After that, I dug out some leftover black chalk paint to cover the hunter green parts. When I realized my chalk paint was also a hardened glop — apparently it’s been a while since I’ve done any painting or staining — I mixed up a homemade batch (a little bit of water, a little bit of plaster of Paris and some black latex that was thankfully still in a liquid state).

My homemade chalk paint was a little on the thin side, so it ended up taking three coats to cover all of the hunter green.

After painting, I started marking out diagonal lines on the seat.

Here’s what the final grid pattern looked like.

I put a dab of black paint in the middle of every other diamond.

Then I started filling in the marked diamonds. I used painters tape to make sure I had nice, crisp lines to start with, but I ditched the tape after the first coat because it was slowing me down.

It took three coats to get full coverage on the diamonds, too.

(Next time, I’ll use less water when mixing my own chalk paint.)

To protect the paint, I gave the whole chair a couple coats of matte finish polyurethane.

December 19, 2016September 5, 2018

Makeover | Chalk-painted suitcase

Here’s a little train case I picked up at a thrift store …

Except when I bought it, it looked like this …

Cute little case, right? Except for the tragic 1990s floral tapestry.

I like to use old suitcases for storage (because a shelf full of vintage suitcases is much nicer to look at than a shelf full of Rubbermaid totes).

Although this suitcase didn’t qualify as “vintage,” I liked it, and I thought I could neutralize the grandma-y flower print with …

… black chalk paint. (IMHO, a little black chalk paint makes everything better.)

I spritzed some water onto the case first, so the paint would go on a little thinner and work itself into the weave of the fabric.

Then I started painting.

I didn’t worry about taping anything off. I just cut into the edges as carefully as I could. I got a little paint on the suede trim and the hardware here and there, but it wiped right off with a damp rag.

Here’s what the case looked like after the first coat. It was a little splotchy and some of the flowers still showed through.

So I just kept spritzing and painting until all vestiges of the flowers were gone.

Honestly, it’s impossible to tell that the case was painted.

It looks like it always looked this way.

Here’s the inside. The lining was already grey and in great condition, so I didn’t have to do anything to it …

… except fill it with stuff.

So, one last time: Here’s the “before” …

… and the “after.”

September 20, 2016September 5, 2018

Makeover | Twine-wrapped dog and cat

Meet my two new pets.

They’re much less trouble than my two old pets.

I found them at the St. Vincent de Paul Dig ‘n’ Save. (The new pets, that is. The old ones were also someone else’s discards, but that’s another story.)

The Dig ‘n’ Save is pretty much The Island of Misfit Toys for castoff junk. The items that languish on the shelves at the regular St. Vinnie’s stores get hauled to the Dig ‘n’ Save and dumped into big bins to be sold by the pound.

What doesn’t sell there gets thrown out.

I couldn’t let that happen to these guys.

Because how can you turn your back on a one-eyed dog with blue nostrils?

So I brought them home and decided I’d give them a makeover with some jute twine. To begin, I painted the grey dog tan, which was the closest color I had to the twine.

covering a paper mache dog in jute twine

Then I started wrapping the twine around his legs, holding it in place with clear craft glue.

Once I had the dog’s legs covered, I moved onto his body.

I’d do as many full-body wraps as I could. On the spots where I couldn’t wrap the twine all the way around, I’d just fill in the holes with individual short strings secured with craft glue.

The body was the easy part. The face and the tail were a little tougher to figure out. It felt like I was doing a jigsaw puzzle — except that I was creating the puzzle pieces as I was going along.

For the face, I started by wrapping the twine around his ears.

When I moved onto his muzzle, I decided to paint his nose black and leave it exposed.

I wrapped his eyes, from base to top, with plans to attach button-type eyeballs later.

For his tail, I wrapped the points from base to tip.

Then I filled in the main part of the tail by wrapping all the way around it where I could and filling in with individual strings where needed.

Once I had the dog all covered, I moved onto the cat.

covering a paper mache cat in jute twine

Since he was mostly black to start with, I decided to paint out his facial features. I figured the black basecoat would melt into the shadows if there were any gaps between jute strands.

I felt kind of mean covering up his face.

Here he is all painted.

I started the wrapping process with the ears.

Then I moved onto the cat’s neck and worked down his body, wrapping and glueing as I went.

When I got down by his legs, I pressed the twine into all of the bumps and indents and waited for the glue to get tacky before winding around a new row so the twine would stay in place.

It was a little tedious to have to keep glueing and pressing and waiting for the glue to dry, but I liked the finished look.

For the tail, I wrapped the twine all the way around where I could. I cut short strands to fill in the base of the tail and anywhere else there were big gaps.

I did the cat’s face a lot like I did the bottom portion of his body. I just wrapped the twine all the way around, pressing it into place and glueing it as I worked my way up from neck to ears.

Here’s the cat all wrapped.

covering a paper mache cat and dog in jute twine

They both needed eyes yet …

… so I pulled out my collection of random metal pieces. (I live close to a junk yard and always find these little pieces laying on the side of the road when I’m out walking.) I painted four of the circle pieces black, using acrylic craft paint.

The two small circles became the dog’s eyes.

The two larger circles became the cat’s eyes. I wanted his nose to bend around his head, so I used black craft foam for that.

Don’t they look much happier now than before?

September 4, 2016September 2, 2018

Makeover | Painting a quilt square chair

Here’s my new Ohio Star quilt square chair.

Here’s how it started. It may have been a curbside rescue. If I was the sort of person to pick up other people’s trash. Which apparently I am.

One of the spokes holding the legs together was missing, so I bought a dowel that was the same diameter.

replacing a missing spindle on a chair leg

I chopped the dowel down to size.

Then I glued all the pieces together and let them dry.

Once the chair was stable, I sanded it down with my little Mouse sander.

My original plan was to stain the chair.

But then I changed course and decided to paint it instead. With chalk paint. Which will stick to anything. So I could have totally skipped the sanding step.

I painted the whole chair with the black chalk paint.

Here’s what it looked like once I had the first coat on. It doesn’t look bad from a distance, but it needed a second coat. But first, I wanted to put the Ohio star design on the chair seat.

making a quilt square design on a chair seat

The chair seat was 14ish inches deep …

… and 16ish inches wide.

With the seat being wider in the front than in the back, I decided the easiest way to center a square on it was with my tried-and-true eyeball-it-and-hope-for-the-best method. So I cut a 12-inch-by-12-inch pattern out of newspaper and just kept moving it around until it looked more or less centered.

I traced around the pattern with a white colored pencil.

Then I measured and marked every 3 inches and used a straight edge to connect the dots…

… which left me with a 4×4 grid pattern that was more-or-less centered on the chair seat.

Using a straight edge again, I drew diagonal lines from corner to corner in the squares.

Here’s the final grid pattern with the diagonal lines added.

To idiot-proof the painting process, I wrote a “W” on every triangle that I wanted to paint white.

Next I cracked open the white paint jar. The paint had separated so the top looked like an oily mess.

A little bit of stirring with a popsicle stick made it nice and creamy again.

I pulled my paintbrushes out of storage …

… and started filling in the triangles.

It was looking pretty good.

When I was done, I stepped back to admire my work. Hmmm. Apparently my plan wasn’t as idiot-proof as I’d initially thought.

Fortunately the paint was still wet when I realized my mistake, so I just wiped it off with a wet paper towel and tried again.

Much better.

Then I erased all of my white lines …

Ohio Star quilt square design on chair seat

… and gave everything (black and white) a second coat of paint.

I did a little hand sanding with some fine grit sandpaper to distress the edges.

I had some antique wax leftover from a previous project that I used to finish the chair.

I applied the wax with a soft cloth, and wiped off the excess.

After the wax dried, I buffed the chair with a clean cloth.

Here is the finished piece. Proving once again the old adage that one man’s trash is another man’s Ohio star quilt block chair.

November 23, 2015September 4, 2018

Makeover | One old bedspread becomes four pillowcases

After buying new cushions for my patio furniture this summer, I had these old pillows left over. They didn’t match the new cushions, so I didn’t want to use them on the patio, but they were still in good shape, so I didn’t want to throw them out. I figured I’d hang on to them for a while and wait for inspiration to strike.

In the meantime, I “temporarily” tossed the pillows on the dining room floor one day, where Calvin promptly discovered them and claimed them as his own.

Calvin’s two favorite things in life are soft cushions and sunny windows, so finding one in such close proximity to the other made his day. And his next day. And his day after that… Fortunately for Calvin, I didn’t have a plan for the cushions yet, so they stayed on the dining room floor for quite a while.

Finally, months later, I read a post on Censational Girl’s blog called “Easiest Pillow Covers Ever,” in which she made envelope pillows with ONE piece of fabric. She’s probably not the first person in the world to invent the one-piece envelope pillow, but it was the first I’d heard of it. Whenever I’ve made envelope pillows before, I’ve always used three pieces: one for the front and two that overlapped in the back.

As someone who loves the idea of sewing but who possesses only rudimentary sewing skills, I was giddy with the possibilities. If I did the math correctly — unfortunately my math skills are roughly on par with my sewing skills — I figured this new one-piece method would involve approximately two-thirds less sewing.

In a fit of inspiration, I remembered an old nubby bedspread that I had bought at a thrift store a while back even though I didn’t have a bed to spread it on. At the time, I just loved the texture. Now I knew what I was going to do with it: cut it up into one-piece pillowcases for Calvin’s pillows.

In a rare moment when Calvin wasn’t around, I picked up the pillows and snipped the buttons off of them. Then I laid the bedspread out on the floor to start measuring and cutting.

I had barely gotten started when he showed up and proceeded to move from whichever pillow I was attempting to work on to whichever pillow I was attempting to work on. He’s helpful that way.

Fortunately, I knew his kryptonite: dangly tape measures.

After successfully luring him off of the pillows and onto the other side of the bedspread, I measured out the pillowcases. I wanted the pieces to be the same height as the pillows but about six inches longer, so the fabric would overlap in the back.

I measured, marked and cut the pillowcases.

Then I wrapped the cases around the pillows to make sure they would fit. When I was confident that I had cut the pieces to the right size, I turned the fabric inside out and marked with pins where I was going to sew.

All I had to do was hem the raw edge and then sew seams across the top and bottom. Easy peasy.

Or at least it would have been if my assistant didn’t keep coming back and sitting on my work surface.

Eventually I got all the pieces up off the floor and ran them through my sewing machine.

Once I had the raw edges hemmed and the seams sewn, I turned the pillowcases right side out, and I was done. Here’s the back.

And here’s the front.

When the cases were all sewn, I stuffed the pillows inside.

Each case looks a little different because I used different parts of the bedspread for each one.

I put the pillows on the couch for now. I haven’t decided if they’ll live there permanently or if I’ll put them on a bed. Either location will be an improvement over the dining room floor. (And look: Calvin found a new sunny window to lay in.)