Side tables to benches

One of my favorite things to do is to give new life to something old and forgotten.  So many good pieces get thrown out and if I could collect them all I totally would.

While in Canton I found these end tables.  I was just about to leave and I decided to go back through the junk section one more time.  I just couldn't go home empty handed.  As I walked through these ugly end tables caught my eye.

I called Matt and had him measure how tall our current chairs were at the dining room table.  The nice lady that was selling these had a tape measure and these were the perfect height to turn into benches.

I paid $15 for these two ugly forgotten about end tables.

It took me a few weeks to have time to work on these but I knew exactly where I was going to start first.  I thought these looked a little too boxy for my taste so those support pieces had to come off.

 

Let me tell ya something.  Those support pieces were not meant to come off.  I was sweating trying to pull those blasted things off of there.  But I didn't give up and alas I won!  Taking the pieces off did not affect the balance of the tables either.

 

So next I sanded the legs down to smooth out the rough spots.  I also filled in holes and nicks with putty.  There was no need to sand the tops since I was going to cover them up eventually. 

 

Once the putty was dry I sanded all the spots down so they would be smooth and blend in once the legs were painted.  So two coats of spray paint primer and two coats of latex paint later this is what I had.

 

 

It was getting hot out so for the next part I came inside.  I turned the benches upside down and traced the shape of the top on to the foam with a Sharpie marker. 

 

I purchased the foam from Hobby Lobby.  To make the bench comfortable I knew I wanted 2 inch foam on top.  It was cheaper to buy the one inch foam and just cut out two pieces and stack them on top of each other.  To get the foam to stay in place I sprayed the foam and table with spray adhesive. 

 

  

Cutest photo bomb ever!!!  Just had to put this one in here.

I used an old sheet to cover the foam.  It gave the foam a smoother look for when I put the fabric on top.  I think I used about 2000 staples to get this sheet nice and tight.  Not really but there are a lot of staples underneath. 

Finally, I put the fabric on and again used 2000 more staples underneath. 

I love the way these turned out.  I still need to spray these with Scotchgard.  It's only a matter of time before these boys get stuff all over my pretty benches.  I will just enjoy them for now though.

Sources & cost:
Tables-$15
Primer-already had
Paint color-Swiss Coffee by Valspar $3 sample size
Foam-Hobby Lobby $15
Fabric-Hobby Lobby $9 

Total-$42 or $21 for each bench

 



Little Red Dining Room

This is a story about a room.  The room that caused me to fall in love with our house 6 years ago. 

Once upon a time, there was a pregnant and hormonal girl that needed a bigger house to live in.  She searched and searched and finally found a house that felt like home.  The reason it felt like home...the beloved red dining room.  It was perfect in all its red glory.  The room had a dimmer on the can lights and the chandelier had candles on it.  She had dreams of romantic dinners in the dining room with her sweet and wonderful husband.  Then along came kid #1, then came kid #2, and finally kid #3 and still no romantic dinners under the candles.  Oh well...it was a fairy tale to begin with.

One of the very first projects we did in this house was in the dining room.  I loooved this room.  But it did need just a little something to break up all the redness.  We decided to add wainscoting to the bottom half of the walls with a chair rail above that. 

You can click on each picture to see a larger version.

This house is full of weird angles and it makes it difficult for full shots of the room.  This is standing in the hallway looking in the dining room.  In the above picture we had already taken down the oh so romantic light fixture from the previous owners and replaced it with the original fixture shoved in the attic.

This shot is from the center of the room looking out to the rest of the house.  Originally, the dining room had carpet in it, which I will never understand.  Who puts carpet in a place where food can be dropped on the floor?  Craziness!!

After living with the little red dining room for a while I soon realized that it was too dark compared to the rest of the house.  So I convinced Matt that we needed to paint the room and not just one color either.  Two colors.

I chose the color Tobacco Road for the top color and a shade of brown for the bottom color.  After I finished the Tobacco Road color on top I really wasn't happy with it but I wasn't going to dare tell Matt that I hated it and I wanted to repaint already.  So I lived with it but secretly it gave me the twitches every.single.time I looked at the room. 

This is a poor old cell phone picture that I took when I was trying to decide on the color for the bottom half of the room.  We also ripped out the carpet in here and installed laminate floors.   

Here you can see the final color of the room.  It was ok and an improvement from the dark red from before.  So I lived with this for about two years and then this year I decided I needed lighter.  I made an agreement with Matt that if I painted the room by myself with no help then he could take 1 climbing trip to Oklahoma.  If he helped me then he could take 2 climbing trips to Oklahoma.  I did it all myself. 

The color in the laundry room is Silver Sage from Restoration Hardware and the shade just lighter than that is called Light Silver Sage.  Go figure!  I love these two colors.  So that's what I chose.  When the late afternoon sun hits the dining room the color is perfect.  This is a shade that changes colors as the sun hits it throughout the day.  It's fresh and cozy, I think anyway.

So here are the after pictures.

It's a dramatic difference.  The "curtains" are from Target this last Christmas.  Target had a beautiful selection of table cloths and so I bought two and hung them up.  Using table cloths as curtains is a great inexpensive way of getting the look you want in a room.  So next time your in a store with table cloths check them out as a possibility for curtains. 

I have since added two benches in here for seating for the boys.  I love this room and it makes me happy every time I walk by it, which is about 1 million times a day. 

The light fixture we found at a garage sale for $10.  It was from a model home down the street so it was a sweet score. 

I'll be back soon with another room transformation. 

Have a great week!

Linking up to these awesome places:
Thrifty Décor Chick
Mom4Real
House of Hepworths
Fox Hollow Cottage