NEW PAIR OF WINGS

Helloooo!!  Happy June 30th friends! Y’all this month has been a doozy!! I’m so sorry to have missed giving you weekly updates, but real life kicked in and whirled us around and around, and then dropped us on our behindles!

Mum put the beach house up for sale and after 5 days and 9 offers she settled on the best quick cash offer with a 2 week close.  We got to take one quick trip back up to say goodbye to the house and move the rest of our tools and supplies back home.  It was kind of bitter sweet, and now the house belongs to a new family. We hope they will love and take care of each other well.   Another whirl, I never go to the doctor, but I spent 2 whole days doing routine tests and checks.  I only went because I knew I had to.  It turn’s out I’m a full fledged, card carrying, raging diabetic! Ugh!!!!  But God is so good and with meds and some life changes, its under control and I’m feeling so much better!

Anywho, enough of all that!  Time to share the makeovers!

I finished y’all!  Just about 2 hours ago I put the finishing touches on the chairs and if I do say so myself, they look Ah May Zing!!

I really needed divine help with everything though.  With the squished time line, fumbling for inspiration, and super low energy, I give all credit to our Good Father for giving me help and keeping me from panicking and giving up on everything!  Thank you Father!

So what did I do?  I sewed slip covers, painted, crocheted and even killed my own spiders!  Eeeek!

First I worked on the old faux plastic wicker chairs. These took the most effort and cost, but they are my favorite of the three makeovers! It turned out the screws that held the seats were rusted on tight, so that led to plan B, new cushions!  I had wanted to macrame the backs, but I long ago forgot any macrame knots and since time and energy was short, I decided to use the Bonnie Craft Cord and just crochet the backs with it.  I measured the area, then made my crochet a little small so that I had to stretch it tight to fit the space.  I just used a simple crochet stitch. I would have loved to have lacey flowers, but I’ve only ever crocheted with just this one stitch! Lol! Time to learn something new I think!  After binging a few Netflix movies and crocheting like my life depended on it, I had 2 and 1/2 backs crocheted, so they went pretty quickly. At that point I needed to order more cord, so two faux wicker chairs got done and two more will get finished next week sometime.

Cutting off the old plastic “wicker” was fairly simple, but a huge lady Widow had made one of the chairs her home!  The real challenge was squishing her before she made it under one of the couches! Eek! Otherwise we would never be able to go back into the living room again!!  Yikes!!

The cleaned chair frames got some fresh black paint and then I just tied the four corners of the crocheted rectangles into the space and then used my crochet hook to loop the cord aound the frames and attach the crocheted backs onto the chairs.  The seats got more cord, tied and woven through, to make support for cushions, and the Amazon clearance cushions got new white slipcovers. And then bam!!  We had cool new chairs!!

This is sort of embarrassing, but with the zigzag cushioned chairs, I’ve had 10 yards of white outdoor fabric waiting for 3 years to recover them.  I even got a new sewing machine last year, but it took me two months to warm up to using it at all, and then we had just started work on the beach house, so the slipcovers got put off again.  This summer it was definitely time to “get er done”!

Knowing today was the last day for this challenge I went to bed last night saying “If God is willing!”, and he was!  I woke up bright and early with a plan!  Four chair slip covers took me from 7am till 12:30pm, but I mean, I got 4 chair slip covers done in 5 hours!  That’s phenomenal!!  They really went fast! It was like 1,2,3,4 and bam! And they look like brand new chairs! At least they do to me!

The bar stools went the fastest of all. They got a coat of spray paint, and I probably need to hit them again, but I ran out of paint, so I’ll pick up a can next time I’m at Lowes and get the thin spots.

The stools also got new cushion covers, in light grey and white. A screw driver, scissors and some hot glue and they were done!  Yayyy!!

I’m so glad that I didn’t let myself give up on this challenge, even with all of the delays and emotional whirls, it feels so good to accomplish these projects!  To know they were done with my own hands using mostly supplies we already had.  The crocheted chairs were the only project that money was spent on, but $66 for 4 new chairs is a bargain!  $36 for 4 skeins of polyolefin craft cord and $30 for new seat cushions.

I’m still figuring out exactly what project I’m moving forward for next month’s summer SFD Room Challenge, but I’m thinking of working on our front outdoor entryway or sharing a couple of small projects on some indoor rooms.  I’ll let y’all know just as soon as I know! Lol!

Thank you all so much for stopping by to join mum and I on our diy adventures!  Please have a safe and fabulous July!  And as my poppa would say, have fun and be good dear friends!!💋

Much love, Mum and M