Design in My Home Project: Recovering Our Dining Room Chairs

Recently, sweet hubs and I acquired a fantastic mid-century modern dining set from his mother for our new home. In addition to a dining table with a removable leaf and six chairs, the set also includes a beautiful credenza, which unfortunately won't fit in our small home's dining space, so that will be saved for the day we buy our first house.

The dining set is in pretty great shape, considering it's age and the fact that between it being used and it coming into our possession, it was living under a bed for a few years.  It needed a little love and was be back in fine condition in no time.

Hey look! It's the first interior reveal of the house:
the dining room, which we painted in Behr's "Desert Cactus"!

Our first step to bringing the set back to its former glory was to recover the chairs. We recently went on the hunt for fabric that would fit stylistically with it but also give it a little bit of a modern flair. Our search unveiled lots of gorgeous fabric in many styles, colors and textures - but we couldn't find something just right - it all seemed to be missing the most important thing on our search - our budget!  For those of you unfamiliar with purchasing fabric - yes, it can absolutely be an incredible solution to freshen up a piece of furniture or a room on a budget, but it can also get very expensive, very fast, especially when you have champagne taste (in fabric) as I do.

Anyhow, after lots of searching, both online and in-stores, in New York City as well as Atlanta, I came across a fabulous little website called Newtoto. It was perfect on several levels: reasonably priced, had lots of options for modern prints and most of them were heavy duty (ie. resists spills and tears - perfect for cats and messy eaters). They even allowed you to order free swatches. I picked out my top three favorites and three days later I had my swatches in hand.

(Fabrics Left to Right: "Network - Frost" Terratex Panel Fabric $7.50/yard, "Maxim - Sesame" Crypton® Jacquard $10.64/yard, "See Saw - Granite" Crypton® $6.50/yard)

And the winner was: See Saw in Graphite! It was absolutely perfect. The moment my grubby little fingertips touched its thick, beautiful texture I was in love. Yes, I fall in love easily, especially when wonderful textures are involved.

But I digress... I got online and ordered my fabric immediately.

Fast forward to 5 business days later...

The day that our delivery was scheduled to arrive, sweet hubs and I ventured to Hancock Fabrics and our luck was with us - they were having a 40% off sale on foam! We walked out of there with four pieces of foam to start recovering our chairs as soon as our shipment arrived that evening.

And once we got home, our fabric was at our door. We then began recovering.

This was what we started with:

The chair before, which was covered in a red vinyl
that just didn't match our color scheme at all.

Sweet hubs and I then disassembled the first chair (unscrewed the seat from the frame) and took off not one, but two layers of different fabric and multiple layers of batting and foam - some of which I'm sure was from 1970 - and removed all of the staples left from the previous recovers.

Sweet hubs removing staples.

After removing the staples, we cut the foam to the size of the board. Once that was done, we cut the fabric. I don't know about anyone else, but I always get so nervous making "the first cut". Be it wrapping paper, fabric or cake, I'm always nervous that I'll mess it up.

Sitting on my knees, taking a deep breath before cutting the fabric.
Very dramatic, I know.

Once the fabric was cut, next was stretching the fabric over the foam and board and stapling it to the back. It's not nearly as difficult as it sounds - you just have to be careful to make sure you eliminate ripples and whatnot on the corners when you're stapling. And stretch the fabric tight. You want it to be nice and smooth. (I failed to capture any photos of the starting point since we were both doing this at the same time, but when you're doing this, your fabric is on bottom with the correct side (the side you want showing) down on flat on a surface. You stack the foam and then the board on top. When stretching and stapling, you want to start with one side, then do the side opposite of that, and so on. It keeps the fabric taught.

This is what it should look like mid-way through (keep in mind we had a little too much fabric left over, hence sweet hubs trimming it):

After you finish, you simply place the cushion back on the frame and screw it back on.  Voila!

I'm not going to lie - this was my first time recovering a chair. It was surprisingly easy, once we figured out the logistics. And when I say we, I mean that after the first chair, sweet hubs decided that he enjoyed recovering that first chair so much that he actually took over the project and finished the rest of them solo.

I'm a lucky lady. I'm even luckier because now I have a rad dining set.

That's all for now folks!

Design in My Home: Colors in the New House

Well, the move to Atlanta from Brooklyn is complete. We've been here almost two weeks now and things are going swimmingly. We're settling in, getting familiar with our new neighborhood and catching up with old friends.

All of that aside, I've been asked numerous times now what my color palette is for the new house and I'm finally ready to share.

I must admit, in my home, I resist a lot of variety when it comes to my color palettes - I gravitate toward cooler colors, as does sweet hubs, which means we typically stay in the neutrals (mainly shades of grey or cooler browns), blues and greens. Guess what? We didn't stray from that here either.

In our last apartment, we went with more conservative, dusky colored blues and greens. You can see what I'm talking about here. This time, we felt since we were actually going to be in a house rather than an apartment, that we'd go a little more bold - instead of dusky, we went jewel toned.

Now, without further adieu, our color palette:

As you can see, I chose Behr colors - I also used Behr paint. I really do find them to have excellent quality paint with great coverage (No, I'm not paid to say that, I truly do just love their products.)

I'm not telling you where which colors are going or what they're doing - just soak up the color palette for a bit and relax. After I saw the colors we picked all together, I realized its almost a Palm Springs color palette. Good thing most of our furniture is modern and mid-century - they go hand in hand in the Palm Springs style.

Well, that's all you get for now. I'll have another "Design in My Home" update soon!

Last Night in Brooklyn

It's our last night in Brooklyn. Instead of some crazy night, sweet hubs and I went out for a nice dinner and cocktails at The Farm on Adderley with my parents, who so kindly drove up here to help us move.

Tomorrow morning we will pick up our moving truck and leave NYC. Atlanta, here we come!

Farewell, Brooklyn. Thanks for a great 7 years.

(A tasty farewell.)

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

A Visit to The Philip Johnson Glass House

A few years back, I discovered the work of architect Philip Johnson and instantly fell in love. I find that his simple yet thought provoking designs that integrate so beautifully into their surroundings inspire me in so many ways. While delving deeper into researching his work and style, I discovered that he had resided for a good portion of his life in a little town an hour and a half north of New York City called New Canaan, CT. I also discovered that his property, The Glass House, which is now a part of the National Trust for Historic Preservation, is open for daily tours.

As soon as I read that it was open to the public to experience, I decided I needed to experience it as soon as possible. Unfortunately, as soon as possible didn't really happen until almost three years later. Sweet hubs and I had attempted to buy tickets a few times in the three years before, but the dates sold out almost immediately that we were able to make the trip up. When this past March rolled around and the 2011 ticket sales opened, I was probably one of the first to buy tickets.

Fast forward to yesterday and I finally was able to experience The Glass House in person. I was in heaven. From all of the photos I've seen, it truly wouldn't matter what time of year you were to visit - I can only imagine that it is a spectacular experience regardless of weather or season. We were lucky to have an absolutely perfect July day - sunny and warm, but not hot, and with a few beautiful, puffy clouds in the sky.

Our tour guide was phenomenal - unfortunately, I didn't catch his name, but he was so incredibly interesting to listen to. He told us details on the property that I'm sure he'd acquired from his five years of giving the tour, but also was able to give us a local's perspective, being as he'd lived in New Canaan most of his life. He made it interesting, personal and fun, which are all of the things that make a tour more interesting.

The property itself covers 47 acres of land and contains several bulidings. The Glass House, which was Philip Johnson's home, The Brick House, which was his guest house, The Lake Pavilion, which was his outdoor dining room, The Painting Gallery, which houses his personal collection of paintings, The Sculpture Gallery, which houses his personal sculpture collection, The Study, which was his library and workroom, Da Monsta, which is a building that was designed and constructed on the inspiration of Frank Stella, Frank Gehry and Peter Eisenman, The Ghost House, which was inspired by Frank Gehry, and The Kirstein Tower, which was a sculpture that Johnson created in honor of friend and poet, Lincoln Kirstein.

Below are my personal photos from The Glass House. To view the rest of the gallery, click here.

The coolest driveway gate ever.

Da Monsta

The Study and The Ghost House

The Glass House

The Glass House

The Glass House Interior (Kitchen / Living Room / Dining Room)

The Fireplace

The Bedroom

The Kitchen

The Bathroom (Located on the back half of the fireplace)

Back of The Glass House

The Back View from The Glass House

The Kirstein Tower and The Lake Pavilion

The Glass House Property (The Brick House - Left, The Glass House - Right) - Interesting fact: The pool doesn't have a flat bottom, it's cone shaped and the only way you can get out is by pulling yourself out on the cement slab.

The Painting Gallery

An Andy Warhol original of Philip Johnson

Interior of The Painting Gallery - the walls rotate to display different works of art.

The Sculpture Gallery

Interior of The Sculpture Gallery

Interior of The Sculpture Gallery

In a Month's Time...

We sure have gotten a lot accomplished.

Since we made the official announcement that we're relocating from Brooklyn to Atlanta, sweet hubs and I have gotten a lot done with regard preparing for our upcoming move, worked a lot, put a lot of miles on the open road and we managed to have some fun along the way. Actually a lot of fun.

I'm not going to lie, I am completely exhausted to my bones and know that I will continue to be until we get settled down south, but I'm happy. I'm really happy. It's been an adventure and I'm excited about our new future.

A few things we've done recently:

Ventured to the Coney Island 29th Annual Mermaid Parade.

Experienced the Brooklyn Cyclones 2011 Season Opener.

Stayed after the baseball game to watch the fireworks on the boardwalk.

Went down to Atlanta for a week and signed a lease on an adorable little house that I can't wait to get my grubby little hands on to start painting and decorating.

Spent Independence Day weekend with my parents in Virginia and went to the Luray Caverns.

Totally missed seeing any fireworks on the 4th of July because we were too exhausted to go back out after driving back to NYC.

Whew!

So that's a little recap of life up till now. Busy bees, we are.

Ta ta for now, friends.