Welcome To On The Avenue Home Decor & Gifts. Years ago my husband and I bought our first home. It was a very old home and needed a lot of tender love and care. I had the vision of what I wanted and my husband was able to help me bring it to life. As we began building and creating items for our home, we had another idea..... What if we started our own business and offered our creations to others who share the same love and passion for decorating as we do. Here we are, 17 years later, sharing our creations and designs with friends everywhere.

Saturday, March 2, 2013

Happy Saturday Everyone!
Welcome to our ~Make Your House A Home~ post, where we share about the things that ~Make our House A Home~.  We have been incredibly busy with orders and are so grateful for all of the orders that are coming in.  We have been working fast and furious and are so grateful for this little business we have created.  It is amazing to me how much joy I find in creating things.  It is amazing to take a piece of wood and create something new and I absolutely love taking something old and making it better.  
Check out some of the things we have done to add a little more coziness to our home.

GLIDER Rocker Transformation
I Love This Transformation......
I logged onto facebook the other day and found this chair for sale on the classifieds.  Then, I realized who the seller was.  My dear friend Amy!!!!  I told her I just had to have this glider.  Look at the potential!!!!  I actually felt guilty that I was buying it from her because I knew what it could look like after I was done adding a little love.  It was in perfect condition, just needed a little updating.  


So we went shopping for fabric and I absolutely love this fabric.  It is different than anything else I have in my home, but it looks super great.  I covered the cushions first (which I have never done before).  I just laid the cushions on the fabric, cut about a 2" border around the cushion, sewed them like a pillow cover, stuffed the cushions in and hand sewed the bottom together.  It was one of those moments that I was quite proud of what I had done.  Sewing has never been a talent of mind, so this was quite an accomplishment to me.   I was so excited about how they looked, I put them right on the chair.  However, I couldn't wait to re-paint the wood.  My first thought was to paint it antique white, but decided at the last minute to spray it black.  So glad I changed my mind. 
 Tadaaaa!  Here it is........the final project.  I took the glider out to the shop and sprayed it black.  While it was drying, I decided to cover a couple couch pillows I had.  I added them to the chair and ran back outside to clear coat my glider.  While that was drying, I decided to cover two more pillows with the fabric I had left over and added them onto the couches.  I actually draped a throw over the top of this chair to add a little more texture.  
Doesn't this look fantastic?
I emailed pictures of my new transformation to my friend and she said she wanted it back!!  Can you believe her? (LOL).  We laughed and laughed about it - Thanks for letting me have a little fun with your old Chair Amy - I sure love ya!
This was a Super fun and fast project!


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The next fast and fun project were these kitchen chairs.  Once again, I got these chairs from another dear friend.  I was dropping my daughter off to play at her house one day and saw some new super cute stools she bought for her kitchen bar.  They were darling.  I asked her what she was going to do with her other chairs and she said take them to the dump.  Ding Ding Ding...... My mind started turning.  She asked if I wanted them and I said absolutely!!!  She was so embarrassed that I took them because she really thought they belonged at the dump.  She gave me four chairs, two of which were broken in spots.  So I enlisted my sweet Kylan.  Isn't he handsome???!!!  It is wonderful having a son that can help with those little projects around the house.  We had a great time and a lot of sarcasm escaped our mouths that day.  (SMILE)  He took the two chairs that were broken and made one really good sturdy chair out of the parts.  Way To Go Ky!!

My friend was really disappointed with the way the fabric lasted on these chairs.  She said they were supposed to be really easy to clean, but they weren't.  I am sure these seat covers were the only things in her house that even had a speck of dust on them.  - And I am not kidding!!!
 We removed the seats from the chairs...
 I found some fabric at Joann Fabric.  I got about three yards for $8.00.  It was on their clearance shelf and it LOVED it.  I have never re-covered chairs before, so once again, this was a new project for me.  I placed the seat upside down on the fabric and cut about a 3" border around the chair.  I got out the old staple gun and stapled it to the back of the chair.  It was so easy.  I had to use bigger grabber screws when I put the seat back onto the chair because of the additional fabric.  
 And Tadaa!!!  Here is one of the finished chairs.  Doesn't it look fantastic?????  I was really excited about the way they turned out.  I figure if the get dirty again, I will just recover them again.  It was quick and easy and very in-expensive. 
 And of course..... one last touch.  I tied a twig wreath onto the back of each chair with a big burlap bow.  LOVE this finished look.  We ended up with three great chairs and I added some black stools around the table to go with these chairs.

This was a really fun project, probably because Kylan helped me.  We really had a great time together.  He will be 16 this year and I can't believe all of that time has passed.  As much as I love the decorating, creating and designing, the things that really ~Make Our House A Home~ are the people that live here.  (ok, and the dogs, the cat, the chickens, the goat, the bees and whatever else lives here)  I am so blessed to have the best husband in the world and what more can I say about my kids?  I absolutely adore them!  None of us are perfect and we definitely have our share of arguments, frustrations and hard times, but we are a forever family and we love each other.
Thanks for sharing part of your day with our family!

~Mandy~

1 comment:

  1. I have an old glider rocker that is brown. Now you are giving me ideas about refinishing it. Lets hope it works out as easily as you made it sound :)

    ReplyDelete