Feeling The Blues

I wanted to call this post “It’s About Frickin Time You Got Started On This” since I’ve been telling you all about my plans about it for what seems like an eternity. Or maybe I’ve been telling it to myself? Sometimes I can’t remember if the stories are just ones I have with myself in my head or if I’ve actually had conversations with others. Not that I’m nuts or anything. I swear. Well earlier this week I finally started it. Let’s be honest- it was mostly because the shit was just lying around my house causing me to go bat shit crazy a huge mess on my dining table.

I previously talked about how I had family in town at the end of July. One of the things that they asked before they left home was did I need them to bring me anything from there. I immediately thought of those two poor lonely curtain panels that I left there at Christmas time. My mom hadn’t planned on using them and I was looking for a pair for my upstairs living room since I had just decided on the navy theme and couldn’t find anything here that I liked. So I stole them from her. Thanks Mom! But stupidly only took 2 panels and left the other set there.

The more I got thinking about recovering my chaise lounge that's upstairs and calculating the cost of new fabric for said lounge- the more I cringed. No not really. But since I had just added 3 more colors to the freshly painted room, I didn’t want anything too crazy pattern-wise and wanted it to be all matchy matchy with everything else that was up there and we all know how picky I am so I knew it’d take me for-eva to find something that I actually liked. And then it dawned on me. DUH! Why not use the same fabric as the curtains to recover the chaise? Cough cough plus it’d be free cough cough.  So I asked my uncle to stop at my mom’s to pick them up for me along with my teal poinsettia’s that I got for a steal after the holiday at Michael’s which I plan on using for a crafty little project closer to the end of the year- stay tuned!

Well the family left Indy on July 29^th and everything they brought has sat on the dining table since then. Bad Kristi. I threw the curtains into the wash last weekend and finally brought them upstairs and laid them across the chaise to see how it would look. And not surprisingly I LOVED IT! So of course walking by it for a couple of days got me itching to start and finish the job.

Here is what the chaise looked like before I started.  

Monday night I headed upstairs around 10pm with tools in hand. I started out by taking apart the chaise which wasn’t that hard since it was just bolted together. 

I’ll be honest- it’s not the most expensive or quality piece of furniture out there. I got it from the clearance section of a local store for something like $50.  So after I disassembled it, I used up one whole curtain for the seat. That left me the back and two arms for the remaining curtain. It wasn’t looking good.

I laid out the 3 pieces onto the curtain and determined.......that it wasn’t going to work. Mother fucker.  I didn’t have enough material to do the entire piece. My heart sank a little bit, I won’t lie. Don’t you hate when you have a brilliant idea and then realize it’s not actually going to turn out the way you wanted it to? Yes- that’s how I was feeling. So I decided to just do the back and see if I liked it without the arms. Which I didn’t. I definitely liked it with the arms attached. It is just a lot more comfortable with the arms especially if you sit on it for a while. So it sat up there wingless until I could figure out what to do.

I checked out Joann’s on Wednesday and didn’t find anything that came close to the fabric I was using. So I was kind of bummed. I could totally pass something else off as being similar but I don’t want it to look like a hot mess either. Then I thought of a solution!! Again, DUH! I totally should slap my forehead. Hello????? You have curtains of the same material!!! Why not use them? I took down one of the panels from the window to use and plan to cut the other one in half from top to bottom to make two skinny curtains out of one.  But that'll have to wait.  We've got a chaise to finish here people!

So after carefully measuring to see exactly how much material I’d need for the two arms I snipped away the bottoms and finished recovering the piece. After I put humpty dumpty back together again I won’t say that I don’t love it- because I definitely do. BUT- it was missing a little something. I stood there checking it out, hands on my hips. It definitely looked a little Plain Jane. Hmmm.  Don't judge the arms yet.  I needed to figure out that piece.  It took me a while.  

I knew exactly what it needed so I jumped into my car and made the trek back over to Joann’s. What do you think now?

I do have to say- I LOVE ME SOME NAIL HEAD TRIM. If nail head trim were a man, I’d marry the fuck out of it. If home decor could be handsome, furniture with nail head trim would be People’s Sexiest Man of the Year. That’s how much I love it. So from now on this chaise is known as Bradley in homage to the very fine Mr. Cooper.

I totally cheated with this nail head trim.  Well at first I didn't.  I got 5 boxes of the individual nails after seeing how much I would need before leaving.  I was going to put them every inch.  So I needed 152 of them.  When I first started this morning I carefully measured out and leveled where they would go and began hammering them in.  After about 5 minutes- I was down about 10 bent nails, 4 that had actually gone in but were nowhere near being in a straight line and two very sore fingers from holding the too small nail while hammering..  Frustrated was not even close to describing what I was.  I probably used more curse words in that 5 minutes that I have in my entire blog.  I was pissed.  P-I-S-E-D.  (The Sweetest Thing reference...did any of you pick up on that?) 

So I headed back to Joann's today to return the 4 unopened boxes and to pick up a roll of 5 yards of trim for $12.  The extra $4 I paid for it was WELL WORTH IT!  I was done with the trim in less than 10 minutes.  I sooooooo did not have the patience for the individual nails.  So my advice to you if you are planning a similar project- just bite the bullet and pay the extra for the roll of trim.  You won't regret it.  

Here are some more shots of Bradley.  Looking good.  Work it.  Work it.