Yo Ho Ho and a Bottle of Rum (Part 2)

Well, it took a while for all the paint to dry (literally), but my storage bench makeover is complete! Okay, well- mostly complete. There's still one final step I intend to take once I can decide on a pattern, and that's to get some cute wrapping paper and mod podge to line the inside. Then it'll be finished. But in the mean time, let's take a look at how it's improved.

So this is what it looked like after I finished my first improvement: adding the upholstered bench seat to the top. Definitely an improvement on how it was before, but it still needed some work. Remember how I said that there were nicks and scars and scratches and a huge crack and a miscellaneous wax spot on it? Those had to go. And while I was at it, the seemingly unsalvageable water-marked condition of the wood could do with being hidden away. Out came the tools!

Paint, primer, poly-filler, brush, screwdriver, and sandpaper. I had a whole arsenal ready to tackle this chest. So armed with my DIY supplies and a handy furniture painting tutorial from YHL, I was ready to go.

There was just one problem I later discovered with my supplies. If you followed the link, you'll note that John and Sherry over at Young House Love suggest enamel- or oil-based primer and paint for wood furniture. Alas, that particular post didn't detail the reason why...but this one from yesterday did. And boy do I wish I'd read it before I hit up B&Q. The water-based paint I was using (trusting the lady at the paint counter to - I don't know - understand the ins and outs of the product she was selling!) has a much higher propensity to allow the wood to bleed through both the primer and the paint, giving your paint job a dingy and dirty "I couldn't be bothered to wash this...check out the stains!" kind of look. Shame the paint lady didn't warn me. I did mention that I was painting a wood chest.

You can see where this is going. Oh yeah, ma-hoosive bleed through on the lid of the chest. (Nowhere else, thankfully!) I shellacked that thing with two coats of primer, and probably four coats of paint until the bleed through seemed to stop. My fingers are still crossed that I don't have to re-do the whole thing at a later date. Lesson learned.

But, to start at the very beginning (Sound of Music moment!) with this project:

Numero uno: poly-filler! That giant crack in the lid of the chest had to be filled. That step done, I unscrewed the hinges and took the lid off. There's enough of a lip on this thing that if I hadn't taken it off, I'd have been left with 1/2" of unpainted chest. Which is just awkward.

Step deux: cleaning and sanding. The first thing to go (while the poly-filler dried) was that creepy blob of wax that had stained one side of the lid.

Grotty. Once that I was done, I gave the lid a good sanding and set it aside. Then, it was time to tackle the rest of the chest. There wasn't much on the outside that needed cleaning, but what needed it was dire. Remember the ugly hinge handles that came on this monster? They had to go.

It. Took. Ages. Seriously: after 5 minutes of fighting the rusted bolts with the screwdriver, my frustration peaked and I whipped out the power drill. And like the nail-biting climax of a super-hero movie, the rusty bolts - as my token Arch Villain - nearly defeated the power drill in a battle to the finish. But after another ten minutes (and some venomous swearing), the power drill and I emerged victorious on the side of good and good taste.

Sadly, our nemesis left behind this token of his long and unhindered stay on the chest:

I sanded that bad boy to within an inch of its life, getting rid of the absolutely disgusting pile of of gunk. The staining, however, had to be tackled by the primer and paint. The bolt holes were poly filled, sanded down, and then I was ready to move on.

Step 3: Time to break out the primer. Following the John and Sherry instructions, I layered on two very thin coats of primer to the whole of the chest; giving each one about an hour or two to dry before adding a new layer.

Step 4: after two coats of primer (separated by a trip to the gym), it was time to break out the paint. I chose a glossy white since we have a big white & blue aesthetic going on in our living room. Not to mention, a glossy white goes nicely with the white plant pot we have living in the bay window next to the chest/bench. The swanky new handles I got go with the brushed nickel-effect lamps we snagged last year at Ikea. It's all about the small details. :-)

Numer funf: yesterday, after letting the paint dry for a good four hours, I broke out the measuring tape and a pencil and figured out where to place my 96mm brushed nickel handles. Since I'd filled the bolt holes from the evil other handles, (which were only 90mm) I was going to drill all new holes to make sure my handles were centred. I measured and marked on the inside to avoid nicking the paint more than necessary.

In hind sight, I could have waited a bit longer (like until today) to attach the handles, but the paint was dry enough to manage it without peeling away in huge and horrifying chunks. Whew! (Big important tip coming!) Oh, and because I'm not the world's most accurate measurement-taker, I only drilled one of the bolt holes for the new handles after taking my measurements off the centre. Once that was in, I levelled the handle, marked where it actually hit the surface, and then put my second bolt hole on that marking...just in case I hadn't managed a perfectly even 96mm guide line on the inside.

So, having fought the demon of bleed through when painting wood with water-based products (never, never again), mastered the vile crust of the old handles, poly-filled any big gaping holes, and super glued any loose bits of wood, I was pretty much done. All that was left, once the paint had dried, was to screw the lid back on and see where all my efforts with painting and upholstering had got me. In case you're eaten alive with curiosity, this is where it got me:

I think that's about a 1000% improvement on how it was before. To recap everything that's actually been fixed so far:

• the gaping canyon in the lid has been filled
• the splintered boards on the inside bottom have been covered and reinforced with MDF
• the old handles were taken off and replaced
• an upholstered bench was made for the top to provide extra living room seating
• the abused condition of the wood was hidden with liberal use of primer and glossy white paint

Since both the seat and the glossy paint finish are easy to wipe clean, those parts of it are pretty baby-friendly.  And, now that the handles don't swing, not only are tiny squished fingers no longer a worry, but my nerves won't suffer from having a sadistic child who likes the sound of repeatedly swinging and bashing the handles into the side of the chest. Everybody wins!

So that has been my first furniture re-finishing adventure. Well, at least two out of three parts of it. Personally, I know it doesn't match my navy blue and polka dots obsession, but I think I might hold out for the multi-colour stem print wrapping paper from Orla Kiely to line the inside.

Until my next domestic goddess misadventure!

Thank You Very Very Much

So, I was going to post about the second part of my snazzy storage-chest-to-storage-bench makeover, but seeing as I'm not finished yet (and thus can't put up any awesome opossum-worthy "after" shots of the whole to-do) it's going to have to wait until tomorrow or Friday. Soz. :-/

Sad faces! (That is definitely the cutest sad face I've ever seen.)

Anyway, I do have something to talk about today...and that was inspired by something I mentioned in yesterday's post. Thank You cards. Well, cards in general, but since we've made shed tons of Thank Yous in the past year, let's start there, shall we?

To seriously begin at the beginning, I have to note that it's Seb's fault that we don't buy ready-made cards any more. I don't blame him in an angry way for this: it's been fun! But he ruined most store-bought cards for me by both making his own so much cooler and pointing out the high percentage of hopelessly cheesy, ugly, naff, or otherwise redunkulous cards in every store. When his cousin got married, we searched for half an hour in one store that didn't have much more floor space than our living room and couldn't find a single card without A) furry little animals, B) ugly champagne glasses,or C) furry little animals toasting ugly champagne glasses. This experience reminded us how hopeless most card shopping is. Unless, you can find cute ones like this:

Our card making skillz have even left us so picky that we designed and made our own wedding stationary. Invites, RSVP cards, Thank Yous...you name it, I designed it in PowerPoint and collected the family sweatshop to assemble it.

Oh, and those were our Christmas cards from back in 2009 and 2010. See what I mean? Nice, simple, no cheesy poem...if you have the patience not to get glue everywhere (which I sometimes don't) you really can't go wrong making your own cards. Especially because about half of our best cardstock came from just 2 trips to Target over the course of about 3 years. How impressive does that feel? Granted, when we do printed cards (like the Thank Yous I'm excited to show you), we tend to use a slightly less-fancy white card for the base and then print our home-made amazingness on some photo paper. But either way, the supplies are dirt cheap, last you for ages, and produce some cards that are way more fun than most things you can buy in the store.

Bam! Check it out, people! Our latest adventure into the realms of home-made card gods. With lovely cards from family and family friends remembering our first anniversary, we realised that we needed some Thank Yous pretty darn quickly. Turns out, even more than usual, all those spiffy free fonts I found were quite the life-saver. Ten minutes in PowerPoint with the fonts, a few colours, and the circle-drawing tool left me with these babies. Printed out on some photo paper and then mounted with some Scotch sticky squares onto white card, they made fairly swish Thank Yous that are now ready to be filled with whatever message we choose and sent to their lucky recipients. And I didn't even have to waste the time and money on going to the crap shop card shop!

Oh, and because I like this so much, here are the two versions I made...in case you're in one of those "crap,I need a thank you card!" type panics. The first is the A4 version...you know, for those of you with tall and slender UK format paper. The second is the 8.5x11" version that I tweeked for everyone who still finds that size paper normal. (I've been here waaaay too long, and I don't even notice how tall and skinny the A4 paper looks now...it's 8.5X11" that looks weird to me.)

A4 Thank You goodness:

8.5x11" Thank You sweetness:

Now, I've posted these trusting to two things: A) that when you click on the pictures, they go to their normal size, and B) that their normal sizes aren't too small.Why is too small a problem? No one wants the pixelly aliased look that comes from printing an image that was so small that it had to be zoomed in 300%. So, my hope is that these .pngs are big enough that the anti-aliasing on the fonts holds up to print them at their normal size. Of course, you could always turn them 90* and half the size; getting you twice as many cards for your trouble.

Until next time! (When I can hopefully show you the refurbished coffee table/bench in all its glory...)

Curtain-Hanging Extravaganza

Okay, so maybe "extravaganza" is a bit much to describe my curtain-hanging exploits yesterday. Maybe Curtain Fest or Curtain Adventure would be better. Either way, it was both more and less involved than my last attempt...though I'm inclined to err on the side of "more involved".

The day started with a much-needed trip out to Reading. Why Reading? Because Farnborough is a little too ghetto to have a John Lewis, and that was the store that had the curtains that seemed most likely to get the job done. They were A) not very expensive, and B) involved pretty much no sewing. Definitely what I wanted. Until I get myself a sewing machine, I'd really like to avoid sewing-related projects where I can. My hand-sewing is worse than my machine sewing and it's a pain in the butt.

So, out to Reading, and two hours later I walked back to my car full of a tasty burrito (The Mission is a brilliant stand-in for Chipotle) and with two sets of John Lewis curtains for the remaining nekkid or poorly-dressed windows in my house. It didn't take me two hours to find and decide on curtains...it took that long to get myself a dress that covers my baby bump (church/wedding appropriate maternity clothes are thin on the ground in my wardrobe).

 

So these were the curtains I walked out with. The ones on top...John Lewis Value collection. Which means they only cost me £20. Score! The other curtains were the only unlined variant of that pattern I found, and for the length I wanted (the usual 228cm for all of the windows in our apartment) they only set us back about £44. Under any other circumstances, I would have balked at this price; but, we had some extra cash floating around as an anniversary present from Seb's awesome Granny. So we put that present towards some jointly-approved home improvement.

First to go up were the - presumably easier to hang - polka dot curtains. The bay window in our living room has now become Polka Dot Corner (hi, I'm Bryony and I'm addicted to polka dot patterns...), but since it's confined to that space, I think it's okay. I promise I won't add any other dotted patterns to the living room décor. And anyway, Seb gave his full approval to hanging these specific curtain in that specific window. I have an enabler.

The reason these were "easier" to hang was because they were - dun dun dun! - pencil pleated curtains. I have not hung them with the pleat, but it did mean that I could steal repurpose the fixings from our ugly terracotta-coloured curtains. That handy bit of scavenging saved me having to replace the curtain track that goes around all three sides of our bay window; which is good, because curved curtain rails aren't the least expensive thing to switch out.

Well, I got the fixings on, threaded them onto our weird bendy curtain track...and spotted a problem. Do you see the problem?

Yeah. My 228cm drop length was a teensy bit too long. Because I hadn't switched out the curtain rail, these curtains weren't High and Wide like the ones in our bedroom. Granted, the other lengths were too short to get the ground-brushing effect I wanted, but I now had 16cm of extra fabric to contend with. Time to get creative.

My first idea was going to be a temporary quick-fix. I'd iron the curtains up to the length I needed and then (crafty cheater that I am) use some bobby pins to secure them at the appropriate floor-brushing length until I could get some hem tape. I didn't want to cut these beauties because they'll come with us to our later homes, and if I get the chance to hang them to their full length, I intend to take that chance.

Well, ten minutes, some ironing, and about 6 bobby pins later, I realised that my cunning plan just wasn't going to cut it. Boo-hiss. On to cunning plan Numero Dos: hand-sewing. I texted the Husband at work and got him to pin-point the location of the only thread and needles in our home: a tiny button-fixing kit he got from staying in a snazzy conference centre for work. Out the button fixing kit came, riding a black horse and wearing a mask, ready to save the day from droopy puddling curtains. Okay, its entrance wasn't that dramatic...

Ta-da! Cheating accomplished. By doing this every 5" or so, I was able to get a much more acceptable solution to my too-long curtains. And I didn't lose any of the length, so they're reusable on whatever windows may come our way in the future. Handy, huh?

So now that I had some much nicer living room curtains all fake-hemmed and hanging, it was time to tackle the bigger beast: my nursery's nekkid window.

This window has been scandalously undressed for about a week or two now. I took the curtains and rail down to paint and never put them back up since A) I was getting new curtains anyway, and B) they would hang on the second Ikea curtain rail we had bought on our big New House Ikea Trip. Unfortunately, with the turn to hot, muggy, and otherwise unpleasant jungle-like weather, those nekkid windows turned the nursery into a sauna. Seb went in one evening to assemble our last Billy bookcase and came out looking like he'd been in a fight with a swimming pool and lost.

Since I was hanging another curtain rod, out came the Rawl plugs and drill. The drill and I don't seem to see eye-to-eye when it comes to securing these Ikea fittings to the wall, but in the end I beat it into submission made it see reason and got my curtain rod up.

Turns out that John Lewis weren't kidding when they called these curtains "natural". They're way more granola tree-hugger-feeling than I was expecting. Think less "refined undyed linen" and more "trendy burlap bag look". Not entirely what I was expecting. But not necessarily a bad thing.

If I decide that the window really needs some colour, I'll just find a nice fabric dye and attack these with it. But that's a decision for another day. For the meantime, I'll just enjoy having curtains in there at all. And wait patiently for the Husband to break out the Baby Hack Saw to take the extra length off our curtain rail.

Yeah, not only is the room thin and long, but the window is wildly off-centre. Otherwise, wide-set curtains (and long curtain rails) are no problem. But with at least half a foot of useless hardware sticking out on one side, something must be done. Hopefully, by the time my next nursery project comes along, I can show you what a beautiful job Seb's done fixing my awkward curtain rail.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, was the end of Curtain-palooza 2011.

The Year of Paper

Sunday officially made one year of being married peoples for me and Seb. It seriously feels like it couldn't possibly have been a whole year. And yet, at the same time, I find myself thinking, "Just a year? For reals?" I mean, it's still weird for me to remember that this time last year, I looked like this:

My, how things change. Not only am I married, but I'm a Master of Arts, and a Momma-to-be. You sure can do a lot in one year.

But, in celebration of our one year anniversary, we decided to keep it simple. A trip somewhere at least one of us hadn't been and a nice dinner out. After much deliberation, the decided trip destination became Blenheim Palace up in Oxfordshire. This gianormous palace and grounds have - for a couple hundred years - been the family home of the Churchills.You know; like "we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds...we shall never surrender." Those Churchills.

Despite the pictures, it actually was a nice day. Really warm by the end and pretty sunny, too. Which is nice, because the past few weeks have been filled with torrential rain at some point pretty much every day. Did you know England had a monsoon season? Because I didn't.

Anyway: on to the day's highlights...

The world's stupidest pheasant. This thing came up while we picnicked by the lake and kept begging for food. It would have hopped in my purse and come home with me if I'd actually fed it some barbecue chips! (How does "big enough to smuggle a pheasant" sound as a measurement of purse size? No; I didn't think it would catch on either.)

Yay! (More baby bump photos to come. I promise.) A few shots of us outside of the palace itself. This is when the day was still pretending to be evil-tempered as if it wanted to rain again. Luckily, for once, the weather did just what the forecast said it would. How cooperative. We would have dressed nicer, since we were going out for dinner and all, but since the day involved lots of walking in the humid June air, we decided that jeans and nice-ish tops were a much safer route to go.

Heading into the palace. Like the rebels we are, we decided to sneak away before the start of the guided tour (everyone else was doing it!) and go through the house on our own. Good thing we did, too! One tour we passed was being given by a guy I swear was the Crypt Keeper! After just 30 seconds of listening in, we were surprised that some of the little old people hadn't keeled over yet. I bet you didn't think you needed a stiff constitution to withstand a guided tour in a historic house. Well, you do. There is a severe risk, at the hands of the wrong tour guide, of being bored to death. Literally. 

in the gazebo using the panorama setting on our snazzy camera

Some of the really pretty gardens and the world's second largest hedge maze. They tell you that the maze takes about 25 minutes to solve. That's a lie. If you're slow and pregnant (rather than a hyperactive 7-year-old who pushes past adults in your way) it takes 25 minutes to walk...if you married a super smart mechanical engineer who solves the maze before you go in (and only takes 2 wrong turns).

Baby bump with an added bonus: check out the dude in the back! We passed this couple in the house when we were sneaking past some of the more stultifying tour guides. If we weren't in Europe, I'd wonder who this guy thought he was fooling. As it was, I'm not going to judge whatever your sexual orientation is, but at least give your girlfriend her clothes back! And under no circumstances whatsoever is the European variant of the Texas Tuxedo look okay. (Or any variant, for that matter.) I mean, the squared-jawed stubbly man with the lovely necklace and red toenail polish wasn't fooling anybody either, but at least his outfit wasn't a crime against fashion. And he even had on sensible shoes!

(Also, what's with this trend? Both of the last times we've had a nice trip out together we happen to run across at least one really unconvincing transvestite. Why is that?)

So, oddly-dressed men aside, we had a really good day. The weather held up, we got to enjoy not only Blenheim, but a lovely Italian dinner in Oxford, and a gorgeous drive through the Oxfordshire countryside. As anniversaries go, I think this one has set a good precedent. It was a lovely end to what has been an awesome first year of marriage, and a good start to the second year. And that second year promises to be pretty darn interesting itself, seeing as how we're working on that whole pretending-we're-gown-up-enough-to-be-parents thing. So cheers to the first of many years with my fantabulous husband!

PS: I've decided to add more footage of the world's stupidest (or best-trained?) pheasant. More accurately, Seb baiting the pheasant while I tell him off.

Getting Organized

In the midst of fun decorating projects - the majority of which, I think, will end up being for das bebe - I've come to a realisation. We've just moved in and we aren't entirely unpacked. Shocking thing to suddenly remember, right? A stunning observation full of intellectual depth and cunning insight. Okay, I'm being entirely sarcastic, but the point was brought home last night.

The Husband had an appointment to go visit a family in our congregation last night. It meant coming home (all lovely and sweaty, mmm...), running into the shower, getting changed, inhaling dinner, pulling up driving directions, and running out the door. Unfortunately, that last step couldn't be completed until we'd turned the apartment upside-down looking for some spare change for an object lesson for our friends' kids.

Neither of us could remember which box we'd dumped the jar of loose change. We looked in the nursery, in the boxes in our closet (there are a lot of those), and finally all around the living room. It was in a random Duchy Originals tin that we found the stash of pennies and Euro coins (do they even have names for those coins?).

(That's the stuff in our closet. I promise, that's an improvement. Half of this stuff was on the nursery floor earlier this week.)

Anyway, the whole penny-hunting fiasco really brought home the point that some serious organizational work is most definitely in order. And since it's the end of the week, and I feel lazy, so I've decided that the starting point will be the smallest organizational project I can find: label-making.

As you can see, we have lots of magazine holders for various and sundry pieces of music and important (and not important) papers. They're pretty inoffensive as appearance goes, but they could use labels. That way, I can keep all of the untidy-looking papers facing the other way, but still know what's in each folder. And what does that mean? The wonderful combination of neatness and cuteness all for free. Yup. Because I don't have to buy the labels (we got them earlier to leave some for the new tenants of our old place to forward any straggling mail still going to the wrong house), or the ink, or new magazine holders. I do love free projects.

So, labels in hand, the first step is to find a fun font to print all of my labels with. And here's the best part: all the fonts I'm about to show you are absolutely confidential absolutely free. Have I said yet how much I love that word?

Those are some pretty snazzy fonts, if I do say so myself. And again, 100% no monies required.

Another tool, if you want to go that route, is to have pictures on your labels and then edit and caption them in picnik. The handy thing about this web-based application is that it's free. The downside to that is that most of its particularly cool features do require paying to get the subscription...but you can still use it to do up some pretty nice labels or pictures or DIY artwork in just the free version.

The fun cartoon characters are "stickers" that picnik gives you to decorate your pictures. Though I admit, my personal favourites are the ones called "Whimsy Trees" which look all retro-revival and mod.

If only those were in the free version.

Anyway, whatever labels you get (we had some inexpensive store-brand versions) should have an automatic template for Word (or Adobe) that you can find on the Interwebz. A short 2-minute search got me to our template...and it was free. (I wonder how many times I can use that word in this post...) So, off I went to word to test out a few fonts (and some sneakily cropped Whimsy Trees from the above Google Image Search result...).

Simples. All that's left now is to print the stickers and make sure that all the magazine holders are organized accordingly. I like this idea because, aside from being easy and free, it also ends up looking a lot neater (at least in my case) than hand-written labels. I don't do very well with straight lines.

Pretty soon, though, I'll graduate from my respite in label-making and move back to bigger things. I still need some nice baskets and other containers to organize the remaining junk that doesn't fit in our closet. Either Ikea-style coloured cardboard boxes or nice lined wicker affairs would do best. They tidy things away no better than any other box, but they do it so much more stylishly. And, as Oscar Wilde said, "in matters of true importance, style - not sincerity - is the vital thing." Oh Oscar, how right you are.

For more tips on the actual organizing of your junk, I humbly submit to the authority of Young House Love...again.

Fixing a Hole

I just realised a gaping hole in my photographic coverage of my life in general: I forgot to show everyone the 20-week scan of the Piggly Wiggly!

Head, nose, chin, and chest: there's my tiny bebe! Looking much more like a human being this time rather than a cocktail shrimp. Right now its hobbies seem to include kicking me, hiccuping, doing somersaults, and sleeping. Oh, and packing on the pounds like a boss. Its weight can now officially be measured in pounds and not just ounces.

Anyway, enjoy it. This is last picture we all get until the little monster decides to make his/her appearance in the world come October. (They only do 2 sonograms here on the NHS unless you want to pay some clinic to do another one for fun...and that's expensive.)

Yo Ho Ho and a Bottle of Rum (Part 1)

It may not be a dead man’s chest that I'm tackling with my next project, but it could certainly use a new lease on life.

This battered monstrosity is a chest we inherited in a roundabout fashion from The In-Laws. Before it came to us, it was in the boys’ house back in Wimbledon. (Nostalgic sigh for the days when we lived in London.) Even before then, I think this sucker had seen better days. But hey, there’s not much I’ll turn up my nose at when it comes to free furniture.

To give the down and dirty laundry list of issues to tackle with this beast:

• The bottom is practically coming off. It looks like someone stomped on it in a fit of rage. This makes its capacity for storage en masse somewhat diminished.
• The skirting and the top have hugenormous cracks in them. I could play peek-a-boo through the crack in the top when Piggly Wiggly gets old enough.

• The nicked, scarred, watermarked, and generally abused condition of the wood; including a huge miscellaneous oil/wax stain. I’m not big on miscellaneous stains, myself. TLC is desperately needed here.

• Seb is less than reassured at the structural integrity of the handles. I just think they’re kind of ugly…but in a much less offensive way than the dresser drawer handles!

There’s one final problem, not specific to our little chest, but the chest will help us solve this dilemma: we need more living room seating. Now that we have a new couch, it takes very strictly its policy of seating for two people…no more, no less. We have lots of Ikea stools, which are handy in a pinch, but they aren’t very comfy. The dining room chairs are also a serviceable option, but they do have to be dragged out from around the table and have the distinct air of being used in a pinch. I don’t want people to feel like I’m scrambling for seating for them. Our place may be small, but it’s not so small I can’t finagle some more seating in the living room.

Enter, stage right: our abused little chest. With a bit of structural reinforcement, courtesy of the Husband, and some upholstering, courtesy of Yours Truly, our little chest can make for easy in-a-pinch seating that doesn’t feel like an afterthought. However, it needs to be convertible seating, so that I can still use the chest as a coffee table when eating in the living room, or eventually letting Piggly Wiggly use it as a table for colouring and crafts.

Step one, as ever, measurements. In this, as with many furniture improvement projects, MDF has become my best friend. The MDF will be upholstered with firm foam (try saying that five times fast) and my fabric of choice and then have little fasteners added on so I can clip it in place when the chest is used as a bench.

Step two: measurements in hand, I decided the next step was to get the fabric I wanted. Off to Fabric Box back down in North Camp, just minutes from our old flat. They carry a line of curtain and upholstery fabric that I now am in lurve with: Prestigious Textiles. And this beauty is my choice for the living room bench:

1 metre of beautiful Full Stop in Sapphire. It comes 134cm wide, so I knew that I’d have quite a bit to play with since the top of the chest is only about 86cm across and 45cm wide. Even with 5cm-thick foam, I’ve got plenty of length to play with.

Oh, and in case you didn’t notice, I got this lovely polka-dot in the PVC-covered wipe-clean version. All the better for guests with drinks and rambunctious babies. One has to keep these sorts of things in mind…and I don’t trust my neurotic upholstered-bench-love to rely solely upon a can of obsessively sprayed Scotch Guard.

So with 2" firm foam and some batting to soften the look of the whole thing, I got started:

I gave myself a safety margin of about 14cm on each side (since I only had the cm tape measure at the time).

Now, I have to say, the best instructions on this whole process came from this chair upholstering post on Young House Love. So there isn't much for me to add, really. Just remember the one important thing about upholstering simple shapes:

Wrap it like a present!

I feel like that should become a line in a song. Something you can shake your booty to. Really, I'm just having a Black Eyed Peas moment and singing "Sh-shake it like a Polaroid pik-cha!" over and over again. Now I bet you'll have that song stuck in your head, too. :-)

As much as I'd never upholstered before, John and Sherry's super simple directions made the whole thing seem pretty easy. After about 5 minutes, I had four present-like corners on my cushion.

How awesome does that look? If nothing else, this picture proves that even the upholstering illiterate have hope. It's one of those deceptively simple things that can make a big difference to a piece of furniture. And, when you tell everyone that you did it yourself, they're all ridiculously impressed.

So: making your own bench...a cinch. And having gone the convertible route, it means that our chest is now storage and a coffee table and a bench. Three for the price of one. Awesome opossum. (I've wanted to use that phrase in public for a while now. There's even an actual Awesome Opossum for the occasion:)

How awesome is that? :-) Anyway, let's see just why my awesome opossum gives a nod of respect to my chest/coffee table/bench:

I'm thoroughly pleased with that. And just because the camera keeps showing the colour as more of a royal blue than the navy blue it actually is, I hijacked the pillows from the couch to show how nicely they match:

Ta-da! And - having just tested it - I can say with confidence that my bench is pretty comfy. I think that's a win, if I do say so myself.