Who wants to have a dinner party?

We loved our old apartment because of its location and fabulously giant balcony, but inside it was a little on the small side. It had a galley kitchen and practically no where to put a normal sized dining table. (For those who don't know... I teeter on the verge of being a giant. Not so much so that I'm searching for some magic beans in order to make myself a home up in the sky.... but small spaces just contribute to my way-too-gangley-limbs-complex. Thankfully the Mr is no shorty himself so we standing next to each other we just look normal).

hmmm... I got off topic a bit there... back to the dining table. My solution to the small problem was obviously Kijiji (this will be an ongoing theme around here). I found a great bar height table with 4 swivelling stools. It was a great set and fit half-decently in the small corner near the kitchen.

When we moved to our new house I was determined to get a big table (and be able to flail my arms around without hitting a wall). I pictured hosting fabulously elaborate dinner parties with well coordinated table linens and scented candles... although that is pretty far from the reality of my life or rather the level of classiness of my friends. But either way, that was my mission.

So, I did exactly what you would guess... I went on Kijiji yet again. Try to contain your shock and amazement please.

I found an awesome table that had a fabulous wood grain and great legs (I believe I mentioned this earlier, but when it comes to furniture I love great legs). The table came with 6 chairs that gave me little inspiration. So, I sold the 6 chairs and found another set of 4 that worked perfectly. Now obviously I couldn't host a dinner party with only 4 chairs, so I continued to hunt until I found another two chairs that had a similar shape that fit my vision.

We were a little overly ambitious and sold our bar height table before we even started on the new set. So, we had no dining table for a little while. And by a 'little while' clearly I mean almost 2 months.

We wanted the table top to have a bit of a rustic look to it. So we decided to sand off the old stain and top coat unevenly. The hope was that with some of the old stain still on the wood it would absorb the new stain differently across the top. Luckily for me, this little experiment worked out amazingly.

We decided to paint the legs of the table and the chairs. We found a sale on paint at Lowes and picked out a great off white colour. We had never used Para paint and choosing it for this project will forever be one my life's greatest regrets. Yes, you read that right. I hate Para paint. It was the worst paint I have ever worked with. It was sticky, tacky and left terrible brush strokes. It seriously felt like painting with Alymers glue. After doing one coat of primer and one coat of the Para paint I threw a temper tantrum and refused to paint with it anymore. We ended up having to re-sand some of the chairs and buy a whole new can of paint to start over with.

Can you tell that I am still bitter about this? Because I totally am.

For round 2 we decided to go with CIL Smart Melamine Finish in Bone Folder. It turned out nicely, although it would have been so much better if we had started with the CIL paint. We never quite got rid of all of the mess left behind by the Paint-that-shall-not-be-named, but we are happy with the results.

Anyways.... moving on from that leaning lesson. Next came reupholstering the chairs. The original cushions on all of the chairs were gross. And when I say gross I mean NASTY!

After much debate and discussion, the Mr finally gave in to me agreed to the fun fabric I had chosen for our new cushions.

We bought new foam for the seat and used the old cushions to trace out the shape. We tried a combination of a saw, exact-o knife, and bread knife to cut out the new cushions. Oddly enough, bread knife was the best choice. We used the original plywood bases for the new seats because they were still in good shape. For each cushion we laid the new foam on the wood and then covered it with new batting (we got a random bag of it from Fabric Land for about $20 and it was the perfect amount for all 6 cushions).

Once the batting was stapled down we cut the fabric using the old material for a stencil. Upholstering is certainly a two person job, but it went pretty quickly once we got the hang of it. Neither of us had reupholstered before, but we were pretty happy with the results and no one got a staple in the hand.

Side Note: Is it called upholstering or reupholstering? I used both works in the above paragraph in the hopes that when I read it back to myself if would become obvious which one sounded correct. But that is not happening and now I am just more confused. I think I will continue to use them interchangeably until I know for sure - if that fails maybe I will just make up a word... perhaps I will call it Fabricking. Don't judge.

We are super happy with how it all turned out in the end. Its the perfect size for our dining area.

You can see two of the different chairs side by side. I love that they have a similar shape but are not identical.

And maybe we should wrap this up with a little dining room Before (with the old owners furniture) and the After (with our dinner-party-ready dining table)

xo B