the dining room chairs

the dining room chairs were driving me crazy. once my "nesting" instinct really set in with Baby, they just had to be done. done! now.

i finished painting them really fast in just a few days. (they are far from perfect). i wasn't really being picky when i painted them. i just wanted them to be finished. i was tired of the folding chairs and i had this feeling that it was kind of now or never. i was only 34 weeks, but i felt like painting them was a necessity. it was a feverish project, completed on the double (and on the picnic table so I wouldn't have to bend down) while the children played outside around me. nesting city. funny - i had Baby less than a week later.



so, they were finally white. which was good. but they didn't have any seats! which was bad. i had planned on recovering the seats long ago, but hadn't chosen a fabric, yet. i wanted a charcoal and white ticking, but i couldn't fine one. do you do that? get something so specific in your mind's eye that then you can't find it anywhere? because no one makes it? silliness. anyway, Baby came sooner rather than later and... well... you get the picture. we still had those dumb folding chairs and no fabric. they looked sad and they made me grumpy :( i decided to put the white chairs at the table anyway. two of them had reasonably useable seats. two of them were completely seatless. a little risque, really. seatless. and what's sadder? folding chairs or chairs with no seats? i guess i thought any progress was better than nothing.





they stayed like that for over two months. the older girls do their morning school at this table, so they would choose one of the chairs with seats and just plop down, right on the bare batting. it might not have looked the best, but at least it didn't seem to affect their math scores much.

early last week, i was in joann's and noticed the indoor/outdoor fabrics were 50% off. the time was ripe. i took absolutely forever trying to decide, but eventually settled on "morgan tile". i didn't want the chairs to stand out too much, but i didn't want them to be boring, either. i think the total came to around $17 with the discount. score! i happily took the new fabric home to my poor seatless chairs.



but, when i got it home... i tried to convince myself it worked. really, i did. the pattern, though. the scale of the pattern was all wrong with the pattern on the rug. they competed. big times.



instead of jumping into things right away, i laid the fabric on one of the seats and left it. i wanted to see how it felt to live with it there. to help me really decide. i kept checking it out for a day or two. nope. no dice. still competing. the chairs made your eyes fix on them now. i didn't want that.

phooey.

i was back at joanns a few days later, getting more decorations for punkin's birthday. i had all of the children with me, but baby was sleeping and my kids are (generally) good shoppers, so i decided to go ahead and look for a better option. it took me a looooong time. i think i stood in line at the cutting counter three different times with three different fabrics. good thing there was a line to give me more time to deliberate! i don't think i would've been happy with the first couple of choices.

i wound up choosing a thin black and white stripe that looked very similar to ticking. it wasn't indoor/outdoor, though, and i had been trying to go that route for stain reasons. but, it was marked down to $9 a yard. good enough, right? get this - when i took it to the cutting counter, the joann's lady told me it was 50% off of the marked down price! i got all the fabric i needed for four chairs for around 7 beans!

woot! :)



i took it home. held my breath. oh, hooray. it looked great with the rug, and - although pretty safe and traditional - not too boring on the white chairs. i covered the cushions over the course of the nest 2-3 days and evenings. it doesn't really take that long usually, but i was working with snippets of time here and there, so it took me longer. like this post. i wrote some of it this morning. saved it to finish later. now, it's 2:57 pm, the older kids are watching a quick video, Baby is kicking and cooing beside me, pandora is playing a xylophone rendition of tom petty for babies (seriously? who knew?) and i'm typing w/ one hand because i'm pumping and stopping to talk to baby and play with her. yep, pumping. baby hasn't quite figured out this whole nursing business quite yet. she's doing better every week, but i'm still bonding with my medela on a regular basis. so, while i pump, why not blog? ha ha. i'll probably save this post again, load the photos later tonight or tomorrow, and finally post it after 4-5 short blogging sessions. snippets of time.



so, now the dining room chairs are done. makes me very happy to have that crossed off the list. my pregnant-lady-in-a-hurry paint job will probably need touch ups here and there, but so far no one's come in the house and immediately started inspecting my chairs for thin paint spots, so i think we're good for a bit.

hope y'all are having a great day. enjoying the crisp fall weather. love it.

by the way... after tom petty?

aerosmith.

for babies.

ha.