The 'tip' chairs finally meet the new table!

So in all the excitement of finishing up the school year and spreading the word about little Baby A I never finished the chair and dining table story.

After about 6 friday nights of A being out during the football season and me ironing, stretching and staple gunning I finally finished all the chairs! Phew! The very next day we went out and bought ourselves a new dining table. I think that it is actually the first brand new piece of big furniture that we've purchased (flat pack desks and office chairs don't count). We'd seen the table a while back and both agreed that it was what we wanted. We checked out prices online but they turned out to be more expensive than buying it locally so that's what we did. The lady who served us was an absolute riot and spent most of the sales time telling us about meeting footballers when she worked in a store in St Kilda. So funny.

Anyway, without further ado, here are the table and chairs, together, in our dining room!

The table extends out at each end so we can fit 8 people easily and 10 at a squeeze. It makes such a difference to the space from the round table we had before and the chairs are much more comfortable. 

Table and chair project - complete!

Dining Chair - Before and After

I've completed 2 and a half chairs! Enough to show a before and after. After considering a range of fabrics from spoonflower I found a simple, neutral coloured linen in a local shop and went with that. It's slow going but I'm happy with the way they are turning out and at an estimate they'll end up around $50 a chair. 

So, without further ado...

Before

After

Best intentions

Yikes. I had the best intentions of doing the 31 photos in 31 days but I totally fell off the blogging/photographing wagon these last two weeks. Work has been insane and weekends have been dedicated to playing catch up/recovering before diving back into another week of full days plus afternoon/evening work commitments. Ugh. Maybe next time.

In addition, we've created a list of things we really want to get done so spare time has been dedicated to doing little bits and pieces with that. We've even given ourselves deadlines. My chair deadline is, uh, this Sunday. I'm happy to report though that I have now sanded and painted all the legs. They are a simple matte black and they look as good as new. The difficult bit is still to come, remembering how to staple the fabric on!

Given I got the chairs in March I'm determined to make the deadline so we can go out and get ourselves a new dining table! Here is the process so far in photos.

Wish me luck with the rest of the project. I feel that I'm going to need it!

Chair dilemma

So, a while back I posted about the $5 chairs I picked up at Tiny's Green Shed (read - the tip). I was full of excitement at the thought of recovering them and getting myself some awesome and cheap new dining chairs. then we went fabric shopping and our choices were prohibitively expensive - $71 a metre and $158 a metre!!!! - and I would need 8 metres!

Then I found Spoonflower. The prices seem reasonable - about $34ish a metre for the upholstery weight fabric if my maths is correct. Shipping is $12 but will take up to 3-4 weeks. Has anyone used this? Should I get a couple of swatches first or just dive straight in and order the whole 8 metres?

Here are my favourites. Sorry about the dodgy screenshots, you can check them out in all their glory if you follow the link below each one!

Mirror Mirror

Chevron Stripe

Linen Dahlia

Black Dahlia

Here is one of the chairs and this is what the new fabrics might look like. Yes, I'm a bit of a nerd and I'm on holidays!

  If you look past my questionable photoshopping skills which fabric do you like the best? I'm stuck!