Tres Chic

As readers of my blog know, one of my missions in life is to find ugly duckling furniture items and try to make them beautiful. Sometimes I'm more successful than others. I think this time I've done quite a good job with my $25 chair. Here is what it looked like when I found it:

I fell in love with it because of the wheels and also this:

The original leather backing which had, thankfully, not been covered by fabric. Then when I stripped the fabric away, I uncovered this original sacking. I decided not to re-cover that part, just the seat.

I wasn't fond of the timber so I painted it white:

I had saved all the old upholstery nails, so I just stretched some toile fabric over the seat, and voila!

Here's the finished product after a bit of time, paint, fabric and effort.

New Vintage

Over the last few weeks, I've spent $75 at the op shop, for which I 've bought:

Four Thonet chairs ($5 each):

One lamp ($5):

One fireplace surround complete with mantel piece ($20). The fact that I don't actually have a fireplace isn't a problem - I use it as a book shelf:

Half a metre of French grain sack fabric ($30), which I made into a cushion with a calico backing:

Not  a bad haul. My op shop has been an Aladdin's cave lately. I'll post some more finds soon.

Before and After

Recently I found a couple of ugly ducklings at the op shop, which I decided to transform. The first is a doll's house, which is going to find a home with my favourite little girl:

It needed a makeover, so now the interior has been painted with Berkshire White, my interior paint of choice:

While the exterior is now a very stylish Grey Ember:

I also found this coffee table with a rather scratched top:

The top has now been painted black and the table fits in well on the back porch: