Archive | Before and After

DIY couch feature {11 Magnolia Lane}

June 20, 2012

Hi everyone! I’m headed out today to Haven but I wanted to let you know that the girls over at 11 Magnolia Lane are featuring the couch I sawzalled in half as part of their “Fearless” DIY series. That crazy couch still makes me laugh Hop over and check them out! Have a great week and I’ll post some pictures on my facebook and twitter account while at Haven. It’s kind of strange thinking back to this time last year, I didn’t even know what a blog was. Now I’m headed to a blog conference on a jet plane. Whaaaaa?!

DIY reupholstered wingback chair {before & after}

May 20, 2012

Today I am sharing our DIY reupholstered wingback chair with you. I feel like it’s been forever since I posted a project. Do you ever feel like some things just take you twice as long as they should? I have to admit, part of my problem is that I usually have 3 or 4 projects going on at once. I have been in a funk though for the past couple weeks, not feeling very crafty or motivated.

Photo curtesy of Woman’s Day Magazine

UPDATE: This reupholstered wingback chair recently made it’s way into the January 2013 Woman’s Day Magazine issue along with our kitchen and dining room makeover.

Here is the before picture with the original primitive patterned fabric.

I have come so close to selling this chair (and the other matching one) so many times for a fraction of what I paid for them. My first house I bought was a 250 year old farm house and I loved primitive and very rustic decor. Thirteen years ago, this was my favorite purchase ever! Now, my tastes have changed and I am so glad I never got rid of these chairs. Look what you can do with some fabric, a powered staple gun and four hours!

The fabric is Samoen Plantation, Gem by Iman.

I love the bold colors and how bright the chair now looks. I had a professional give me a quote of almost $750 to reupholster each chair. WHAAAA! I said, no thank you. The fabric was not cheap at $25/yard and I bought 8 yards. This chair used just about 4 yards. I tell ya what though, mine is not perfect but I will go with my reupholstered version any day over $750 a chair! Be sure to check out the full tutorial + video of how I reupholstered this chair here.

Did you know that you can double fold the ends to achieve a “seamed” look?

I did this because I still need to determine my drape fabric so I wasn’t sure which color piping to go with. Creating a seamed look allows the chair to look finished while I get my act together and make some piping. This is only my second reupholster attempt, the sawzalled couch being my first, so I am by no means an expert.

Hoping to have the dining room reveal by the end of the week for ya!

PS. I bought the fabric from Calico Corners.

DIY Couch – how to make a large couch small {with a sawzall}

April 11, 2012

This is probably the most ridiculous post I have done since I started blogging. I even agree, it was crazy. The peanut gallery (my husband, dad and gramp) all told me I had lost my mind.

This couch was given to me over 10 years ago by a family friend. Absolutely, nothing wrong with it just to big for our home now and not my style anymore.

We needed a small couch for the foyer and this was the only piece around. I didn’t have a place for it and needed a smaller one, so why not make this smaller? Worse case scenario, it goes to the dump.

First, you need to remove any fabric and/or metal (tacks). Be sure to remove anything that may be in the way of your blade. Once you have removed everything, work in sections and remove the “guts” of the sofa. You will need wire cutters to remove the spring coils.
I did convince my husband to help me pull all the nails/staples out for me. I needed some muscles. This was his first day off in 15 days and he was very annoyed with me.

Once that is completed, start sawzalling. I didn’t say I was scared but I was. The sawzall is definitely a tool you need to be careful with. I looked like the biggest wack job cutting a couch in half and my body shaking.

Depending on the insides of your couch, you will just need to work in sections removing the insides and removing the wood.

Couch lovers, please do not send me hate mail.

I was starting to feel a little overwhelmed here. My dad was lurking and peeking out the window so I knew I better get this thing back together. I will admit though, I was wondering how I was going to do that. At this point, my gram and gramps came home and lets just say, my gramps just shook his head and said a few expletive terms we won’t mention here on the blog.
Can you say, train wreck?

This picture makes me laugh.
I removed about 2 feet from the middle.

Once I got the mess cleaned up and just the two pieces in the room, I fastened pine braces with a bazillion heavy duty screws across the back. Oh my goodness, my fear was that if my dad sat on this thing, it would collapse. I would NEVER hear the end of it.
The sides of the couch as well as the center braces (that were original to the couch) were oak wood. Oak is very strong and difficult to screw into so you will need to drill pilot holes first so your screws will fasten properly. I braced the bottom (underneath), backside and front. You will also need to brace the “seat part”. You can use 2×4’s (which are stronger than pine) depending on the size and weight of the couch.

The pine braces fit right under the existing foam & coils.
You need to make sure you secure the couch with solid wood on the back and seat area. This couch doesn’t even make a squeak . I had my brother, who is a big boy, try it out and it’s solid! Smile
Stay tuned. In a week or so, I plan to admit this baby to the hospital and sew her up with some muslin, new foam and a pretty new slipcover!

Update: You can see the final version all pretty and put back together on my DIY couch reveal post {before and after}.

DIY couch {Before & After}

April 3, 2012

I posted a couple weeks ago about a large couch that I cut in half with a sawzall. This is my ultimate DIY project yet since I have been blogging. Never in a million years did I think I would be tackling a DIY couch.

Here is the before when the couch was 2 feet longer.

Oh my goodness the emails and comments I received were hilarious. Although, I did have a couple people seriously question my sanity. I kind of questioned it myself when it looked like this,

So, in all seriousness, this was by far one of the craziest things I have ever done. I will say though, she came out look-in pretty darn good.

This project cost me “zero” dollars.

I used 2 drapes that I purchased last summer from Pier 1 Imports and used them to reupholster the couch. They were actually hanging in this room until a couple days ago. I LOVE the paisley print and prayed it would look ok on the couch.

If you use drapes, you want to make sure you have a heavy cotton or canvas type material. These were perfect. I have never in my life reupholstered anything, never mind a couch. If you are a professional, I would stop reading because my method will probably make your stomach flip.

I used my power staple gun and 1/2” & 3/4” staples. I know you can use real upholstery staples and yes, they probably work better but I was trying to do this without purchasing anything so I used what I had.

There are tons of upholstery tutorials out there so I am not going to duplicate with another and honestly, they are much better than my method . Lots of tucking, folding and stapling. I just went with it and once I got it the way I liked, I stapled away!

I originally planned on making piping for the edges and I still may but I am happy with how the seams came out so for now, it will stay like this.

I used my hand stapler for the smaller areas but if you have a power staple gun, it will be your best friend for a project like this. This really was fairly simple. If you can cut fabric, place it on the couch and cut to fit, you can do this.

When I sawzalled the couch in half (you can see that post here ) there was a large gap. I cut up an old egg crate that I had for one of our beds and filled in the gap. You can purchase foam/batting at any fabric store but this worked and it was free!

I wanted a straight lined back and the original couch was a camel back so when I cut out the middle of the couch, I still had a bit of a hump so I slide in a 6” piece of MDF and covered with the foam/egg crate, batting and muslin.

It’s not professional and far from perfect but it is solid as a rock and pretty sassy look-in if I do say so myself Smile ! I am happy to say that I have a DIY couch under my belt. ha

You can see the tutorial of me sawzalling the couch in half in my previous DIY Couch post.

DIY built-in barn doors {tutorial}

March 16, 2012

How about a “mini” barn door built-in tutorial for an existing bookcase? I had a few emails from people commenting on the island built in bookcase in our recent Family Room makeover so I thought I would share with you how I made easy DIY doors. The area under the island is what I enclosed.

diy built in barn door tutorial

Here is the final product that was featured in the This Old House Magazine.

Before:

Adding smaller doors using existing cabinetry was the easiest and least expensive solution I could come up with. I used two random kitchen cabinet doors we had left over from a previous project. Home Depot and Lowes also, on occasion, will have random doors in their scrap area. You could also use pine or even plywood. I actually used the “back” side of the door to cover with my bead board because it was much smoother . The recessed part of a front door can be difficult to get a flat finish.

Flip your cabinet door over and cut a piece of bead board to fit directly on top of the cabinet (or whatever you are using as a base). I used wood glue and reinforced with 1” finish nails. NOTE: nail from the backside if possible so you don’t have nail holes showing in the front and make sure you use a nail size that won’t puncture through the opposite side.

I used 3/8 x 3 x 36” MDF craft board as my trim. You can buy this in the craft wood area of Lowes. These doors are on the smaller side so MDF craft wood will work but if your doors are larger, you may want to use a trim that is more substantial like pine. Similar to what I used in our previous larger DIY barn {closet} door project.

I measured my length pieces first and adhered to the bead board with wood glue and reinforced with larger finish nails (1 1/4- 1 1/2”). Once your length pieces are nailed, measure the width part and voila , you have a cute little barn door!

I used white paintable caulking to fill in all the gaps and spackle to fill any nail holes. If you have a large gap that isn’t able to be filled with caulking you can buy the paintable wood veneer strips to fill the edges. I got lucky and the caulking did the trick .

The hinges and door pulls are oil rubbed bronze by gatehouse from Lowes. I added some shelves in the middle where baskets house my sewing stuff as well as shelves behind the doors where my sewing machine and larger craft items are stored. I did add some pine to the existing island to “beef” it up a bit and coordinate with the planks I added to the wall in the rest of the room. Be sure to check out our other DIY barn {closet} door tutorials and creative DIY sliding door solutions.

10 diy built in ideas BHG inspiration

Built-in Ideas

Update:

This project was featured in the This Old House Magazine’s October 2012 issue.

{Resource list} for our family room

March 7, 2012

Good morning! Last week I posted our new casual and cottage designed Family room and I guess I dropped the ball a bit on providing a resource list. I had no idea the response this post would receive and after the 100th email (literally) about “where did you buy that?” it dawned on me….I should have added that in the post! For some of you 100 emails isn’t a lot but for this little O’l blog, it blew up my gmail account. Thank you so much for all the sweet comments!

RESOURCE LIST:
*The media console we made. You can view that tutorial post here.
*The drapes are raw burlap cut to size. You can buy burlap at any fabric store.
*The rug is from overstock and is called “blue/gray trellis rug”. The size shown in my picture is an 8×10 . It appears to be sold out but you can find it here. I found a $40 off coupon code on retailmenot.com ! Take a few minutes and Google coupon codes for overstock, $40 is worth it!
*The couch is a slipcovered sectional. You can see it here.
* The lanterns are from pier one that I already had.
* The lamps are from Marshalls that I already had.
*This sunshine pillow is from Cottage Coastal Store. Can you believe I won this on a blog giveaway! This online store is fabulous!
*The yellow throw is from Marshalls.

*The bench/window seat we made. You can find that post here.
*The doves above the TV are from target that I already had.
*The fabric is from Fabric.com. The 3 yellow patterns are “premier prints yellow slub” and you can find them here. The gray flower pattern is “Thomas Paul Dahlia Dove” and you find it here.

This was my first time posting about a {before and after} since I started blogging last September so I’ll chalk it up to a learning experience. I am recovering from surgery so if I haven’t gotten back to your email, I’m sorry! This post should answer all your questions Smile .

Coastal Cottage family room {before & after}

February 24, 2012

We finally finished our family room makeover. I feel like I have been working on this room forever. The colors in the room before were traditional and on the darker side, which is what my mom liked. This use to be their family room, until we switched living spaces last year. This furniture is a set we bought many years ago and was in a much smaller room. It looks a bit lost. I decided to change the look from traditional to a cottagey pottery barn style. In my opinion, the family room before and after is dramatic.

Photo courtesy of This Old House Magazine

Before:

After

Photo courtesy of This Old House Magazine

This was a joint project with Rhoda, from Southern Hospitality. You probably already know how awesome Rhoda is but if you are new to blogging and don’t know her, be sure to head over and check out her amazing blog. I enlisted her expertise and boy was she helpful! I sent her some before pictures of our room as well as my inspiration picture . I love the white planks on the wall in the room below and the light “airy” feeling. This was my inspiration picture.

house beautiful

Rhoda sent me a four page email with loads of ideas, tips, layout suggestions, color schemes & source suggestions. It was fabulous to work with her! While we deviated a bit from the board, a lot of it was incorporated. What I loved most about Rhoda, is she is budget savy and was very motivated to re-use what I already had.

After the dark paint went away and I started to add planks to the walls, we looked like this:

After:

Pottery Barn cabinet, DIy pottery barn style

In order to achieve the look I was going after, I got busy nailing planks to the wall. I used 1×8 tongue and groove knotty pine. It seemed like it took forever to complete that part of the project. My dad showed me how to use the nail gun and then disappeared for 2 months while I worked on the room. It is winter time and he hibernates in front of the television. He wanted NO part of this project .

coastal, cottage, diy pottery barn inspired

The planks on the wall are painted BM white diamond and the top of the wall is BM Wythe Blue. I also added a 2 inch shelf on top of the planks to define the separation between the planks and the wall. It turned out great for leaning pictures.

This part of the room had an unfinished built-in that I resurfaced with planks and made some barn doors to close off two sections to hide my sewing machine and craft stuff.

Before:

Yes, this is what it was like in the middle of a remodel.

The built-in After:

Photo courtesy of This Old House

I will do a post on how to make inexpensive barn doors using doors you already may have. You will be amazed how easy it was. I don’t have an extra room to dedicate for sewing and craft stuff so the bulk of it now hides behind these doors and in the baskets.

The drapes are burlap. I loved the deep pocket pottery barn burlap drapes but for $75 a panel, it would have been very expensive. I bought 55 yards of burlap at $1.99 a yard on sale and with my 40% coupon, I was able to make “no sew” burlap panels for under $130. That is pretty good in my book considering there are 5 large windows. See our how to make curtains using burlap tutorial to see how I made these.

I ordered all the fabric for the pillows and window seat / now bench from fabric.com. My favorite is the Thomas Paul fabric (gray) Dalia print. I plan on making barn doors to cover this bookcase opening but just didn’t get them done on time for this post. I am having surgery tomorrow and will be out of commission for a bit and decided to move ahead with this post instead of waiting until I got the doors made.

Isn’t that “you are my sunshine” pillow lovely? You can find it at Coastal Cottage Store. (see reference list below)

Prior to putting the planks on the wall, the fireplace looked lost. I love how the planks added character and a bit of pizzaz.

Planked walls, diy, vermont casting fireplace

I think our DIY Pottery Barn inspired media console fits right in. My dad and I had fun making it.

There you have it! Yes, we invested in a new sectional sofa and no, it is not pottery barn. I found it on sale at a local furniture shop but had to buy it as shown. It was a deal let me tell ya! We love hanging out in this room watching TV as a family or just surfing the net. Before, it was difficult to sit as a family, especially when my stepdaughters were here. The kids are all getting bigger and were tired of sitting on the floor so it was time to get something that would fit all of us.

A gigantic hug to Rhoda at Southern Hospitality to helping me throughout this entire process. Be sure to head over and check out her online consultations.

You know when you just look at a room so much, you can’t see the potential or are just so overwhelmed, you can’t move forward? Well that was me! Rhoda helped me navigate through resources, layout suggestions, fabric help, and a four page email of design ideas and suggestions, she was my confidence! It was great to bounce ideas off of her and get her honest opinion. The entire experience was beyond fabulous but best of all, I feel like I made a new bloggie friend .

I hope you enjoyed our family room before and after reveal. I am so pleased with the coastal cottage look that I don’t really want to leave the room! ha.

Jessica Bruno
Update:

* Rhoda featured us today on her “Feature Friday Series” .
* You can find a resource list here.

The beginning of our Family Room makeover

November 9, 2011

I was going to wait until next year to tackle our family room but came across these inspirations & decided, “OH, I WANT THIS NOW”! Smile Love the white horizontal paneling, barn doors & rustic coffee table. The chandelier’s not to shabby either!

via House Beautiful

Board & Batten …..I think my dad would FREAK if I suggested beams across the ceiling. I LOVE them though!

House Beautiful

This is our family room now, a pretty basic traditional look. It has so many windows & no wall space that I struggle with furniture placement. Any suggestions? This was my parents family room in the main part of the house until 7 months ago. We switched living spaces when my gram, who recently passed away, moved in. My mom loves traditional design & I actually just painted this room 2 years ago for her. NOW, I’m going to paint it white!

Thanks to no internet, TV or phone service, when we were invaded with snow a couple weeks ago, I painted this entire room by myself for 10 hours (over 3 days). Hello Benjamin Moore, White Diamond! Here is a peak at the corner with the fireplace. Any suggestions as to how to incorporate a mantel?

You see the wood? I decided I wanted to cozy up the space & love the horizontal panel look so I asked my dad to help me out. He said NOOOOOOO, not until next year! He’s gone into “winter hibernation” mode….which basically means, he sits in his recliner & watches TV. I will admit, he has always cut most of my wood & helped me with projects so I was totally bummed he wasn’t motivated like I was Sad smile . The man has every power tool under the sun but they are ginormous & beastly and they scare the CRAP out of me! I tried using his skill saw & it basically ran away with me. So after stressed for a day about how I was going to to do this alone, I went to Home Depot and bought battery powered tools. I love my little 5 1/2 inch skill saw & chop saw.

This thing though, the nail gun, is my dad’s and scares me……but after using it for two days to nail the wood to the wall, we have become friends Smile .

This picture was taken by my camera on a timer! I can’t believe I did that! What a DORK!

So that’s what’s going on around here! My new blog name & blog design is looking good & should be done soon Smile Looking forward to showing you all!

Target night table transformed with Annie Sloan Chalk Paint

November 4, 2011

Amazing what a little ASCP in duck egg blue will do! I bought this table from Target 3 years ago when my little man graduated to a big boy bed. The table was navy blue to begin with so all I did was apply one coat of ASCP in duck egg blue. Once dry, I took a fine sanding block and did a little distressing. This was my first go of it using chalk paint & I will say, I was freaking out because it looks REALLY bad wet….very streaky! BUT sure enough, it dried to a really cool matte finish. Barely NO streaks. It distressed SO easily! EASY PEASY! This is the before:

Being a beginner with this painting furniture “thing”, I decided to buy Shaunna’s painting furniture eBook over at Perfectly Imperfect and I am SO glad I did Smile ! Her Ebook has so many great ideas, techniques & great “how to” video’s! I highly recommend you go check it out!

PS. new blog design & name change coming soon! I love my name “nucheysmommy” but wanted the name to be geared more towards our family of 4 generations living under 1 roof. We do so many projects together while living together….. I thought it would be fun for the blog name to reflect that

Hope you all have a great weekend!

Linking up to these parties!

DIY barn {closet} doors

September 23, 2011

Today I am sharing our DIY barn {closet} doors and how we built them. I have been putting this post off for about a week. It brings a mixed bag of emotions. We lost my “gram” this past summer to “old age”. Even though she lived 92 wonderful years, it’s still not easy to say good-bye. We were very fortunate though, that she lived the end of her life with us, here in “our” little compound. Before she passed away, we were working on our DIY barn {closet} doors to enclose our existing built-in bookcase. My goal for this room was to display the china and hang our coats. This room is off the foyer/garage & in between our kitchen & family room.

{Update: see how we made them here – stage 1 & here – stage 2}

This is the built in bookcase before. This picture was taken with my old camera so it’s not the best quality.

I love these barn doors and am very pleased with all they came out.

We ended up mounting the barn doors on hinges to save money. I really wanted the sliding door hardware (like in the inspiration picture) but I got the look for $22. The top black pieces are aluminum pieces that I bought at home depot & spray painted black.

I think the black spray painted aluminim gives the look of a sliding door, don’t you?

This is one of my favorite things, the barn doors open.

The coats have a new home!

My dad thought I was banana’s when I suggested we put barn doors here. When I showed him the picture, he said, “why do you want to do that?” It was definitely a project hanging them as we dropped one and it did cart wheels across the floor. Thank goodness my son or dog were not in the way. After my dad’s meltdown we finally got them hung. Oh and guess what, now my dad & gramps are taking credit for the barn doors & design!

That is my gram in the picture above. Building DIY barn doors is really a fairly straight forward project. Don’t forget to check out stage 1 & stage 2 to see how we made them. I’m sure my gram would be thrilled to see her mom’s blue willow china displayed with our DIY barn doors. I miss you gram, thank you for all of your inspiration

BE sure to check out our other DIY barn door tutorials, Creative DIY sliding doors as well as updates to this room.

Last updated by Jessica Bruno at March 26, 2013.

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About

JESSICA BRUNO
Hi, I'm Jessica and welcome to our blog. We are a crew of four generations all living together under one roof and I just happen to be the ring leader of our little o'l blog. We are multigenerational family ranging in ages from 5 to 85 living, dreaming and DIY "ing" together. If you love Do-It-Yourself projects, room makeovers, project tutorials or just want to hear about the bits of chaos (some good and some not so good) of what it's like having four generations all living under one roof, then follow along, you have come to the right place!

Archive | Before and After

DIY couch feature {11 Magnolia Lane}

DIY reupholstered wingback chair {before & after}

DIY Couch – how to make a large couch small {with a sawzall}

DIY couch {Before & After}

DIY built-in barn doors {tutorial}

{Resource list} for our family room

Coastal Cottage family room {before & after}

The beginning of our Family Room makeover

Target night table transformed with Annie Sloan Chalk Paint

DIY barn {closet} doors

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