The Tale of the Thrifted Tufted Chair

Say that three times fast!

A few weeks ago while I was hitting up our local Goodwill I spotted this chair and literally push-sprinted across the store to take a closer look at it.  Good, the tag was still on it, meaning no one else had claimed it yet!

It was in amazing shape.  The velvet was still full and soft with no stains, the wicker on the back was in pristine shape,and the wood frame was sturdy with no nicks or gouges.  Best part?  It was $9.99! 

You’d better believe I ripped that tag off fast.

Then I thought about it as I shopped around the rest of the store.  Did I really need a chair like this?  Would we use it?  Would it become a misfit chair that takes up space in the garage?  In the end, I knew I could easily find a new home for it if we ended up not using it (and I knew if I didn’t buy the chair it would move to the top of my Thrifting/Garage Sale Regret List!) so OF COURSE I bought it.  Don’t worry, I never seriously considered not buying it. :)

 

It has this fun Greek key design on the arms:

Then I got it home and as I was lifting it out of the car I smelled a bit of funk…oh no!  I hadn’t been totally sold on the color originally so I knew that I might want to re-upholster the chair--but then when I smelled that I realized re-upholstering might have to be prioritized.  I decided to give the chair a good cleaning and see what I thought after.  I know there are lots of people out there who would never buy used upholstered furniture but honestly I have never bought a new piece of furniture nor do we have the money to do so.  I feel comfortable buying used upholstery if I know I can clean it in such a way as to kill all the surface germs and to get out any stains. 

First I vacuumed the chair really really well, making sure to spread out the tufted parts to expose all the fabric. 

I looked at odor-removal tips on the internet but I didn’t have any vinegar on hand (the recent pickle-making had depleted my supply!) so I decided to try Oxy-clean.  I use Oxy-clean instead of bleach most of the time and I’m really a big fan of it so I thought that might kill the odor and really clean up the chair well.  I sprayed it down with a strong mixture of water/oxy-clean until it was soaking wet.  I wanted it to get really deep into the chair in case the odor was coming from the foam.  Also, it was in the heat of the summer here so I knew I could leave it outside in the sun to dry quickly.  I blotted the chair with clean rags and then blotted the chair with fresh clean water to remove some of the Oxy-clean solution.  Then I put it out in the sun for the day. 

If I had spent more money on the chair I would have been more careful to test the Oxy-clean on the velvet first for color-fastness, but in this case I didn’t really care.  I knew I could always re-cover it in another fabric.  It ended up being fine—the color didn’t fade or change at all—it actually looked brighter afterwards. 

The next day I still could smell a little something on the chair so I decided to sprinkle it liberally with baking soda.  I left it out again in the hot sun, and again the next day.  Then I vacuumed the baking soda from the chair and wow, what a difference!  It smelled fine!!!!  I was so happy that it worked.  :)

 

I put the chair in our “music-room” for now.  Who knows, I might still re-cover the chair (I could really picture it in a navy velvet with a white frame) but for now we’re enjoying it as is. 

I’m planning to start a house tour section on the blog soon…it will take a while for most rooms to look photo-worthy (if they ever do!) but the music room is getting close.  :)

Kitchen Hutch Redo

One of the things that we had planned to do in the kitchen once we moved the fridge around was to install a floor-to-ceiling pantry of sorts in the space that it used to occupy.  That is, we planned to do it until we found out just how much it would cost to have someone come in and install a custom pantry unit. 
Well, lets just say we planned it differently after that.  I started looking for armoires and hutches on Craigslist.  I soon found that most armoires would be way too deep for that area.  I debated between more storage and less decorative appeal, but finally decorative appeal won out (I know, hard to believe!) and I ended up finding a hutch for a good price 10 minutes from our house.  When I got it, it looked like this:

(Actual CL photo)

Not gorgeous, but not awful either.  It was solid wood which I was quite happy about.  It looked, however, a little too rustic and country for me.  I knew I would paint it, but the question was what color would I paint it?  I went between a jadeite color, white, and grey.  Finally I just decided to go with white, since although I had seen some colored hutches that I liked, I really liked the look of the white ones the best.  I also thought it would look the best with the various colors of items I might put on the shelves. 

I ripped out the little fence-like structures on the middle shelf—they came out really easily and I just filled the little holes with wood putty and sanded them.  I also tore off the scroll-y wood piece right under the middle shelf as I just thought it was too much and also I wanted to be able to fit my huge cookbooks in that space. 

I sanded, primed, and painted the piece and also painted the hardware white.  I had a hard time deciding what color to paint them and finally I just needed to get them on so white they were.  Indecision at its best!

Here it is today!

 

I’m sure others could have “styled” it better, but this is how it has been for a few months and with limited time on my hands, I decided to bite the bullet and just take the picture.  I always enjoy finding ‘treasures’ that I can use to decorate the house and a lot of those ended up on these shelves. 

Some have meaning to us, such as this blueing bottle my husband’s grandma gave to him recently:

It is dated 1954 and my father-in-law says that he can remember his mom using that bottle when he was little.  :)

And some things are just pretty, if you like older pyrex:

So there you have it!

  

I really like how it turned out!
Now I need to post pictures of the finished kitchen!!! 
(Remember how I procrastinate?)
Blessings,
Liz