Projects: A Long-Time Comin'!

Yesterday I finally got to a project that has been in my mind for a long time. For literally years there have been food stains on our dining room chairs, and I've wanted to re-cover the cushions. They were a whitish muslin fabric, and they stained easily. With lots of littles around here, we decided on a fabric that will allow stains to just sort of blend in. And a good coat of Scotchgard.

And since I was covering one set of chairs and the kitchen chairs were in need of the same, I figured I might as well do them too. They were even worse than the dining room chairs. So we did those too. And when I say "we", I mean I did them while Elsa made a fort out of the cushions that weren't being covered at that moment, Caroline napped, and the boys were at Samurai Warrior day camp. 

So here are the before and after pictures. 

Old and new kitchen chairs (see the stains?!?)

Old dining room chair

New dining room chair

And now they're done! Safely Scotchgarded, and hopefully no stains will show up anytime soon. 

We've got the basement project going on again. Stephen has been working on electrical wiring (along with an electrician) for the last few weeks, and today the work passed inspection. He's slapping up some insulation, and then we'll have the drywall guys come in next week. Hopefully we'll soon be moving our school room to the basement...maybe even before we officially start school! And that means another trip to IKEA is looming in my future...better start the list now!

I've been doing some painting around the house too. Nothing big, just the wainscoting in the foyer and the baseboards around the kitchen. I need to do the same in the living room and dining room still, and when the drywall is up in the basement, there will be plenty of painting to do down there. Not really looking forward to all of that, but it must be done. I'm so glad to have two responsible boys to watch the into-everything-toddler while I work on things around the house. I sure am missing them while they're at camp this week!

Only three more weeks before it's back to school for us, so the projects are rather pressing. Once school starts, it's really hard for me to change my mindset from school-mode to around-the-house-projects-mode. Guess I better get busy!