I've been DIYing too!

You can tell that Mama H and I have recently moved with our DIY projects. When we moved into this house the owner asked if we'd mind keeping the table as it didn't fit out any of the doors and would have to be cut up if we didn't want it. Although I love our dining table (that Mr M painstakingly sanded back and stained) I was happy to adopt this beautiful solid timber table. And it meant that ours didn't get damaged by little kiddies. This table was in the house when the current owner moved in 15 years ago so who knows how old it is.

The issue we had though is that our dining table has matching bench seats. We needed to find chairs. Being a rental I don't want to spend a lot of money either. Inspired by my mother in law's love of all things colour, a Peter Jensen scarf I own and the purple splashbacks I've grown to love it struck me that we had to have different coloured chairs.

I thought a simple trip to Ikea would solve this problem but they only had some horrible acrylic chairs in softer colours and I wanted bright. But I saw these chairs that come in red, white and black and decided that Mr M, being the wonderful handyman that he is, could paint them. However Mr M thought the chairs were too hard for his precious behind so I convinced him that I could make cushions for them. So we bought 6 white chairs, 3 different patterned bright fabrics for the covers and 6 cushions (at £2.95 each!!! How do they do that?).

We took my rainbow scarf into the local hardware store and they customised the high gloss paint to match. It took 6 weeks for Mr M to paint them because he could only do it on the weekends and only 2 at a time with at least 24 hours drying time between coats. Plus there was trial and error with just how many coats they needed. In the end he really did perfect it and after 3 coats they look incredible.

My job was to create the bright, vibrant, random cushion covers. My machines had been in storage here in London for over 2 years so they really needed a service before I could use them. Once I got them back I had to develop a pattern and create the cushions. After working on one cushion and being delighted with the result I made the remaining 5 finishing each with vintage buttons I'd bought off ebay a while ago.

Saturday morning we both finished the chairs just in time for the unveiling to friends over for a BBQ. They were really impressed and couldn't believe 1) we thought of the idea, 2) they were painted so well, 3) the cushions were so great and 4) we were brave enough to have all those colours together! We're very proud of ourselves and wonder what we're going to do with these chairs when eventually we move out and have our own walnut stain table with matching bench seats again.