geocaching!

I heard the word "geocaching" at work the other day and had no idea what it meant, so I asked The Googles.  I found that it's a gigantic scavenger hunt where people put out physical objects for you to find. Holly has to get 50 hours of driving in and I thought it might be fun to have her drive around while we look for geocaches.

It's our second day of hunting and our third geocache called Heigh-Ho, Heigh-Ho, Rodentologists. We found our way to the  Pittsfield Preserves where there are a bunch of geocaches.

We set out through the Preserves and immediately saw a skunk. Instead of taking a picture of it - I  immediately turned tails to run. But ... it wondered off the path and we then continued on.

The clouds starting rolling in and we were on our journey.

I kept stopping to take pictures of the flowers.

So many are in bloom right now and they were just gorgeous.

I couldn't help myself ... I started to lag behind the girls.

Julia is the one who has the keen eye and usually jumps right into the brush. She did find the geocache. I won't spoil it - but it was super creepy! She nearly jumped out of her skin when she saw it.

Holly pulled out the log for us to sign.

It was nearly filled up on both sides.

We signed it.

Then we put it back.

We set off to find another and we found the coordinates. After searching around and seeing the clouds get thicker, we abandoned the quest and headed back to the car.

We were about 2 steps ahead of the rain the whole time.

We made it back right before the rain came down. The girls loved it and we'll be going on more adventures!

doggie bed

During the last upholstery projects, I took the back off the ugly pink chair. The back was filled with super soft fiber fill. It was protected by a thin layer of white fabric. I wanted a more modern back with new foam, so I didn't reuse it. Looking at it, I thought .... hmmm dog bed for Butters. He needed one for when we were hanging out in the basement.

I saved the project for when mom was here for her visit, cause I knew she would love doing it.

This is a picture of what it originally was. You can see the "neck" area hitting the floor near the bottom of the ugly pink fabric.

Mom took out the "neck" part that sat between the arms, so it was more rectangle shape.

She opened up the bottom and cut off the access fabric. She insisted on hand sewing the opening close.

We removed the neck and the fiberfill was moved into the main area making it really nice and full.

Off to Joann's we went and picked out these two fabrics. The bottom is an upholstery fabric that I found on clearance for $7/yard. The top is a super soft fabric that matched colors. The total cost was $17 for both.

I added a zipper to it so the cushion could be pulled in and out easily. I had this one in my stash of zippers. It's a little shorter than I would have liked, but it worked.

I can't believe how much he loves it. He hasn't gotten off it yet.

I haven't been able to get a good picture of the back yet, cause he won't leave it. We measured the widest part of the cushion and cut our fabric to match. There's a 5 inch binding connecting the top and bottom.

The hardest part was the soft fabric. It stretches easily and ended up not exactly matching up, so I put in an easing stitch so I could pull the thread to ease the fabric to the length I wanted.

 Not only does he love it, but Julia does too. She laid down there with him and took a nap. At least he didn't mind sharing.

red chair

I did not know this, but my cousin Darlene told me Aunt Dottie dabbled with reupholster too. I can totally see her doing that. Maybe she was the guiding hand in this project?

This chair will forever now be referred to as the "red" chair. I like to think it's happy with it's new look after screaming for years, "Someone make me pretty again!"

I may have covered this in the post I did on the brown chair, let me reiterate if I did. When we finished the basement, I started looking at furniture.

Should I buy new furniture for the upstairs and move the old stuff downstairs? When I looked at the cost of new furniture, I felt queasy. We paid a lot for the living room furniture and it's not in the greatest shape just 5 years later, even taking into account we don't have small children anymore.

So while strolling through Habitat for Humanity Restore in Ann Arbor, I came across some chairs I liked. This one was $5, I got it during a half off sale.

Burke really liked it because it felt solid to him. I tested it to make sure the frame was good by trying to twist it. Yep... solid.

We took it home and began to pull the fabric off. If I had to guess the age of this chair, I would say somewhere in the 1990's. I did find a receipt for some Chinese food in it that was dated in the year 2000.

The trick is to reverse engineer it. Removing each section and retaining the old fabric to use as a pattern. I started at the bottom, removing the dust cover.

I then moved to the back and sides. They used this item called curve ease and I did the same. I ordered some immediately. In this stage of the project, I lost my helper - he was done.

I took off the first layer of fabric and discovered the foam, cotton and under fabric was really dusty from years of use, so I took off everything.

Normally you would just take off the first layer to keep costs down, keeping some of the cotton/foam. However, I thought .... if I truly screw it up - I'm out $5, so everything came off.

There were 3 layers of foam and fabric on this chair and about 3.2 million staples. OMG, the staples. I started out using a hammer, small screw driver and pliers, pulling out most of the staples. I ordered a couple of tools online to help, but really ... these tools worked the best.

I actually found it quite calming hammering and yanking those staples out. It took me nearly a week just to get it down to the bare bones. I got to spend a Sunday and nights after work on it.

This might be a better indication of the amount of staples there were. Rows and rows right on top of each other. Someone was staple gun happy. Once I thought I was done, I went back over everything with a hammer to make sure nothing sharp was sticking out ... ready to eat my finger.

Things I ended up ordering was new cotton, some foam and a new staple gun. Burke's mom had given us the electric one his dad used before his death and I tried using that but soon wanted to advance to a compressed air staple gun. I found a decent one on Amazon for about $30,

Eileen and I went shopping at Joann and she talked me into getting this nice soft red fabric. It was $30/yard. Ouch! Some websites suggested that I would need 7 yards for a chair. So I dug out a 50% off coupon for Joann's and bought 6 yards. So this was the biggest expense, this and the cotton and foam. Six yards did it all and I had some left over.

At this point, I'm into the chair for a weeks worth of time and about $200 in materials. I could have saved money by using cheaper fabric and reusing more of the underlay - but hey .... go big or stay home. I used scraps of upholstery fabrics for the under layer, which was nice. Finally got to use up some existing fabric.

Now I know why reupholstering costs so much - it's so time intensive. Not especially hard, but just time intensive.

I finally put everything back together and made the cushion cover, reusing the zipper and cording that I pulled off the chair. This took another couple of weeks, working part time on it.

I watched some YouTube videos on reupholstering, but this one was particularly helpful and I even bought some supplies there.

How to reupholster an armchair

I really enjoyed the process and it let me use other skills I've developed over the years like woodworking and sewing. I'm definitely putting this one on the list of  "Things I want to do to make money when I retire". Plus, I got to take something old and make it new again - saved from the landfills. THAT makes me happy.

the upholstery adventure

Burke and I were browsing around at the Habitat for Humanity Restore in Ann Arbor and came across this chair. It was super cool - a glider. The footstool was also a glider. The price was $70.00, but I waited until they had a 50% sale and sent Burke for the chair. I paid $35 for both pieces.

This is my first upholstery job and I really enjoyed it.  It allowed me to use by sewing and woodworking skills.

After about a week, this is how it turned out. Super comfy chair!

I began with a screw driver and hammer to remove the staples that holds the fabric on.

I began at the bottom and worked my way up.

The manufacturer is New Castle Furniture and looking online - this set costs anywhere between $450 - $600.

I actually began with the foot stool. I really only took me a day to uncover it and reupholstery it.

I took the old fabric off and used it as a pattern for the new stuff.

I ordered some new foam for the back cushion and also decided to go with a square backing instead of the original curved.

I decided the skirting on both the chair and ottoman would not go back on. The fabric is a duck canvas that I ordered through fabric.com, which matches the wall color in the basement. I ordered 10 yards overall and I used about 7 yards.

It actually was not hard at all. All together I spent about $115 on materials. I already had most of the tools I needed. Not bad for a first try. I'm already stripping down my next chair that I picked up for $5.