Holly's New House

It all started with the aqua chair in my gallery. Holly, my friend from work, saw the chair, loved the color, and wondered if something could be done with her dining room set (which she was not in love with). We agreed that I could do a make over on the dining room set and.....that led to a whole line-up of projects! Holly is getting married to her fiance, Akilah, this July 9th and wanted to "make over" their house before all the family comes to town.

So, I've been working hard this month finishing the dining set, sewing pillows, sewing curtains, sewing tea towel hangers, creating a centerpiece, and redoing an old chalkboard. I should say "we" have been busy. My wonderful husband is actually the one who did most of the work on the dining set, without his help I think I would have sat down and cried more than once. Thank you Theron!

The following is a line up of before and after pictures. Holly did an great job of picking fun fabrics and I think the end result turned out great!

Holly's dining room "before". We agreed it need some color to mitigate all that brown.

Chairs in progress

Table in progress (Theron did all that sanding!)

Old chalkboard Holly rescued out of her friend's shed! I had a hard time painting over all the "oldness" of this. Holly thought I was nuts for wanting to keep it the way it was.




Voila! Here's the finished dining room, new curtains, redone dining set, new centerpiece. You can't see the centerpiece very well and I forgot to take an upclose shot, but the sticks are painted silver and paired with white flowers.

You can see the colors better in this shot. We did the chairs in "Blindfold" and the table in "Backstroke". Both colors are Valspar paint from Lowes. By the way, if you like a Valspar Signature Color, instead of the Signature paint formula ask for it in the Premium paint formula. The Signature paint is more expensive and too thick to work well in a paint sprayer.

We learned the hard way!

Here is another shot with Holly and Akilah's engagement picture. Our handy men hung the new picture while we girls decorated. :)

And the details....

Please excuse the sideways photograph. I downloaded this picture four times and it wouldn't stay rotated! If anyone knows a trick for this I would love to have it!

Holly found an easy tutorial for making these darling tea towel toppers on a blog she reads, TreyandLucy. They were really easy to make and turned out cute. I might need some for my kitchen.


And the old/new message board


Whew! This project was a big one, but I love the way everything turned out. Holly's style is more "modern" than my usual country-shabby-chic look, so the whole project was a challege. Thank you to Holly for being brave and choosing such fun fabrics and colors!