Weekend Projects--upcycled!!

It was a busy weekend! The "big kids" were in "class" all day 8-5 learning to be soccer ref's. Why you may ask? $25 per game ref'd that's why. Can you believe it? That is good money when you are a teenager. Fortunately they both passed the test....in true form Ben got the high score of the class...too funny, his competitiveness transfers to all things...he won some line flags though so that paid off. Games should start sometime in August which will be especially good for Ben ... he is going to need gas money when he starts driving in about a month. Yikes!

So the projects. We did some IKEA investigation...that is always an outing that takes a couple of hours but needed to be done. We didn't buy anything while there....unless you count a little plate of swedish meatballs!! (they are not bad!)

We started revamping this table. We got this table for free years ago along with 4 parsons chairs. We had it inside for a long time but it has slowly been pushed out. The table itself is a bit wobbly, and smaller than I want for outside; I really want to be able to seat 8 comfortably. So my handy MAN took the table apart, we really only salvaged the legs.

We went to Lowe's and bought some birch plywood, it is 8 feet long and we trimmed the width to 3 1/2 feet. He doubled the thickness and built the frame...here is where we are at as of this morning. Now we are trying to figure out the stain/paint combonation we want, and there is still some sanding and smoothing of the edges to be done....but so far I am liking it! I also finished refurbishing these chairs. We already had done the table and four chairs, but then we got the arm chairs and wanted to paint and recover the seats to match the others. The whole table was this honey colored wood....I am not a fan.

So we repainted them white and antiqued them a bit. You can see the table in the background, we refinished the top of the table with a darker stain, with less shine. I recovered the chairs myself with genuine "pleather"! Don't laugh it is economical $10 per yard, so I recovered 6 chairs for $30; and they wipe clean....since this is our everyday eating area and I have a 2, 13, and nearly 16 year old in the house they need to be washable.

So that's it. I also tried two new recipes this weekend which the family called "keepers", I will share those another day as this post has already rambled a bit. Hope you like.