Working with a Friend
Nothing is more fun than working with a friend. Time just flies, and before you know it, the project is over! Recently, my friend Kim and I started working on a joint project. She found this amazing table, chairs, and buffet from a previous employer that she wanted to fix up. Kim showed them to me one day when I was visiting, and of course, I fell in love with the design and the embellishments on the chairs and the buffet!
We started planning to work on them together, but we had to find a time when we both were not super busy. Plus, she needed a trailer to pick up all of this furniture. I think we were blessed that they gave us as much time as we needed to come get the pieces. A couple of weeks ago, Kim and her husband brought all of it to our garage out at the farm. We don’t have any air conditioning or heating over there, so our time to paint there is very limited.
We spent two days out at the farm—kind of like a painting girl retreat—working on getting the chairs and the buffet painted. The next morning, we didn’t move too quickly; the coffee actually slowed us down. Then we sat on the couch and talked until almost 10:30. It was time well spent with a good friend and allowed us even more energy and caffeine to continue working. Now that we had more strength, we stripped the top of the table.
We had a good laugh as we were doing this because Kim pointed out how the rolled-up old varnish looked like old skin, like from a sunburn. Eww! Lots of giggles were had as we scraped up the “dead skin” off the top of the table. She started to sand with a little hand sander, and I showed her how to use a powerful sander to help speed up the removal of the stain. Here is a picture I took of her having fun controlling this crazy sander!
We didn’t have time to finish our project during our short little retreat, so I will have to do a follow-up blog to show what we do to finish up. We have chairs to reupholster, and I found some fabric to do it with later that afternoon. What do you think?
This first fabric with the flowers and birds will be used to cover the armchairs. There are a total of 8 chairs, but there is not a leaf, so we decided that we will sell the two armchairs separately.
This brown paisley fabric is the one that we fell in love with for the chairs around the table. We wanted to go with a brown tone because the top of the buffet has a beautiful brown-toned marble top. We also wanted to incorporate navy into the color scheme as well. This fabric was on sale and will match a variety of decors.
Kim and I cannot wait to show you the rest of the project, so stay tuned for Part 2 coming soon! (I hope, because it is April in Texas. We only have two months to get this project done before the temperatures soar!)
Blessings, Jamie Orsburn My Back Porch TX
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