re-finishing. . . again

Last week we found a dining room set on Craigslist that we could not pass up. It extends to 9.5 feet long and has 8 chairs. There were some scratches on the top, and the seats needed new fabric, but that is nothing we haven't done before. So we picked it up, and Thad had to have the neighbor help him bring it in the house. I know you aren't supposed to lift heavy things when you are pregnant, but I'm not very good at obeying that rule. This time though, I literally could not lift my end of it at all. This sucker is heavy, so neighbor to the rescue. I didn't take a before of the whole set, but this is our new addition with it's 6 new coats of stain and poly. My right arm is a bit sore.

I may have sanded inside the house and then spent 2 hours vacuuming and sweeping and dusting and scrubbing to get rid of the mess. Oops. But this thing is so heavy I couldn't help him lift if to get it outside! Anyway, it's done and It's lovely. We do have a before and after of the chairs. I love the green fabric. I went to Joanns with an entirely different fabric in mind. The one that's on the drapes in the front room, but it was not on sale, and that stuff is way too expensive otherwise. So I found this on sale, and had a coupon, and I like it so much more than my original idea.

Much better, right? I also started bringing some color to the walls and painted the kitchen. Here is a reminder of what it looked like before.

And the new color.

Now it feels like me in there. We actually scored twice on Craigslist last week and I found a dresser for Sammy's room that I am going to tackle today. Two of the drawers were falling apart, but it was only $20 and I knew Thad could fix them. Luckily it landed in the garage, so I can sand outside this time ;) And since we had a garage sale on Saturday there is room in the garage to work on it! We were able to get rid of a lot of stuff, and what we didn't is in the back of my car waiting to be dropped off at goodwill. Yay for spring purging.