In the ongoing saga of my little dressing table project, the next necessary procurement was a chair. Because sometimes a girl just needs to have a seat.

Yesterday I brought this chair upstairs from our guest room. It goes with the vintage bedroom set in there (inherited from my grandmother on my dad’s side), but was just sitting in a corner unused.

My sister is actually the rightful owner of the bedroom set (I got Nanny’s diamond engagement ring, Shannon got the furniture), but she doesn’t have any space for it at her house and I am happy to babysit it indefinitely. A few years ago she reupholstered the seat with this purple fabric. I love me some purple but this just wasn’t doing it for me. Happily, Shannon said she didn’t mind if I replaced it. So I flipped the chair over and got to work.

Four screws later I had the seat removed. The staples were easy to pull out with a flat head screwdriver.

I was really encouraged by the pinkish-coral velvet I could see as I worked. I couldn’t remember what the chair looked like before she recovered it, but this velvet was promising.

Unfortunately, once I flipped it over I could see why she’d covered it up. No longer pink and not at all velvety, this fabric had seen better days.

I was really, really tempted to run out to the fabric store and look for some pink velvet, but it was raining cats and dogs all day yesterday and I really didn’t want to spend the money anyway. So I went through my fabric stash and found this yellow twill.

I’m not sure whether I’ll keep the yellow and I didn’t want to make any more holes in the old wood than necessary, so I just taped it on there for now. The tape was not particularly easy to work with, but it’s good enough.

Here it is screwed back onto the chair base. Pistachio observed for quality assurance.

I think the pop of color is kind of fun, but I’m not totally convinced that its here to stay. I’m also totally cringing at the sight of that window unit. I really, really need to make some curtains to cover it up.

I usually like to make my bed before letting it appear in photographs, but I slipped on our porch steps yesterday and hurt my back pretty bad. I’m still sore today. No way was I exerting myself to fluff the pillows and pull up the covers. Plus there was a baby in there, haha.

There’s no more procrastinating at this point–the only thing left to do is sort through all my stuff and organize it in the new drawers. I guess I’ll put that on my to do list for the weekend! Along with some much-needed yard work if the weather cooperates. It’s been raining practically all week so the weeds should come up easy! I hope y’all have a more exciting weekend planned, haha. I’d much rather spend my weekend lounging around with my boys and some Netflix, but the yard has reached a breaking point.

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I took a few minutes yesterday afternoon to play around with some pretty little whatnots on my new dressing table.

I’m toying with the idea of keeping jewelry in the birdcage. It’s a good place to let my favorite stuff sit out where I can see it without being vulnerable to feline shenanigans. I might just put it in a drawer, though. Only time will tell.

Nick and I have been cleaning out our closets (in an effort to stick with my New Year’s resolution to rid the house of clutter) and I found this little mirror in the guest room with the Goodwill price tags still attached. I think I must have bought it over a year ago and have actually been meaning to take it BACK to the Goodwill because I didn’t have a place for it. Well, little mirror, your time has come.

I picked up some hanging hardware at Hobby Lobby. You just hook the ends onto the edge of your plate, mirror, whatever, and then stick it on the wall.

It was stretched really tight and I had a hard time getting it to “catch” the nail in my wall, so I jammed some crumpled up paper underneath to make it stick out a little.

And voila. I love it. Those other frames were looking kind of dinky and oddly placed, though.

Whenever I visit Ikea I like to stock up on these 5×7 Ribba frames. They’re so inexpensive and easy to hang. I dug two of them out of my stash and rearranged everything kind of impulsively. Looking at them in the photo below one of them looks a little crooked. I’ll have to fix that later.

I still don’t know what I’ll put in them. Maybe photos or some free printable art or maybe I’ll DIY something. I’m totally putting form before function in this little dressing table project because I know that as soon as all my stuff is over here I’ll just start using it every day and stop trying to make it look pretty (just like the bathroom you’ve never seen on the blog because it is seven kinds of ugly). Once I get some pretty stuff in those frames, and a cute chair to sit in (I’ve got one one mind) I’ll sort through all my health and beauty accouterments to see what is worthy of a spot in the new digs. And I’ll be knocking out two birds with one stone by dealing with the clutter issue in the bathroom! Holla.

Can y’all believe that just, like, a week ago this corner looked like this? Boring and not particularly functional.

My eye is totally starting to wander to the matching empty corner on Nick’s side of the bed, wondering what kind of useful little nook I can whip up over there. This old house was not really designed for the way we live today, but the longer we’re here the more ways I find to make it work (like turning the front room into an office/playroom and, more recently, using some odd storage nooks upstairs more like how regular people use their attics–details on that to come).

ps If you’re just reading this post and wondering where I got the stuff above, you can read about the desk here, here, and here and the birdcage here. 

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