DIY

So this past weekend I decided to do something I’ve never done before.  I real DIY project from start to finish!

In preparation for a new challenge that I’m tackling this coming week, I needed some chairs.  A little background:  When I first moved out on my own 7 years ago, I was in the process of acquiring all the furniture needed to make a house feel cozy.  I went onto Sears’ website and picked out a bedroom set, made my way down to the local furniture store and picked up a coffee table and two end tables, and luckily got a FANTASTIC deal on a couch and love seat.  (If you’re in the market for some new furniture, I highly suggest you check out Leon’s at 20 McLevin Ave in Scarborough… They have a HUGE as-is section at the back of the store with tons of furniture from couches, headboards, tables, etc.  Anyways, I got my couch and love seat from there for $150 total!  Just because it was delivered to a house but didn’t fit in the space; nothing wrong with it at all!)  Ahh.. I digress.  So the only thing missing that I needed was a dining room table.  At the time, my step-brother worked for The Brick and called me to tell me that they got a solid wood dining room table shipped to them, and it had 4 chairs, but only 2 seat cushions.  Did I want it? For free? YES! 

So for the past 7 years, I’ve been lucky (?) enough to have dining rooms that weren’t big enough to need 4 chairs around the table.  As I mentioned though, this coming Thursday I will need all four chairs.  So I got to work… I took one chair apart in order to get the seat off (for measurements) and made my way to Fabricland and Home Depot.

I wasn’t able to find the exact same shade of fabric that my other seats were in, so I picked something out that was in the same colour and fabric family.  I then picked up some high density foam for the seats (which by the way, is NOT cheap), and off I was to Home Depot for the plywood bottom and all the nuts and screws and bolts that I needed.  I was shocked when I got to Home Depot and gave them the current seat and told them that I needed this shape (kind of a trapezoid), and they told me I needed a jigsaw.  A what??  I don’t have one of those…  Good thing for family!  One of my cousins wants to go to school for carpentry, so I shot him a quick bbm and he assured me that he could totally do that – Score!!  Not to mention, that my other cousin, his sister, is a huge DIY’er and she knows how to do pretty much everything.  So I got to work.  Cutting foam, wrapping fabric, stapling batting, until it was complete!

Ahhh… I  wish this story ended on one of those positive notes that I did it and it was amazing, and that my dining room table set is now complete. Not the case.  I got home full of positive energy and determination and the will to DO IT!  The first disappointment came when I realized I didn’t have all the pieces that I needed.  Somehow, over the past 7 years, I lost ONE piece of wood necessary to hold the whole chair together.  Bummer.  But I didn’t let it get me down.. I still had another shot… For the last chair, I still had all the pieces and the seat that I just made and all new screws and stuff.  3 out of 4 ain’t bad right?  Ughh.. Well, it started at Home Depot when I showed the man the type of screw I needed and he said that I had a metric not imperial (or the other way around)… Anyways, because of this whole thing, I got a screw that needed a wrench instead of a screwdriver.. Which led to this email to my dad below:

Hey Dad,

So the screw things that I bought for the chairs aren’t the kind that you need a screwdriver for… You have to turn them with the adjustable wrench thing… But they’re in a small space, so I can turn it like ½ a turn every time… You know that tool that you have (I think it’s called a ratchet), that you turn it then it makes a click-y noise when we bring it back around?  Can you bring that over like Tuesday or Wednesday? I need to put these chairs together by Thursday but going at this pace, I’ll be here till next year!!!

Soooo… I’ll let you know how it goes.. If no chairs, Thursday’s activity may have to be done on the floor.  Which, since I have a dog, may not be...interesting.  Stay tuned J