Sweet Little Vintage Rocker

I. am. alive.  For real.  I am sorry about my absence.  Without spending an hour recapping the last three weeks of my life for you; in a nutshell I finished choreography and cleaning for our end of year recital at my dance studio where I (frightfully) also performed a solo, I spent two weeks teaching our summer dance intensives program for 7 hours each day, I babysat my brother's 4 young boys (ages 2-8) along with my own Trav, sans my sweets for 4 days, and have been working relentlessly to prepare our back yard for sod that is being delivered to us in a week.  PHEW!  Okay, now that I write it all out it doesn't really sound that impressive but I promise I've been swamped!  Will you forgive me for not writing?

What have you been up to lately?  Are you enjoying your summer?  We finally have sun in my state!  Hallelujah!!! Go figure the first day I spent in it, I got fried.  Literally cooked like a lobster.  That teaches me (a redhead with fair skin) to spend a day at the waterpark with spf 4.  Idiot.

Now that I am finished teaching for a month, I am thrilled to get my hands busy on some projects of my own desire, in addition to the dreaded ongoing yard landscaping.  I did a simple reupholstery job for an old neighbor of mine on her mother's rocking chair.  When she first showed it to me, I was so excited to work on this and secretly wished she would give it to me in the end.  Of course that won't be the case as it is a family heirloom and has very special meaning to her since it reminds her of watching her sweet momma playing the piano in that rocker day after day as she grew up.  The modernized shabby chic vision I had for this cutie pie was not her vision at all however, and she wanted to keep the rocker looking as similar to its original form as possible, but wanted it to be cleaned up.  The gimp (trim) had started to come off and had been amateurly stapled back on by a family member, the fabric was quite old and worn, and unbeknownst to her, the interior foam was disintegrating and very little of it remained. 

I failed to take a picture before I ripped the gimp off, but I held it up for you folks here

So after my friend selected a pattern that she loved and paint color for the chair, I got busy cleaning her up.

I removed all the gimp, fabric and most of the staples, and old batting and foam that had worn down to virtually nothing and was disintegrating. 

I lightly sanded the entire frame, primed it with Rustoleum, and spray painted it with Rustoleum's Espresso in satin finish, followed by several light coats of gloss polyurethane spray.

I replaced the old foam with much plumper pieces (from my D.I. stock pile- if you missed my secret on finding inexpensive foam, check it out here) and used spray adhesive to set the pieces in place, just like I explained HERE with my Chevron Chair.




Image from Chevron Chair post

I stapled new batting and the fabric over the foam, snipped as closely as possible around the edges, and covered all of the exposed staples and edges up with my double welting cord. For more details on how to accomplish all of the above mentioned steps, you can find a detailed tutorial from my reupholstery series HERE and HERE. 

Here's how sweet little grandma's rocker looks now.

I hope my friend is pleased and that the chair is still similar enough that she can remember her mom.  I can't imagine the day that I have to remember my mom from memories, instead of seeing her whenever I want to in the flesh.

On a new note, one of the very most exciting things I did this week was drive 60 miles to pick up.... you guessed it, Annie Sloan Chalk Paint!  My local Utah retailer held on to my two color requests and the dark wax for me as soon as they came in, and is sweet enough that she is going to mail me a can of the clear wax that she didn't have in stock as soon as it arrives.  I couldn't drive home fast enough to start working with it. 

I'll bet you can guess what project I've been saving up $ for this paint to be used on...

I'm all done except for the clear wax.  I don't think they can mail it out fast enough.  I can hardly handle the excitement!  Try to be patient all you nail biters out there :)

Lastly, I want to thank all of my readers so much for your support and sweet comments.  I hit 300 followers today and feel so lucky to have this outlet and creative talent to share with others.  I really appreciate each of you more than you may know, so thank you.

xoxo

Long lost Penny Wenny

P.S.
Here's a hilarious video of my little Trav playing "hoops" with his nephew Luke while I was babysitting at their house.  Too cute for words.