Be My Guest- Our Fifth House!

I'm so excited to have Carmel from Our Fifth House guest posting today!  She is hysterical and has fabulous home decorating ideas!  If you don't already follow her...you need too!  You won't be disappointed!  Thanks Carmel for stopping by!  Take it away.....


Hello Richmond Thrifters!  I'm Carmel from Our Fifth House, you know because I'm currently living in my fifth house.  I'm a genius with blog names - right?!  ;)  Anyhow, I was so excited when Erin asked me to guest post over here because our 3rd house was in Richmond, Virginia!  I seriously love that city!  So she and I have that fun little connection.  In addition, I love thrifting and decorating; and Erin's projects are always so inspiring!


So, in the spirit of Erin's awesome ability to beautify furniture, I thought I'd share one my own furniture transformations.  This was our dining room set.

We bought the china cabinet and table with six chairs from a family member when we bought our third house.  It was all we could afford at the time, and we were pleased as punch to have something to fill our new empty dining room.  My style is pretty traditional (although the hub's is not - he's a modern man) so this queen anne style was fine for me.  It wasn't what I would have picked out if we were buying new, but for the price we paid it worked.  This set worked for us as is for a few years, until we moved into our current home (where it's pictured above).


Our dining room is much smaller than our previous dining rooms.  After I tore the wall paper down, we decided to craig's list the china cabinet (because we just didn't have room for it anywhere in our home).

I gave the table and chairs a little makeover and moved them into our kitchen.  This table fits in this space so much better than it did in our dining room!

I sanded, used kilz primer, pained it Waverly's Cafe Cream, and applied a polycrylic topcoat.  I also distressed the table just a bit so it would be equipped to handle all that my kids had to dish :)

The chairs were recovered with a cotton/linen blend and scotch guarded to high heaven.  I painted them (first primed) with an off the shelf black satin paint by Valspar and used a hand rubbed poly to finish.


I love our "new" kitchen table so much!  I have no idea why it took me so long to bust out the paint brush?!  But, I'm sure glad I did!

My old kitchen table and chairs (which is a little smaller) fits so much better in it's new home in our dining room.  It also gave our dining room a casual use-this-room-more-often kind of feel, which is totally what we going for in there!

So now, if my kitchen table is covered with craft projects homework than we just eat dinner in the "not so formal" dining room!


To find out more about how I stenciled the wall with an ikat pattern in the dining room come on over to Our Fifth House!


Thanks so much Erin for having me over!  Maybe next time I visit Richmond we'll get to meet in person (preferably at Baker's Crust for crepes in Carrytown - that place is still there right?!).