DIY: Dining Room Update

I currently finished projected #4 out of 200 that I would like to accomplish before our little girl arrives this November. I am pretty sure that projects #107-200 will not be completed before my due date, but that's just life.

For this project I had a hope chest that I received as a present from my Grandma when I graduated high school. Apparently when I was 16 and picked it out, cherry wood with gold hardware and a floral seat cushion were what defined my "taste". I am proud to say that since then my tastes have changed tremendously and so this hope chest had to change as well.

Here is what it looks like:

See its not very attractive to someone who has contemporary/modern/retro taste. But being that it is a very expensive, very sentimental and very well made piece of furniture I have to keep it. So it's first stage of renovation was very simple. I just changed the fabric from its current victorian/floral ugliness to something more simple and subdued; thick stripes of a dark navy and chocolate-esque color. It's not something I specifically picked out for this project, but rather the largest piece of remnant fabric I had on hand that would work. You see my ultimate plan for this chest is to strip it, paint it white, replace the hardware with something more contemporary and preferably not gold and then change the seating fabric to something cute, feminine and retro. Since it will eventually be placed in our daughter's bedroom. But for now it serves its purpose as storage and extra seating in our dining room and thus these colors will work for the next 6+months or so until we move and then restoration plan B will be put into effect.

Here are the pictures from this quick and simple project. 

I took the top of the cushion off by removing the screws underneath the lid of the chest.

Then I placed the cushion upside down onto the new fabric and cut around the cushion leaving about 3 inches of excess so that it would wrap completely and give me plenty of room for stapling.

So this floral is now...

a much more contemporary striped pattern.

And this is what it looked like once it was reattached to the chest. Much better.

After adding some pillows to spice it up the final dining room update looks like this...

Much better. Now you can't see the floral pattern that was a total eyesore. The zebra pillow adds some crazy to the whole area and then the back pillows give more cushion and support for when guests are actually sitting there for dinner. I have plans to make the chocolate back cushions a different color probably a nice neutral so the zebra will stand out more, but for now this works. 

Interested in where everything came from to make up this (in my opinion) awesome dining room?

(click on the photo for larger version)