80's Denim for Today

Whenever I spend a Saturday on the Garage Sale circuit I always leave with the belief that American's could clothe the world with their cast offs.  So there's tons of things to pick from, and since most are priced between 25 cents and a couple of dollars, you can't go wrong--even if your do-over goes wrong.

This is the denim dress that we all wore in a past decade.  It wasn't missing any buttons, but they all got stitched back on (more securely this time) while I was catching up on Grey's Anatomy.  I bought a size bigger than I wear and went to town.

I cut it off to make it into the kind of shirt dress that's being shown in the magazines for fall.  Then I fitted it so that the skirt had more "swing."  I finished off by purchasing 48 cents worth of leopard print cotton fabric (and I have a lot left over), and ironed it on over the pockets to add a little detail to the dress.  It looked great with boots and a belt that was already in my closet.

Iron Bar Stools Makeover

 I picked up these bar stools at a garage sale.  They were price at $25 each and I picked them up for $20 each.  I only needed four stools and they wanted to sell these as a set of five which was perfect.  When you're buying a used set of items it's always nice to snag an extra--especially if you want a matching set and you're purchasing furniture.  These are swivel bar stools with one ruined cushion so I now have extra hardware (from the extra bar stool) that I can use to make sure all the stools are in working order.  I also liked that the cushions were covered in vinyl.  It's easiest to recover seats if you don't have to remove the original fabric, and the cushions will keep their shape better. And it saves tons of money if you don't have to include an upholstery shop in your makeover.

Prior to purchasing the stools, I inspected them and made sure that the seats detached easily so that I could recover the cushions myself.  I love neutral colored furniture with easy-to-recover cushions because then you can change them out multiple times depending on where you're using the piece.  The other thing I noticed is that they were DIRTY!

I took them home, attacked them with my screw gun, removed the seats and scrubbed them within an inch of their life.  These were obviously used in the kitchen and rarely wiped down.  There was enough food on them to stick small children to the seats permanently.  Ice cream had dripped down the legs and jam was petrified under the armrests.  I also had to scrub the seats and let them dry overnight because the leftovers would have attracted ants if I had just put my new fabric over them.

When you re-do garage sale finds, you have to be okay with vintage finishes.  No matter how hard you try, there will be signs of wear that can't be erased.  Although my plan is to repaint the iron, a lot of finish had been rubbed off and I wasn't sure how well the paint would adhere in the long run.  Also, we had to try several finishes to find a stain that would adhere to the back of the stools where the stain had been rubbed off, so it's not perfect and I'm okay with that.

The final step was to recover the seats with my new fabric and my trusty staple gun.  A few screws and the seats were back in place. 

This project took about nine hours to complete with a final pricetag of $121.  The fabric cost $9.20 for 2 yards and it took two cans of flat black spray paint.  I used stain that I already owned and I have about 1/2 yard of fabric and 1/2 can of spray paint leftover to use on another project.