How to Make a Reversible Table Runner on Teal & Lime

2014 is an exciting year for many reasons, one of which is that I'm now a contributor on Teal & Lime, an awesome blog about interior decorating and DIY design.  Every month, I'll be writing a series called Sew Your Decor, and will share a home decor project you can sew.

My first post went live today, and is a tutorial on making a reversible table runner.  This was a quick, inexpensive, and easy project (great for beginners!), and I'm so happy with the results.  Please go check out the full post!

Want to see the rest of the dining room?  I just posted the full reveal earlier this week!

Bonnie Projects

Dining Room Reveal

It's finally done!!!  Back in August we started working on the dining room, and now I can finally say it's complete :)

Remember how it started off?  Dark, dated, and messy.  We had already updated the chandelier from the brass one left by the previous homeowners, but the paint wasn't meshing with our other rooms, there was nowhere to put stuff, and the space simply didn't have personality.

I'll give you the rest of the tour, then explain how we got from A to B!

We were so lost with how to approach this room that we hired Jackie of Teal & Lime Interiors to make a mood board and source list for us to get us started.  She gave us lots of inspiration and some great ideas.  This room wouldn't be like it is without her help.

I painted the walls a cool neutral called Kestrel White.  It's more interesting than flat white, and meshes really well with the other colors on this level.  I also gave the baseboards a fresh coat of white paint.

Next I painted the built-in cabinets white.  I was worried the tile on top would clash, but it actually looks pretty good!

With Jackie's suggestions, I bought a small "buffet" to hold laptops, magazines, and the other stuff that was littering the dining room.  I also got those great lamps (so affordable!), the round mirror, the brass duck bookends, and the striped rug from her source list.  The rug was too long, so I came up with an easy way to shorten it.

I found the low-profile wine rack while shopping in Capitol Hill.  It holds the bottles sideways, so it hardly takes up any room at all.

We brought our family to dinner by getting a large print framed - it's a photo of both our extended families, taken a few days before our wedding.  Everyone is wearing coral and navy, and this was the inspiration for the room.

To complete the look, I made a reversible table runner for the dining table.  Check back later this week for the tutorial!

We are so happy with how this room turned out!  It's light, bright, and offers the functionality we needed.  It goes great with the adjacent kitchen and living room, and finally feels like "us".




You might also be interested in these posts:
We hired a designer
Painting the dining room
Painting the built-ins
A shoe cabinet as a buffet
How to shorten a flat-weave rug
How to make a reversible table runner (coming soon!)

Bonnie Projects

How to Shorten a Flat-Weave Rug {Easy Tutorial}

We got this super-cute navy and white striped rug for our dining room.  I love the style and that I can take it outside and hose it down if something spills on it (it's indoor/outdoor).

But.  It was too long.  It was overtaking the main walkway in our house.  The width was perfect, so I didn't want a smaller rug.  I just needed to shorten it!

This was SO EASY!!!

Tommy helped me set up the rug so all the other sides were in the right place.  We eyeballed where the edge of the rug should be (i.e., out of the walkway), and I marked it with a few safety pins.

With a striped rug this was super simple, but with a not-stripy rug I would measure before cutting.

First I cut off just a little so I could know how bad it might fray (bad), and tested out my method (good).

Then I cut off enough so that I had two inches on the rug past where I had pinned it.  This extra length gets folded over twice (to prevent fraying) and sewn down.

That's what I did.  I folded over the end twice, and sewed through all the layers.  My thread matched perfectly, so it didn't matter if I had ugly-looking stitches.  I made sure to keep the roll-over in place with a few clamps.  You know how when you roll up a towel, it gets wonky by the end?  The clamps were to prevent that.

 

You can see that my stitches aren't perfect, but since the thread matched so well (on the front side), you can't tell!

It took about an hour to hand sew the whole length, but you could do this with the most basic of sewing skills.  Plus, it was free!  All I used was a few yards of thread, which I already had.  I definitely recommend perfectly-matched thread, but the clamps could be substituted with binder clips.   I could also envision using this method to transform a large rug into multiple runners.  I'm already dreaming up what to do with the scrap!

And...ta da!  Custom-sized rug for the dining room.

Much better than before! 

You might also be interested in these posts:

Painting the dining room
Painting the built-ins
An IKEA Hemnes shoe cabinet in the dining room

Bonnie Projects

Small Space Solution: IKEA Hemnes as a Buffet

It looks like we finally have some easily-accessible storage in our little dining room!

Remember all that junk that was constantly taking over our dining space?  No more!

This handy guy is less than 9" deep, and because it doesn't have back legs, fits snugly against the wall.  The slim design allowed us to have something like a buffet in our dining room.

Except, it's not a buffet.  It's an IKEA Hemnes that's actually made to hold shoes!  Rather than drawers, the compartments tilt out for access.  My computer and accessories nicely fit in one compartment.  We have magazines in another, and there are still two empty that we can use for whatever may come.

At $100, I'm really happy with this new addition to the dining room!  It's cute, sturdy, slim, and holds all the stuff.  Perfect!

I have to be honest though, this thing was a complete pain to build and install.

Tommy has a LOT of experience building IKEA stuff (his 10-person office is all IKEA), but it took him a several days to build this thing.

Then, when we went to install it, the back didn't quite clear the molding.  What do you do when your IKEA Hemnes is too short for the molding?  Add length to the legs!

I bought 6 different options at the hardware store (everything from wooden buttons to drawer pulls), and plain wooden drawer pulls ended up winning.  I spray painted them with plain ol' primer, and affixed them with wood glue.  If this piece were going to move around much, I would have used something stronger, but since it's screwed into the wall and the knobs will only have vertical force on them, I think the wood glue will do just fine.

There's more staging to be done, but I'm pretty excited about the ducks!  We have lots of wildlife on the lake behind our house, but the ducks are our favorites.  Now we get to have them inside, too!

You might also be interested in these posts:

Painting the Dining Room
Hiring a Decorator

Bonnie Projects

Dining Room Update: Painting the Built-ins

We're still loving the new color in the dining room.  A light, warm neutral was just what the space needed!  That said, the fresh new paint and white trim look so great that they make the built-in cabinets look dated and dingy.

 

We'd been thinking about painting the cabinets white, and the new wall color pushed us to finally go ahead and do it.

I started by removing the hardware and scrubbing everything to get it clean.  Then I sanded the trim and cabinets to create a rough surface for the paint to stick to.  Next I filled in any holes and divots with wood putty then did a final sanding.  For the final prep, I wiped everything down with a damp cloth.

I taped off things that didn't need paint - namely, the quarter-round that matches the floor, the grout and tiles, and the inside of the cabinets.

There was a little space between the top and the cabinets, so I filled it with paintable caulk.  Thanks to my husband for grabbing the camera!

Then I got to painting!

First Coat

Second Coat

First Coat

Second Coat

It took four coats to get decent coverage!!!  Thankfully the piece is small, so it didn't take all that long.

Meanwhile I got to work on the doors.  I started with the backs, which just like the cabinets took four coats of paint to get good coverage.

Before

Working on the first coat

Coat #1 done!

Coat #2 done!

After the backs had fully cured, I flipped them over and painted the fronts.  I did five coats of paint on the cabinet fronts, and I'm still not sure I'm happy with the results.

I gave them a full day to dry, but figured they could fully cure while hanging (which also gets them off my floor), so I went ahead and hung them back up!

The fresh bright paint makes such a difference!  The cabinets look much more modern, and the white paint helps you fully appreciate all that fancy beveling on the doors. {Thanks old owners, for choosing high-end cabinets!}

 

You're supposed to be looking at the tile, but aren't my "thanks for painting for a week straight" flowers from my husband pretty???

Jury's still out on whether the tile will stay, but for now I'm ready to forge ahead and finish decorating this room!  What do you think?  Should the tile stay or go?


You might also be interested in these posts:

Redecorating the Dining Room
Painting the Dining Room

Bonnie Projects