New Hobby: Revamping Furniture

After buying our new place in Show Low, we knew we were going to need to furnish it. It’s been really difficult to find furniture that doesn’t have huge delivery delays these days and we don’t really want to spend a lot of money on this, so I’ve been looking for deals online.

I found what I thought would be a great patio couch and even though I knew it needed some TLC, I bought it!

The couch was huge…18 seat cushions, seven separate pieces of wood. But it was only $300 vs. the $3,000 I’d have spent if I bought it brand new.

The thing is though, I’ve never done a project like this before and I really didn’t know how to refinish or refurbish wood. So I called up a friend, Derek, who works with wood and he came over to inspect the couch–after I brought it home, of course (it only took 3 loads in my Suburban to get it all home).

Derek suggested that I power wash the entire couch and then stain the wood. He thought dying the cushions would be best, but since the previous owners had painted the cushions – I thought we should try that. (Yes, paint them. There’s some great outdoor fabric paint out there that works really well. Crazy, right?!)

When we really inspected the cushions, we found that the original owner painted them without removing them from the wood frame. That meant that there were odd stripes of the original color, where the cushions rested on one another. We also found that their dog had chewed a few seams. I contemplated sewing them myself but then realized I needed to find a seamstress to do that work for me.

Refurbishing was a lot of work, and I found myself rushing through it trying to get it done so I could take the couch to Show Low ASAP. At one point, when I was trying to get the painting done early in the morning before it got too hot outside, I stopped to reflect on why I was rushing.

This project didn’t have to get done on any timeline. It didn’t need to be rushed. Rather, it was okay to slow down on it and get it done whenever it got done–without the stress. I was still putting in long days, but I realized that since it was going to take me 3 trips to get the furniture all up north, I didn’t need to rush as much as I wanted to.

I don’t know that I found myself a new hobby, but I do know that I acquired a new skill that I can use again if necessary. And I exercised the patience of doing it myself, rather than paying more for immediate gratification.