Friday, February 10, 2006

Amy Maintains her Royal Title

My mother used to call me her Project Princess when I was a little girl. To be honest, I didn't like it. It always felt a bit condescending. Sadly, it fit. Wanna hear what's worse? It still fits. I still have fifteen projects up my sleeve and I never seem to finish any of them.

Case in point: I decided to redecorate my living room last summer. If you've been reading my blog for a while you've heard this story. Remember how all it needed done back in August was the picture shelves and the curtains and recovering the seats of my dining chairs? Guess what still needs to be done? Oh you are so good!

So I decided to have one of those "get my friends to buy something so I can get free stuff" parties. (which I hate, so I'm being a hypocrite having one, but I gues for the right product I'll bend my principles.) Since I'm having women in my house I figured it was time to at least recover the chairs and finish the curtains (which have been hanging for three months with only half of them having their cute contrasting edge treatment.) Since I scheduled the party two weeks ago, it's only right that I decided to tackle these projects today.

I bought a brand new staple gun last night and cut the fabric for the chairs yesterday, so I'm all set and ready to go. Brandishing the drill with confidence, I boldly remove the screws holding the seat to the chair. I decided to just throw the new fabric over the old because I'm basically lazy. I carefully center the seat on the fabric and place the staple gun for the first staple. Thwack! huh. only half in. I'll try again. Thwack! grrrrrr. same thing. Thwack! ARGHHHH!!! same thing. Thwack!!!!! I briefly contemplate how much damage I could do to the staple gun if I ran it over, but since I have the small van today, the staple gun is safe. Thwack! I reconsider my decision to never use swear words. Thwack!! Ok, where's the hammer?! At this point I give up on actually getting the staples in all the way and begin pounding them the rest of the way in with my husband's 24 oz framing hammer. Bit of over kill, but believe me, those staples deserved it!

So I got the first seat done and set it back on the chair (after it had been attatcked with a Mr. Clean Magic Eraser. My kids eat on these chairs, you remember.) It didn't fit. nope. not at all. No amount of pushing, finagling, shoving, or sitting would get that seat back where it belongs. I screwed down one side anyway.

On to the second seat, where I regain a bit of my sanity and cut the old fabric off so the seat will actually fit when I'm done. Thwack! Whack! thwack! whack! thwack! argh!!! Thwack! whack! ok. seat's done. I set it back on the chair, flip the whole thing over onto another chair and began screwing the seat back on. The screws won't go in. Joy. Somehow, I missed the original screw holes. How? I have no clue.

So that's why I'm here. I'm trying to decide if Murphy's been messing with my sewing machine today.

This, my friends, is why I never finish projects.

6 comments:

Carin said...

Amy can I just tell you I love you! you make me laugh not at you but at me cause I do te same stuff. Hugs to you good luck with the rest of your chairs.

April said...

Aw Amy - sounds frustrating. Hopefully in the end they'll look so fabulous that you won't mind the pain you went through to do this.

And I'm never going to attempt to re-cover a chair by myself. Ever. lol So sorry.

Anonymous said...

You crack me up!

Anonymous said...

Amy, this had me ROTFL!!! I can just picture you having fits with the stapler...LOL!!! I love your blog - I'm saving it in my "blogs I like to read" folder. It's official, you've made it big if it's in there! LOL!

Anonymous said...

Seems like my name is coming up quite often here recently. :)
I have several projects, too. Mine just usually don't get started, and I would never cover anything. If it isn't done with a needle and thread, I don't do it!

Kristi said...

Amy- I completely feel your pain. My Mom and recovered my Grandma's old dining room chairs when we moved in 2 years ago. I was thinking it was just going to be a quick little task. I was so wrong. I am very grateful that I decided to take my Mom's advice and put plastic on the chairs too b/c I am never going to redo these chairs again.