T-Shirt Chairs

A friend of ours gave us a set of chairs a year or two ago and I finally got tired of looking that the worn tops.. 

So I did something about it. 

The first one I did lasted only a few weeks. I took an old T-shirt and slipped it over the cushion and stapled it on. It had a few issues from the start. The shirt had a TINY hole.. and it soon grew and grew! Before long it looked worse then before. 

First I took Papa's little drill and removed the cushions from the chair.. 4 easy screws. No problems! 

This time I decided to use the shirt doubled up and make sure there were no holes!! 

I lay the shirt back side down on the table, put the cushion in the middle right side down. Then I  pulled the two layers over the back of the cushion and stapled it to the back of the cushion. You have to make sure you have both layers and that you do it so that it is tight all the way around. These were 100% cotton so they stretched pretty good. I did not have any trouble getting the whole front covered. Fold the corners over in a neat tuck before you staple them. Gives it a nice corner. 

Tools of the trade :) I stapled it like crazy!! 

When your all done stapling just screw them back on to the chairs!! 

I also ran my hands over the staples to get any that were at all loose out.. I don't want the baby finding them. The only thing I will do differently next time is mark the cushion so I know which way is the front of the chair. It would make them easier to put them back on. 

Finished!! I'm leaving the backs alone.. they are in good shape yet and I'm not that sure I can do BOTH sides nicely. I did 3 different colors on purpose :) and I'm glad I did!! I love them!! They brighten up the kitchen and the kids love to rotate chairs. 

Oh and by the way I just used old shirts of mine. The green ones ribbing on the neck and arms was worn out but the shirt was fine. The blue one had a picture on the front but it was SO worn it didn't look like a picture anymore. And the red one had a couple of burn holes in the front and was a bit too small on me. 

The whole project took me about 30 minutes :) a drill, industrial stapler and 3 shirts :) Totally worth it. It's been about 10 days now and they still look great. I can't see these wearing out any time soon! 

Well I Promised Pictures :)

Of the 'half' addition and here they are :) Sorry it took me so long.

The back :) That plastic covered opening will be one of the Master Bedroom windows :) The top 3 layers of bales in this picture will have to be redone when we plaster.. they are mostly a wind break right now and bale sizing. We will run rebar through them after we straighten them to keep them in place. Because the poles hold up the roof the bales just fill in the walls not support the roof. The space between the trailer an the bales will be the hallway and the back door will be right there.

Front and Side.. There are two window frames missing from the front, one on the front wall and one closer to the window on the side. Both are kitchen/dining area windows. We still need to find windows we like for the large open area and then make the frames to size. Right now those 4 layers of bales in front have been removed and our beef is hanging there :) These pictures were taken before our big snow.. we now have over a foot of snow. The windows here from front to back are pantry, bedroom, bathroom, master bedroom. 

Work in progress :) I'm standing in the 'to be' dining room to take this picture. If you look WAY To the back you'll see a square of white just about in the middle of the picture.. that is an unfinished wall. The two sections, on that same wall, closer to the camera are finished. These are the weird 2/3 bales I've been making and annoyed with. I keep making them too small and have to re do. Thankfully most of them have found other places to live. On the left of the picture right above that blue thing you can also see an empty spot in the wall, it's bales are there on the floor waiting for Papa to place them. Those bales on the other side of the saw horses are extras.. possibly enough to do the back middle wall or the front middle wall next summer/fall. We want to move them as we will likely be making our own floor trusses this winter on this floor space. I believe we need something like 70? For the upstairs floor and the middle floor to connect the 'half' addition to the little addition where the wood stove lives. As we cannot plaster until spring that is our next large house project.

I just like this picture :) Shows how the wall will sort of look once it's plastered. Yes we are using insulation for stuffing on this side and in the ceiling and eventually floor. Looks cozy doesn't it?

The front end. The ceiling stops there because that's where it goes to a vaulted ceiling. There will be a wall there to block the large living area off from the bedrooms/pantry/bathrooms. The large open space on the right, between the poles, will be where the kitchen (straight ahead) will meet the living room/school room. About a third of the house (the front) will be open in a area roughly 37 feet long by 20 deep.

That pile of stuff there has been one of our fall projects. We've cleaned out our back little shed (stuff from when we first moved here 7 years ago. Some of it had been packed in Wa. 10 years ago!) and moved all the totes of books and boxes of jars to it. The totes of kids clothes also found new storage space in the kids bus, leaving them with tons of room to play. What you see there is what is left. Quite a bit of it is building 'stuff'!! What's not will have to find a new home before we move in!!  

A closer look at the ceiling. We're not 100% on what we will put up there but it's about 80% that it will be 4x4 sheets like our present addition. Those sheets were a PAIN to put in and we are hoping this strapping will make it much easier. Wiring on this part of the ceiling is also pretty much finished. Vents being the one exception. 

Hmm the doors in the hallway are not super noticeable in the pictures. There are 3 of them, master, bathroom, bedroom. The pantry will open to the dining area. We had trouble with the small addition and the doors getting squished, for lack of a technical term, by the bales. So this time Papa used 6x6's on one side of the door and a pole on the other.. hopefully they will keep the doors straight and not prone to trouble. 

And that's it. Some random facts. The 'half' addition is 14 feet by 68 feet. There will be two bathrooms, one off the hallway and one off the master bedroom. The kitchen window in the front will have my sinks under it. The walls in the hallway will be straw bale but all other inside walls will be stick frame. We don't plan on using any gyp-rock. EVER. The floor trusses we will be building will be 22 or 23 feet long. They will go from the 'half' addition to the poles on the other side of the trailer after the trailer is taken out and connect the two additions to become a house.