Apartment Overhaul, part I

I don't know if you've ever had a moment like this, but I looked around our apartment about a week ago and suddenly hated everything. Just wanted to throw everything out and start all over... which of course will never happen for various economic and ecological reasons. But at least some changes were in order. So:

1. good-bye to the horrid old plastic/aluminum folding chairs we were using as dining chairs (thanks, Freecycle!), and hello to these new lovelies in black from IKEA.

2. Similarly, good-bye to the giant unwieldy pink high chair of doom, and hello this small vintag-y one, also from IKEA.

3. Also, good-bye to this fairly useless and apparently unwelcoming plastic table (I say unwelcoming because Lara never ever wanted to use it for anything!), and hello to a more adult IKEA model which I have since modified in a pretty cool way. More on that in a later post.

At the same time that I ran wild in the IKEA warehouse, I also decided to try to reupholster a few things. I found a bunch of cool fabric in the IKEA As-Is department, and have transformed Lara's outgrown ride-on toy. It was one of those faux-velvet plush snail ones (see picture inset), and when I cut off the fabric, I discovered that it had pretty cool-looking guts:



With some inspiration from this ride-on toy, I made this:



Looks pretty cool if I do say so myself. This was a pretty finicky project, I have to admit - because of the way that the seat and rocking bottom are attached, I basically had to hand-sew the fabric directly onto the thing.

More redoings coming up!