Her Makeover Is Complete.....Finally!

This is how I found her

She was falling apart & full of hay & horse hair :{

Took the nasty cover off & this is what I had to deal with

Lots & lots of nails!

Notice my mangled thumb..ouch!

Still working on getting the nails out

Well I finally finished it. What you may ask? The little victorian bench that I picked up at a church barn sale a while back. This is how she looked when I bought her. Not in too bad shape but she was falling apart from the bottom. As a result no one wanted her :(......but I was happy to have her & she was half off too!! :) I think the fact that she was stuffed with grass (yup, you heard me right) scared a lot of people off. Not me. After taking her apart I also noticed what looked like horse hair!? Ewww! That was pretty gross. So I made sure to dispose of that nastiness quick,wondering how old that horse would be now?....There were a ton of staples in her so I don't think the dirty red fabric was original. Once I got the tons of staples out I found out my next surprise. There were a zillions of teeny, tiny nails in her. Most of them were rusty & had been in there forever. I'm sure these were original. Hours later (it was night time when I finished this step) and one mangled thumb (hello tetnus shot) I finally got most of them out. I just gave up on some of them & hammered them in flush. You won't see them anyway. Shhhh...my little secret. ;)

She has a new coat of Sea Green milk paint on!

Close up of the paint job

If you look carefully you can just make out "made in fra..."

Ready for some fluffiness!

Getting her fluffiness.....

All fluffed up :)

After giving her a good clean up & decided to try something different with her. I had read about Milk Paint from Miss Mustard Seed's blog & decided to purchase some. I choose the color sea green. It was easy to use, just like chalk paint except it was a little thinner & took more coats. Probably because I added too much water, it's not like I was going to actually measure or something.....geesh...what do you expect from me? So I just followed Tim Gunn's advice & painted multiple coats to "make it work". Next time I will try to use less water when mixing it up. Here she is all painted up. I really like how she turned out. This paint was much easier to "beat up" & give a weathered finish to. I even noticed on the inside of her were words stamped "Made In Fran...." my hubby thinks it's France but it's hard to read so I can't tell for sure. I then went about putting her back together. This is a first for me since I have recovered furniture before but not built it up from scratch. I think it turned out ok, probably not perfect but I'm happy with it.

Working on her outfit....

Close up of her stripes

Her makeover is complete!

She's hanging out with some of my bottles....

Close up of the top

I think she's pretty now.....

The next step was deciding what kind of outfit to give her. I had a lot of different ideas but of course I choose the most complicated one. I used a bunch of different fabrics that I had laying around & made a union jack flag. Not the traditional one, but my version. If you have been reading my ramblings you might remember my union jack table (which I'm still planning on selling) I definitely have a "thing" for the union jack design.

Originally I was going to put her in my bedroom but my dog, Bella has taken ownership of her. Bella is a stubborn dog & no matter how many times I shooed her off it she just hopped right back on. So now my little bench belongs to her. My hubby threw a pillow on it to keep Bella from destroying it.....hopefully I can make something else for her & eventually get the bench in my room...sigh...

My dog Bella likes her too :)