My realtor asked me to review a small cottage home nearby for staging. She only wanted the living room and dining room to be staged because the space is small and small spaces tend to confuse potential buyers.   Technically, the house feels like a modified bungalow – brick front, fireplace flanked by small windows and shiny glass chandelier in the dining room, and I wanted to be sure to incorporate some of these highlights in my staging plan.

So after reviewing the furniture at my furniture supplier and thinking about the space, I decided that slight shabby chic look would best in this space.  My furniture supplier has modern and contemporary pieces so shabby chic  meant that I would need to get more involved with purchasing the furinture, rather than renting. Which means that I had to purchase smartly.

So after working on the plan and determining what I had and what they had that I can use, I got busy on Craig’s list. I found some great items, a white wooden slightly distressed dining table and a cool swivel chair. Both were priced under $50 (score) and the swivel chair needed some work. Here is the before of the chair..

Swivel chair, without seat cushion

This is while I was working on it, so I had removed the cushion. I already have 2 round barrel chair slipcovers I purchased last year from Ikea that I thought could work well on this chair.  I even took the slipcover with me to see if it would fit. It almost fit on the chair but was just too tight. Fortunately, Mom is a great seamstress – she removed the seams in the appropriate places and pinned up the new fabric that we purchased to fill in the gaps.  She left me to actually sew it together, which I did, using my sewing machine. (Yes, I actually have one of those, handed down from an aunt). I was proud of the work that I did. It didn’t come out perfect, but that is beauty of shabby chic, it still works!

Anyway, here is the final product…both front and side views.

swivel chair after slipcover is sewn

swivel chair, side view after sewing

I will post the updated rooms in a few days to show you how the chair fit into the space. Stay tuned!

Tags: budget, dc furniture, dc home stager, DIY furniture, room decor, slipcovers, small house decorating, vacant home staging

This entry was posted on August 31, 2010 at 6:21 pm. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

Posted in decor accents, decorating, furniture, small space decorating by rrashfor | 2 Comments