Ta-daaa! The first step of our family room makeover is done! And it “only” took me two weeks of getting in 15 minutes of pinning in here, and 10 minutes of sewing in there… Oh well, that’s how sewing projects happen in this house. V e r y    s l o w l y .

This is actually not the first time I’ve made a slipcover for this couch. I will not share the pictures of the old cover, because I find them embarrassing… What was I thinking when I chose that pattern? Ugh. Anyway, I have learned from experience, and this time went much smoother. Much less argggg on the way and much more being happy with the result.

Upholstery projects can be quite intimidating, but a slipcover is a good place to start, and I have some tips for you from my (sometimes bitter) experience.

Nowadays everybody has an work island in their kitchen, or if you’re a carefree bachelor – a bar. With these pieces comes a great responsibility: bar stools. If you’re anything like me, by the time you’ve got to picking out bar stools you’re at the stage where your budget has run out and you’re looking for the cheapest option available. For me that means IKEA. Unfortunately, the simple stools are boring, and not easy on my aching tail bone either. So if IKEA it is, IKEA hack is coming up (in fact, even the fabric I used was from IKEA)!

We’ve had these bar stools for a while, and I’ve already posted their upholstered pictures when I posted about my home makeover. However, they’re so easy, cheap and fast to make – I decided that I must share.

On these last couple of days I turned my attention to our kitchen. We have a convenient work island in the middle of the kitchen, which naturally turned into a junk pile. We decided, as a family, that junk was not the best use for that surface, and that it could be much nicer and cleaner. We also had these IKEA bar stools, and since I usually sit on them and they hurt my back, I decided that some padding would be nice.

To save time and money, I stopped over at IKEA and picked up some fabric and other home accessories and set out to get all the work done in a couple of hours. Well, not surprisingly, it took a little longer than that (but not much). While I was there, I decided to tackle the junk pile on our bedroom dresser as well, and got some candles and a lucky bamboo, which I hope will help keep the junk away in our entire home (and I like the way it looks and that it doesn’t need to be watered very often). It’s not particularly inspiring, just clean and neat, so I’ll spare you the pictures.

This is our kitchen before:

And here is what it looks like now: