Hi everyone, I have a special guest today!  I love a great DIY project, especially this one that combines power tools, beautiful fabric, and nailhead trim to create a custom X leg bench (or ottoman) for extra seating or staging around the house – X base furniture is a favorite of mine, offering a stylish alternative to straight legs, and the smaller upholstered benches look especially fantastic at the end of beds.  Today, I invited Jennifer of The Chronicles of Home to share her technique on how to make your own X leg bench.

“Hello CG readers, I’m so thrilled to be guest posting for Kate today, on one of my all-time favorite blogs, while she’s on vacation!  And perhaps equally excited to be sharing a tutorial with you on how to make this cute X-leg upholstered bench.

Whether you call them X leg stools, X leg ottomans, or X leg benches, they’re extremely versatile pieces that can be used for extra seating anywhere you need it because they’re so lightweight and moveable.  They can be stored away against a wall or under a table when not in use, grouped around a coffee table, used as a coffee table alone or in a pair, or grouped at the bottom of a bed.  The possibilities are practically endless!

I’ve had my eye on a pair of them for my living room for awhile now but decided I wanted to try my hand at making them myself instead of buying them, both to cut costs and because I love making furniture and seeing how things go together.  My two primary inspiration pieces were these:

I liked the chunky legs on the bench at left and the streamlined, nailhead-studded top of the one on the right.  I tend to be a visual thinker so took an old piece of cardboard and drew a sketch of the finished piece.  I’d recommend doing the same so you have a reference to be sure your angles are cut correctly.

 

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It’s the hottest month of the year and my lawn is brown and yucky!  Or at least it was until I decided to do something about it.  This is that patch of flat lawn in our backyard where the kids kick the soccer ball, play badminton, capture insects, and play with their friends, but it was getting prickly under their feet and becoming such an eyesore.  Our front lawn stays nice and healthy, but this one in the rear yard was looking really sad.

I went down to my local True Value to see what I could find in their garden department.  The store manager recommended ammonium sulfate for a quick fix to green it up again, applied in the evening after the hot sun fades and given a healthy watering to dissolve the granules.  Knowing little about lawn fertilizers, I took his advice.

I was surprised how quickly the lawn turned lush and green again, I had it in the back of my mind somehow that these things take a lot of time, but the ammonium sulfate was a great quick fix – here’s the result two weeks later.

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Wanna know something?  When it comes to indoor plants, I’ve never met an orchid I couldn’t kill.  It isn’t for lack of wanting to keep an orchid alive or an affection for the species.  In fact, I like to buy orchids from time to time and display them in my home, but truth is, I lack both the talent and patience to successfully care for them.  Yes that’s me, I fully admit I am an Orchid Killer.  I should start a new series called “things I suck at” because let me tell you “orchid grower” is super high on that list.

As we all know, orchids are so pretty displayed indoors – some designers label the mass produced Phalaenopsis as “ubiquitous” but I think all varieties are beautiful.  We acquired a few orchids earlier this year, and as with the two dozen other orchids I’ve ever purchased and owned over the course of my life, they look pretty for two weeks, the blooms fall off, and then the stem turns wooden and petrified, death results, and that’s the end of the story.

So here’s how things changed in our house and someone (not me) became The Orchid Whisperer.

Matt was on a real estate inspection a few months ago, and the woman who lived in the home he was appraising had an impressive collection of orchids that had rebloomed year after year.  Knowing his wife to be a notorious Orchid Killer, he inquired how he might take it upon himself to learn a few tricks – perhaps spare the lives of a few of the species – and asked this knowledgeable woman what really was the secret formula for orchids that rebloom?  And she spilled it.

So we he tested out these key pieces of advice over the course of the last few months, and hey guess what, they worked.

Exhibit A:  I brought home a moth Phalaenopsis orchid pictured here at my kids’ public school auction (mixed with curly willow) way back in early March and after the blooms fell off, I pretty much ignored it.  It sat there dormant, but Matt followed all the tips suggested, and look at it now, five months later.

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It’s a habit that can never be broken, and that is my constant need to visit to thrift stores in search of cool pieces.  Four out of five times I walk away empty handed after seeing a lot of junk, but last week was a gold mine at my local St. Vincent de Paul.  On the floor were no less than five pieces I would have loved to buy, including a beautiful French buffet plus a few fab armoires.  At one point, I heard two college girls discussing a six drawer dresser and they said “We can prime and paint this, I saw it on a blog” which made me feel proud of us DIY bloggers!  I departed with my favorite find, a fab little mid century style chest, and since it was 50% off day, it cost me $20 bucks.

I thought this little chest of drawers would be absolute perfection for my hub’s office – for storing extra office supplies.  Matt has his own small real estate office and all of the furniture is dark wood, but he’s a dude and he likes it that way so I don’t mess with that preference.  But I couldn’t pass up this perfectly sized piece that screamed “make me wonderful” so I brought it home and gave it a facelift.

He used to give me the hand pinching the top of the nose plus creased forehead combo when I brought beat up stuff home years ago – but no more.  I snuck this revamped piece into his office while he was out on an inspection and then got an email three hours later when he returned that read “LOVE it.”   Mission totally accomplished.

I’m a big big fan of the wood + white combo (hello, these tables and these shelves) so again I’m up to my old tricks.  I was inspired by this mod Austin Dresser by DucDuc and all the wood/white combinations – check out the reverse too!  The real wood drawers on this particular piece were just too amazing to cover up, but the laminate faux wood grain top?  Um, no.  Goodbye and good riddance.

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