Before
The day we first visited our house with the real estate agent I told Jojo there needed to be a giant booth in the breakfast area bay window. Busy with other things and unable to decide on exactly what I wanted we never started that project. So it remained a quirky spot without a cozy feel.
A couple weeks before our wedding I stumbled across a sale on breakfast booths for $69.99 each! After measuring and seeing that 2 pushed together fit the bay window nearly perfect (only a 1" gap on each side from the wall), I decided it would be way easier (and cheaper) to just buy them and get busy painting. Plus it left a cubby size opening for a coffee station making more room on my kitchen counters! The booth benches came in but the tables didn't so for a few days we just had this big empty church looking gathering space.
The tables and shelves finally arrived a couple days before the wedding which meant we had plenty of free labor from our out of town house guests! They assembled the tables and hung up some floating shelves to balance the space. Since we had guests in town and wedding craziness we put the booth and table to use right away and waited to paint once things calmed down.
Taking notes on specifics for their "honey-do" list while I finished pre-wedding details the next day.
Our visiting workforce.
Corner coffee station.
Work supervision from my father-in-law.
Next up was painting the booth and the awesome surprise storage compartments under each seat! I used 2 coats of primer and 2 coats of exterior floor paint (so it would hold up better with people sliding in and out with possible buttons) with a semi-satin sheen (to make cleaning off liquids easier) in a color selected by my favorite local artist Tina Marie. Of course I was trying to do this right in the middle of spring rainy season so our garage became paint fumes central.
Next thing on the agenda was to update the lighting fixture. After hunting high and low I finally found the new lighting fixture of my dreams for a great price!
Once I was no longer distracted by the outdated lighting I noticed the glaring gap under the shelves. We went through a ton of inspirational phrases, quotes, prayers, and scriptures but couldn't get past going with a classic Louisiana phrase as the best reminder to stay in the moment everyday; 'lassez les bon temps rouler' or 'let the good times roll'. So I got busy crafting to make something that fit the space just right.
Something was still off. It didn't have the cozy hang out feel I wanted. I had come to terms with having to sew cushions myself since it was an odd size. With my never ending mess of anything I touch I knew it was a necessity to use outdoor fabric for easy cleanup. Y'all that fabric is expensive! Being the cheap person I am I decided to wait until fall when maybe if I was lucky I could catch a sale on the outdoor fabric.
Saturday the Mr. & I went on a lovely little adventure roaming the architectural salvage shops in New Orleans to feed my "need for hoarding junk", boutique shops on Magazine, and of course Puglias the local outdoorsmen store (because the 2nd amendment Louisiana sales tax weekend demands it and some lame reasoning hubs was spewing about not having a certain kind of gun that was hard to find but this store had).
Hubs educating me on the gun selection.
We really had a nice day roaming around finished off with pizza and beer while watching football. I asked if we could pop into At Home since it was on the route back to our house. I'm so glad I did!!! My Mr. spotted their sale on all outdoor cushions which just so happened to be VERY close to the size I needed for the booth. Then the hunt was on to find the pieces I needed in the pattern hubs found that of course I loved! 2 hours of monkey climbing on the racks, ninja balancing tricks to reach the stack at the back of the upper shelf (Kim you would have been proud of me), negativity from every man there with things like "sweetie just give it up they don't have it", hubs giving up and doing 'quality control testing' by resting on the cushions, pep talks and team work with the other raging lunitics among me searching for their perfect patterns and sizes, I emerged victorious! I had scored cushions for our breakfast booth with ONE cushion that needed to be cut in half then sewn to fit in the corner. To the brave people who ran the cushion sale marathon along side us, it was a bonding experience I will cherish! Go team!
I could not be happier with how the breakfast booth looks now! All that's left is some sort of bench to go across the front and of obviously death to the popcorn ceilings. Keep your eyes open and send over suggestions!
XOXO
A