ballard look-a-likes

I love Ballard design but it is definitely not budget friendly for my family so when I first saw their Louis chairs I started to look on craigslist to see if I could find something similar. After months of searching I eventually found someone local who was selling similar chairs to the ones I wanted. I was able to negotiate the seller's price down so much that I was even able to get two of them!

So here is the before shot of the chairs.

They had a cream finish that was really dirty and worn and the fabric was not the look I was going for :) but I knew they had potential. Here are the afters!

I decided to do the upholstery myself so I went to Joanne and bought a staple gun and found some nail head trim to finish the edges. The seat was the easiest to reupholster. All I had to do was unscrew the cushion and recover but the backs of the chairs were definitely a little trickier. I did this project a year ago and since we now use the chairs everyday in our new home as office chairs I will probably eventually end up paying an upholster to redo the backs. I love these chairs but what I love even more is that this whole project including material and the purchase of the chairs was under $100.00. The seller was actually selling 8 of them and looking back I could kick myself for not getting more!

The next project was to knock off Ballard's firenze curtains which again were definitely not in my price range. A few months ago while searching for pillow fabric I came across a pattern that I thought looked pretty close to the Ballard curtains and it was only $6.98 a yard. I quickly ordered enough to make curtain panels for my office.

In order to know how much fabric to order I measured the height that I wanted the curtains to hang and converted the feet to yards. The width of most fabric is 54 inches which should cover one window but also measure this before ordering because you might need to double up to achieve the look you want. I wanted 3 panels for the windows so I ended up getting 7.5 yards total since I needed 2.5 per panel. Then I simply hemmed all 4 sides and attached them to the curtain rod using drapery clips.

I saved a lot by doing the curtains myself and since they were going in my office I was okay with them not being perfect. I love the Moroccan feel and the fact that all 3 curtain panels were less then one panel at Ballard!

I hope you all enjoyed these projects and please feel free to email me if you have any questions! Have a great weekend!