Courtyard Fountain...

My husband felt our newly landscaped courtyard needed a water feature.
I felt we already had a water feature...a garden hose.
I admit I wasn't crazy about the idea at first (so many are cheesy looking) especially when he told me he wanted to place it in the same sunny spot as my 2 precious tomato plants! But he scored this one for only $50 on Craigslist and we compromised on a shady area away from the sunny flower spots, so I'm happy with it now. Its modest size doesn't overwhelm the space and it drowns out some of the noise from the neighbors' air conditioner by adding a nice tranquil sound. Turns out, this exact same fountain retails in our local garden center for $350!

 What I learned from this project:
1. We tweaked the fountain by adding some large river rocks to the basin part because...
2. There's a fine line between a tranquil water sound and a noise that reminds you of someone peeing.

Now you see it, now you don't...

When we bought our house we made a priority of turning the wasteland that was our tiny front courtyard into a space we could enjoy in nice weather. We hired a landscaper to grade the space and install the patio but we did the rest ourselves - stone path, landscaping, drip irrigation and low voltage lighting. And when I say "ourselves", I mean "my husband" (while I supervised and drank ice tea).

At last, I had the courtyard I had always wanted! I already had the all weather wicker chairs but we lacked a table. But wait, wouldn't it be so cool to have a firepit there for those cooler nights? Sure, but our postage stamp sized courtyard didn't have enough space for both.

The answer came in doubling up. The gas firepit was a purchase from Target.com and resting on top of it is a table top courtesy of Craigslist.  My husband found a round metal cocktail table and just unscrewed the top from its base. Then he turned around and posted the unneeded base on CL - and sold it for the same price that he paid for the entire table! We just lift the table top off when we want to fire up the pit.






                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                               What I learned from this project:
1. You don't need an elaborate stone built-in firepit. This inexpensive one delivers a lot of heat!
2. I was concerned that an 8' x 8' patio would be too small - I was wrong. It's become the cozy "cocktail hour" locale.
3. There isn't much that beats that toasted marshmallow smell on a cool evening.

Take that, birds...

We had a decent sized back deck that extended the length of the house, but it was a little underutilized. I wanted a seating area that was separate from the dining area. We found a great conversation set (that's what they call them even if you are just talking to yourself) at Target.com that fit our small space and was WAY cheaper than similar looking sets at other retailers. Soon after we set it up my husband realized the seat cushions were prey to falling leaves and every bird with a digestion problem that flew over unless we added some protective cover. The answer was one of those cantilevered umbrellas.
The price for a new one varied widely from $200 to an astonishing $6000! But, for an item that YOU KNOW is going to get pooped on by a bunch of birds...the $85 craigslist find suited us just fine.

What I learned from this project:
1. Having the umbrella over the seating area really defines the space, in addition to protecting the cushions. It's become one of my favorite places to relax. 
2. Once again, my husband had a great idea and made it happen.

Days and Nights of the Round Table...

When I sold my house, my rickety redwood patio table went straight to the dumpster instead of the moving truck. But now we had a large deck and no table.
We settled on looking for a round glass table that could seat 4-6 and started searching on CL for patio furniture in November (go figure).

We found a listing on CL for a patio set that someone wanted out of their storage unit, stat! Incredibly, they were only asking $50 for the dining table, a smaller side table and 4 cushioned chairs. Everything was in great condition, but the table had an attached lazy-susan in the middle, which I didn't really care for. And, we had no use for the 4 chairs which were bulky and looked like they came off the bridge of the USS Enterprise. Besides, I had already purchased 6 nice, trim chairs earlier in the summer just after the 4th of July when they were marked down 50%.  We loaded everything up and figured we would make it all work somehow.

Table after we removed the center lazy susan

Well, we paired the 4 unwanted chairs with my husband's old square glass patio table and sold that set at a garage sale for $50, so our table was basically free. We were able to remove the lazy-susan, which now left the white frosted glass top to be dealt with.
My first attempt of spray painting the underside of the table with black outdoor furniture paint didn't turn out well, so next I painted the top of the table with an outdoor rated hammered metal textured paint by Rustoleum. This was some pretty crazy paint and a little tricky to work with (save some brain cells and try not to breathe while painting with this!) but it gave me an interesting matte textured look once it was completed.

What I learned from this project:

1. There are a number of interesting paints with different textures that I had no idea existed. Go to the hardware store and check out what's out there!
2. Shop off season: we likely got a great deal on this table since it was November and not a lot of people were in the market for a patio set close to Thanksgiving.

Irons and Woods...

I already owned a coffee table but it proved to be too small for our new living room so we started shopping around for a replacement. While shopping in a home store one Saturday, dreaming of just pulling up stakes and living on their second floor, we saw a coffee table and matching étagère with a metal base and wood plank top that was perfect. Perfect, except for the price. Each piece was $700 and even at that price the bookshelf was still too small for our living room.

One day my husband found a listing on Craigslist by someone who was selling some reclaimed white cedar planks. They were weathered and dirty, but in sound condition. We bought five 10 foot planks that were almost 2" thick and about 9" wide for a total of $85. Then he made detailed drawings of the two pieces that we saw in the home store and took them to a welder his brother had used previously. The welder charged us $600 total to fabricate a 4' x 2.5' iron table base and a 7' tall bookshelf frame. He did an awesome job!

   Once the frames were completed, my husband         trimmed and sanded the boards so that the planks  would fit snugly. He polyurethaned the boards with
   a matte finish which really warmed up the wood and brought out the grain. Since the frames were raw iron, I spray painted them matte black to give them a more finished look. So, for half the price of the furniture store items we were able to get two custom pieces that exactly fit our living room.

  

Now that our new coffee table was in place, I posted my old coffee table on Craigslist and sold it for $75.

P.S. We also found the multi-colored area rug that's under the table on Craigslist for $50.

What I learned from this project:

1. There are craftsmen out there to help you realize your projects if you can't do everything yourself.

2. When to just step back and let my husband do his thing - he managed this project all the way.

3. Now he wants to learn how to weld.

Lighting the way...

Do NOT buy lamps that
look like this, please.

Sometimes you get lucky enough that your Craigslist find is just perfect the way it is - no alterations needed. That's what happened with a pair of lamps I found for my guestroom. There are lamps aplenty posted on CL, but many are ginger jar 80's bad.

Be patient and don't expect to find the perfect item right away. On a Sunday during my search,  I traded emails back and forth with the seller. He was selling an entire living room of furniture for a house he had staged.  I was happy to buy a pair of lamps at his asking price of $25 each. They had all the characteristics I was looking for - tall, contemporary style, and white drum shades.
The espresso color worked, so I didn't even need to paint the bases. What? I don't get to paint?? Crap.
So, what did I do? I set them on their nightstands, plugged them in...and I was done. Sometimes it's as easy as that.

What I learned from this project:

1. Nothing.

2. Ok, actually, I learned I get a little disappointed when I don't need to alter a Craigslist find.

3. BUT WAIT...

After a year or so, I got the itch to give the room a little color jolt. I replaced the comforter and hung a photograph of some tulips over the bed and then thought it would be fun to repeat a bit of the coral-y pink from the photo in the lamp bases...so, I painted them (with a free sample courtesy of Valspar from Lowe's, btw). I also repainted a small dresser that was in another room and use it as a bedside table, but I'll save that for another post.

What I learned from this project:
1. The pink color paint required 3 coats to give me a nice smooth finish, since paints with red tones usually have less pigment and provide less coverage.
2. This pop of color really livens up the room.
3. I needed to alter my Craigslist find after all!



Deluxe redux...

Just outside our bedroom was an odd little alcove at the top of the stairs. It was about 3 feet wide and we didn't know what to do with that space at first. Put a plant there? A chair that no one would ever use? A kegerator?

Mid Century Mad Men

When my girlfriend saw it she suggested we use the space for our CD player. It would be out of sight, but still accessible. I loved that idea and started casting about for something to set it on. I didn't have to look far, since I already had a Craigslist acquisition that wasn't really working in a different room of the house. Mid century modern is a hot look right now,  but there are a lot of pieces on CL that can be had for a song. Earlier, I had been looking for a couple of small storage pieces for my dining room and found a CL listing for two small mid century dressers that were going for $10 each, an incredible deal! 

When we went to pick them up, the guy was so happy to be rid of them he actually gave them to us for free! But, in reality, they never truly fit the space in the dining room. We sold the taller piece after a couple of months, but the shorter dresser was a perfect fit for the space outside the bedroom. Also, its 3 drawers were ideal for storing CD's. The wood finish was a little beat up, but with some high gloss apple green paint slathered on it - this mid century dresser now sported a 21st century look.

What I learned from this project...
1. It pays to look around your house and see if something you already have will work better somewhere else.
2. Pay no attention to the guy at the paint counter when he says "We don't get many people who pick this color."

Even a classic needs a little help sometimes...

I planned to furnish the guestroom of our new house with a bed my husband already had and some bedside tables that I had. But there was a long empty wall that needed something. I liked the idea of a long desk, but not so deep that it would crowd the foot of the bed.  I decided to look for a sleek style to contrast with the more traditional iron bed.

I've always loved the iconic Parsons table. My parents had a white Parsons coffee table in their living room and I remember thinking they were so daring and hip when they bought it in the early 70's. And with that bunch of acrylic grapes, that were all the rage then, set at a jaunty angle atop the table...well, there was no doubt of their total decorating groovy-ness.

groovy grapes

I started searching CL for desks and tables but I was also hunting for Parsons, parson, parson's... you never know how people will post their treasures. I found a console table with the perfect dimensions at a nearby estate sale that was an odd faux tortoise shell laminate in fair condition (it had a bit of water damage on top), but it was 4" shorter than desk height. I debated about it because of the height, but in the end I felt it was workable and I talked them down from $50 to $40 (because of the water damage).

My husband wondered how it would work as a desk since it was too short. "Honey," I said, "that's where YOU come in." I am lucky enough to be married to a very handy and clever guy, so I gave him the challenge to make the table taller. He rose to the challenge and added the extra 4" to the bottom of the legs with stock pieces from Home Depot. After he was finished I couldn't even tell where the old legs ended and the extension pieces started. I sanded the table (which also smoothed out the rippling from the water damage), primed it, then painted it with bright white semi gloss latex paint, just like mom and dad's.

With a few accessories scored at a discount store, some other items I already had, and a repainted and recovered chair that I had previously rescued from the alley, I was all set with my new guest room desk.

What I learned from this project:

1. Mixing styles of furniture can look really cool as long as you stick to just a couple of styles.
2. My parents had a pretty groovy house when I was a kid.
3. I'll never underestimate my husband's talent for turning my less than perfect purchases into exactly what I need.

Side bored...

You know how sometimes you start a small project and then it snowballs into something much larger? You change a light bulb and before you know it, you're buying sheetrock and picking out tile. Well...I needed an office space, so the nook off the kitchen was about to be repurposed. But before we could do that, we had to first find a replacement for the large buffet that was in that room (it wouldn't fit anywhere else in the house, but it provided much needed storage space).  We did have room in our dining room for a smaller sideboard, so the hunt was on to find one on Craigslist.

After a week or two of scouring CL for buffets, credenzas and sideboards (and every crazy spelling variation) we found a good possibility in a blonde modern-ish sideboard in perfect condition. The seller was asking $150, I offered $75, he countered with $100, so I bought it and we loaded it into the Subaru. This piece was STUPID HEAVY, let me tell you, so I was pretty glad it didn't need to be lugged up any stairs once we got it home.

Here's a "before" pic with 2 of the doors already removed.

The blonde color didn't work for us and the "wood" was actually a laminate so it was going to need a makeover. My inspiration was a piece I had seen in a  furniture catalogue that was a combination of black wood and copper (below).

Since the laminate doors couldn't be stained, we had new doors made by a guy who worked at our local woodworker's store. It was a little more than we wanted to spend ($100 for all 4 doors) but they would be solid wood, he would finish the edges, and he would drill the large round interior holes to match the existing hinges already attached to the sideboard frame. 

We painted the body of the buffet black, then my husband sealed it with an oil based polyurethane (after my initial mistake of using water based poly). The oil based gave us a nicer, smooth finish. Then we stained the new doors, poly'd them, hung them back up, bought 4 pulls at Home Depot and voila! A new buffet for our dining room.

The project was fairly time consuming between all the sanding, priming, painting, and trying to keep the cats from jumping on it while it was still drying, but for about $250 we got a great looking, one of a kind piece that would have cost us hundreds more if we had bought it new (the cost of my inspiration piece was $1499). Oh, and my old buffet...sold it in 2 days for $300 on Craigslist.

What I learned from this project:
1. Water based polyurethane dries too fast for some projects, so use oil based.
2. My husband did a great job fixing the mistakes I made.
3. Our cats love to jump on every piece of furniture we own.

Asian cabin chunky deco...

We had a sofa.
But we didn't have any end tables.
And we didn't have any lamps for the end tables...that we still didn't have.
My husband got to work on CL and found some perfectly serviceable matching end tables, but they were a country-ish-knotty-pine-like style.
Um... but, they were only $20 each.
Suddenly, knotty pine didn't seem so bad. A little black paint and a couple of ceramic replacement drawer pulls from Anthropologie, and we had ourselves some end tables. Nothing fancy, but the size and height are perfect and the black plays nicely with other details in our living room.

     The lamps were a Craigslist find, as well, at only $20 each. They had an interesting kind of Asian deco look, so why wouldn't I want to mix it all up to create "Asian cabin chunky deco". The battered lamp shades reeked of cigarette smoke so badly I had to find a dumpster to trash them on my way home from purchasing them! I painted the lamp bases with some burnt orange paint (which I already had) to cover the original bronze-y finish and bought new shades at LampsPlus, which cost twice as much as the lamps did!

What I learned from this project:

1.  Good quality lamp shades are not cheap, but look great so are worth the price.

2. I had to seal the table tops with polyurethane later since stuff kept sticking to the table tops and pulling up the paint.

3. Our cats think the tables are their personal diving boards.

An obsession with chairs...

  I had two problems.

My first problem was that I often rescued perfectly good furniture that was discarded and left by the dumpster behind my house.

I had set up a little office area in my basement and needed a chair for that spot. The very next day there was a single funky kitchen chair abandoned next to the dumpster. I dragged it home which started a 3 month period where I ended up salvaging a total of 9 different chairs left by my dumpster fairy godmother. I was determined to give these orphans a good home and spruce them up in the process.

The other problem I had was that I collected paint. Friends who didn't know what to do with their leftover quarts and gallons gave them to me, knowing I would put them to good use. Here's a before and after shot of that first chair, which only needed a little wood glue to firm it up, and, of course, some paint. I broke out  multiple  sherbet colored paints I had in my supply cabinet and had a little fun painting. A week later I recovered the seat with some new raspberry colored cotton fabric. 

The next rescued chair would go in a guest room I was in the process of decorating. I envisioned something whimsical along the lines of MacKenzie-Childs. This lone discarded dining chair had heavy lines and was ugly, but was nevertheless solid and had some details that lent itself to multiple painting options. The seat (which was worn and unpleasantly beige) required less than a yard of an inexpensive cotton print to jazz up the cushion. I painted the frame black, fuschia and a couple shades of green to match the same color palette of an armoire I already painted for that room. The cane backrest got a black and cream checkerboard treatment. Since I just used paint I already had, and the chair was free, the entire project cost me a total of about $2.50 for the seat fabric. The chair became the perfect place for a guest to lay her clothes or sit to put on some shoes.

And then the next orphaned Oliver about to be twisted...two of these crazy little chairs were left by the dumpster, but only one of them was worth salvaging. It would also go in that same guestroom, so again, I used the same colors of black, fuchsia, cream and green. But first, I busted out my electric sander and gave the chair a serious face peel. Now smooth as a baby's bottom (assuming the baby was made of wood) I had some fun using the spindle details to suggest where I should apply some of the colors. I also had a fleur-de-lis stencil lying around so I applied that to the seat. I really love this chair's goofy profile. It looks like a musical instrument waiting to be plucked.

                                  

Someone  else threw out 2 matching chairs, one with arms and one without. Even though they were dreary, their lines were classic. First, I painted the frames that yummy deep blue you always see in photos of Greece, then I covered the seat with a vibrant striped fabric. The armless chair found a spot at my computer desk and the one with arms sat close by as extra seating in my former living room.  

                                                         

When I moved to my new house I repainted the armless chair turquoise, recovered it with a chocolate and white cotton fabric (less than $3) and re-purposed it for the guest room desk. 


And finally, someone threw out some rickety ladderback chairs. These were definitely not sturdy enough to use as actual seating - leaning back just a little would send the occupant on the path of a serious concussion. BUT, they still had value. I hosed off the grime, painted one brick red and used it on my front porch with a pot of geraniums perched on it. Another one was repainted and repurposed for a friend's bathroom as a place to set extra towels.



Later, when I moved, I repainted the entire chair with an apple green semigloss. Now it rests against a wall (so I can't fall back) and provides a pop of color in our bedroom.

What I learned from this project:

1. If a chair is in sound condition, it's worth keeping.
2. People are too quick to discard usable items. 
3. If I were a farmer, I would enjoy putting lipstick on a pig.

A bedroom with no closet...

A friend was coming for a visit and my basement guest room didn't have a usable closet so I needed to scramble to find a good alternative. Any armoire would have to be fairly small and short to work in the small, low ceiling room. Craigslist came through for me with a plain, little 50's closet/drawer combo. The owners wanted $75 but they accepted my offer of $50.

This piece was just SCREAMING for a personality. I was itching to use some stencils I had and didn't want to just paint this in a conventional way. I admired MacKenzie-Childs color combos and whimsical designs so I used that look as my inspiration. The door pull was a nondescript, worn brass disc so I replaced it with an unpainted wood pull from Home Depot and painted it with a fun design. I removed the top drawer to use as an open storage cubbie for an extra blanket, and I even managed to find 2 coffee mugs that matched my design at Tuesday Morning to set on the shelf. 

I jazzed up the inside of the door by covering it with a state map. Why not, right? The armoire was cedar lined but the cedar made the interior depressingly dark, so I freshened it up with some pale pink semigloss paint that I had. The bottom got a little trompe l'oeil fringe.

I've since moved from that house, so I'm now using the armoire as a wrapping paper closet and a place to store some of my craft supplies. (See my post "A room of one's own" for its updated look.)

What I learned from this project:

1. Sometimes not having a clear plan is the most fun. I really had no idea how this was going to turn out until the very end. I was making it up as I went along.
2. Take a risk with your color choices. It's only paint.

3. Don't overlook a "plain Jane" piece - this is where you get to be really creative.