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.

The 80's are calling and they want their furniture back...

Just to clarify...this was NOT me in the 80's.

Remember the 80's? They were covered in big hair and oak furniture with rounded edges. I had my share of it (the oak, not the hair), but I updated my furniture look as the decades wore on (unfortunately, I first took a detour into that misguided Santa Fe look...) However, there are a LOT of people out there who are just getting around to realizing the 80's are now long gone, so Craigslist is teeming with all sorts of 80's oak furniture.


Our master bedroom needed a couple of dressers - but good quality dressers are EXPENSIVE. Oh, sure you can pick up a new one for a few hundred bucks, but it's going to be crap. I really didn't want to spend a minimum of $600 for 1 halfway decent dresser and since I needed 2, well, $1200 was not in the budget just for a place to store mismatched socks and sweaters.

I knew that I was going to have a bit of a challenge finding them on Craigslist since I was hoping to find 2 identical dressers to fill up one of the walls in our bedroom. But after searching for a couple of weeks, a new posting popped up that looked to be perfect: two large identical oak dressers.  The owners were asking $175 each and wouldn't budge since they had already gotten a ton of calls on them. Other people knew a good deal when they saw it, too! But I braved a snowy night and got there first...
These dressers were solid wood, made by a well known furniture manufacturer, and in perfect condition. And, no fussy hardware. SOLD!

I was SO excited to start on my project to transform these that I neglected to take a "before" photo, but here's an almost identical dresser that I just saw posted on CL to give you an idea of what they looked like.

First, I gave the dressers a light sanding, primed them, then painted them with a chocolate brown semigloss latex paint from Behr.  I wanted the paint to really cure so even after they were dry I didn't put anything on the top of them for another week. I added some brushed aluminum pulls, too, to update their look which I found for only a couple of dollars apiece at Lowe's (critical, since I needed 18 of them).

Here's the finished product. I'm already thinking of repainting them since I've got the bug to redecorate the bedroom again and change my color scheme (see Bedroom Refresh post).

What I learned from this project:

1. There can be a big difference in prices among the big box stores on hardware, so compare prices.
2. Even when paint seems completely dry, it still needs more time to fully cure so items won't stick to the surface.
3. Using a mini roller sure beats using a brush.
4. Having a dresser of my own...is still not enough space for my stuff.

Not just for church...

In my former house I had a narrow room just big enough for a little breakfast area off my kitchen. I started hunting for old church pews on Craigslist that would fit in the tight space. I was surprised at how many large pews I found!

    

After a couple of weeks, a great little bench popped up in the listings.

It was a pale yellow, very humble, rustic looking church pew

that was neither too long, nor too deep. The owner stuck to her asking price of $165, which was definitely more than I wanted to spend, but since it was

exactly what I was looking for, I bit the bullet. Funny thing about bullets that you bite...once I got the bench home I was completely convinced it was $165 well spent.

    

After a light sanding and priming I painted it spring green. Paired it with some old repainted kitchen chairs and a narrow table I had bought on CL for $15, and I had my breakfast nook all set.

                                                         

But now this country look was not going to cut it in our new blended house, and we didn't need the bench for a breakfast area anymore. However, we did have a front entry that was in need of a spot to drop your coat and pull on your boots, so I went back to my paint supply for a little makeup job. I took a cue from some throw pillows I had bought for my sofa and painted stripes along the back and seat in the same colors. Storage space is at a premium in our house and I didn't want to waste the precious area under the bench on just dust bunnies. With some jute baskets from Target and hanging tags from an office supply store, I now have additional space for hats, gloves, bicycle helmets, and ski goggles (I know, random, right?).

What I learned from this project:

1. If you find something that is perfect for your project, give yourself permission to pay a little more than you may have wanted to.   

2. Green "Frog" tape works  better for taping stripes than the regular blue painter's tape. Less paint seeps under the tape.

3. I'm not really that good at eyeballing stripes, but I am good at being too lazy to actually measure them. Oh well.