Ottoman Fabric

I have never owned a coffee table.  Ever.

Isn't that weird?

Any coffee table that I've ever lived with has been someone else's property, and since the boyfriend and I have lived together, we haven't had one.  I used to think it was because we had a small living room and saved the space for impromptu wrestling matches (with our son - heads out of the gutter, please).  Now I realize it is because I hate about 99.9% of coffee tables.

In theory, I love coffee tables.  But I have a hard time finding one that 1.) I like, 2.) will fit the space well, and 3.) I can afford. 

Some that I love:


Via Apartment Therapy (retails $500+)



Pottery Barn Rhys Table - Also $500+ (and too heavy-looking for my space)



Another industrial-style, from Knight Moves


I've been feeling the love for a big square coffee table in our new place.  Only, it needs some curves to combat the retro mid-century couch.  I found a great Asian-inspired table, like the one below, at an office discount store a couple of weeks ago.


From Caitlin Creer Interiors

Only problem was they wanted close to $300 for it (used!) - not happening.  But ever since, that table has been haunting me.  I was convinced - I will find a table like that in my budget and that will be the end of my coffee table dreaming.

Of course, whenever I make that kind of statement to myself, I almost instantly find something else and completely change directions.  Some people may say that I'm fickle - I'd like to believe that I am open-minded.

This weekend, Hancock Fabrics had a huge sale.  I wasn't planning on stopping there until I saw the red "Blowout Sale" banner from the highway.  I decided to stop, since I'm still on the hunt for the perfect fabric for my dining room chairs.

Lots of cute stuff, but nothing was knocking my socks off until I spotted this fabric on the remnant table, buried under piles of duck-themed and neon pink plaid fabrics.

As if love at first sight wasn't enough - I swear that this song was playing on the store's speaker system.



Talk about signs, right?  I wasn't waiting around for lightning to strike, so I grabbed the 2 1/2 yard remnant like a was rescuing a baby from a burning building.

Now, what did I need this for?

The colors are perfect for the living room.  It's heavy duty upholstery fabric - but there wasn't enough to do much with.  The options I quickly came up with were a skirted table or an ottoman.

It was only $4/yard - which I know is a good deal (not sure if that is what Hancock's remnants always go for - that's what they all were priced at this weekend).  However, I have no idea the maker or name of the fabric - so if you do know, please leave a comment and clue me in.

By the time I made it home, I had pretty much decided to nix the coffee table idea and make an ottoman out of this material instead.  A gorgeous, huge ottoman with lots of tufting and preferably turned legs with casters.

I laid the fabric out on the floor to make sure it would work...



Ottoman will be slightly smaller - and blue couch
will be reupholstered a different color.

I think it looks crazy good.  I'm really excited about the project.  It won't be finished any time soon, of course.  I'm going to keep on looking for an inexpensive coffee table I can convert to an ottoman, because so far the legs I'm finding online aren't super cheap.  However, I believe my $10-worth of fabric is going to make a huge statement.

Yay! Friday!

I'm a stay-at-home mom, so Fridays don't mean nearly as much to me as when I was a working woman.  But they're still nice.  Mostly because the boyfriend works 6 days a week (he's my personal version of Superman) and Saturday is the one day he has off, so I look forward to Friday night rolling around.  However, this Saturday he has to work - boo.  Well, "Yay!" for money, heaven knows we need it.  Luckily he has Monday off for Memorial Day, so it'll balance out.

Speaking of money - I sold the chinoiserie dresser for $60 this morning.  Bought it for $20 and did absolutely nothing to it besides bring it home.  It actually sat on Craigslist for longer than I'm used to (almost 48 hours - shocker!) with only minimal interest, so I was beginning to wonder if I should drop the price.  Then I started thinking about keeping it.  It is probably a good thing that we didn't bring it inside the house or I would have.  Instead, a lovely lady came along who was tickled to get it and wanted to lacquer it up like the 1stDibs piece I spied.

I'm very happy that it's going to a good home.  Funny how attached I get to these pieces.

I hope everyone has a good Memorial Day weekend!

Chinoiserie Dresser

Sold the cabinet/table in less than 24 hours for $120, which basically doubled my money.  Not bad if you don't count the labor cost.  But then you also have to factor in the fact that I did it while staying home with my little man and for about 15 minutes-30 minutes a day.  So, although I'm hardly going to get rich, I think it was still worth it.

I went out and bought this cutie today at another Goodwill.  I used to hate Goodwill, but lately they've been very good to me.  Never hurts to check in once in a while.

It's a small dresser (more like a nightstand) made my Henry Link.  "Mandarin" is the style.  I instantly recognized it because my mom has three cabinets from the collection in her bedroom.  So, the good thing is that if no one wants to buy it from me off of Craigslist, I know my mom will want it because it matches her stuff.

Found this lacquered piece on 1stDibs and now I'm itching to paint it - but hopefully it'll sell just fine without me doing anything to it.  I'm kind of over painting for a while anyway.

My Totally Awesome Cabinet/Table - Finished!

What would happen, you may wonder, if a cabinet and a table decided to hook up and have a baby?  And 30 years later that baby, down on its luck, feeling unloved, sits in a Goodwill for well over a month - neglected, scratched up, repeatedly faced with the question "What the heck is this?"  The price of $79.99 is eventually slashed to $34.99 and still no takers.


The "Before" - Goodwill evidently loves price tags.

Well, that my friend, would be the part of the story where I walk in and decide - "Yeah, this is an easy fix.  Just needs some wood filler and paint.  I can make money off of this."

Famous last words?  Let's hope not.



The "After" - Looks like a million dollars, even if its not styled, right?

 And expanded to a table:

Who doesn't need this in their house? I'm hoping it's the perfect solution for
someone, preferably someone who wants to give me money.

How did I get from the before to the after?  Let me tell you...

Totally ripping off Jenny's vision from Little Green Notebook, I first bought a can of Rustoleum "Safety Red" Enamel spray paint.  Silly me thought that at most I would maybe need 2 cans, but I wanted to try out the color first before committing to the second can.  At home, I removed the hardware and sanded the piece lightly.

The color was great - the coverage - not so much.  I'm not sure how much is due to:

1.) the fact that I read everywhere to do thin coats so much more was swirling around in the air than actually sticking to the furniture; or

2.) the fact that I hadn't primed, or

3.) a million other reasons.  But I quickly realized that it was going to take at least 4 more cans of this stuff and at $5+ a can, it was eating into my profit margin.

So I made my first big paint mistake.  At this point, if I could do it again, I would have simply bought a pint of Rustoleum "Safety Red" in the regular paint.  They sell it right next to the spray paint at my Lowes and it costs less than $9.  But no, I was loving the fact that, despite not doing that great of a job, the spray paint was quick and easy.  Yes, I did manage to paint half of the garage red despite tarping, but it only took like 5 minutes and you can recoat fairly quickly.  And no brush strokes/roller lines!  (This project came quickly on the heels of my last project - painting our dining room table about a zillion different coats in an effort to eliminate all roller lines and then finally deciding to live with a less-than-perfect-but-close-as-it-is-going-to-get finish.)

So I went back to Lowes and decided to grab 2 cans of Valspar's "Berry" spray paint.  It was less than $4 each.  Back home I went and used up both cans within a couple of minutes.  I loved the lacquered, professional look I was getting - unfortunately, I wasn't getting it everywhere.  Despite my best efforts, it was  looking splotchy, especially on the top.

Trip #3 to Lowes.  Decided that I would just bite the bullet and get the regular paint version of "Berry" and finish using a roller and brush.  Only, Valspar doesn't make "Berry" in a regular paint.  Why?  No idea, because it sounds ridiculous to me too.  After the paint guy couldn't match the color with his computer, I decided to risk it and bought Valspar's "Cherry" in glossy - hoping it would be close enough that I wouldn't have to repaint the entire thing - just the splotchy top.  In my spray-paint fume-filled head, this seemed like a good possibility - the names rhymed and everything.

Of course it didn't work out - the colors are similar, but not close enough to get away with.  So I gave the entire thing another coat and the table top got two coats for durability. 

Despite the five coats, there are still imperfections.  But, as I was prepping to do another coat today, I stepped back and thought, "No one else is going to notice this stuff except for me."  I put on the shined-up handles to double check and the imperfections quickly disappeared to me too.  At this point I have spent much more than I originally budgeted for paint, so I didn't want to keep bogging down my time as well.  I snapped some pictures and posted it to Craigslist.

Lets see if I get any bites...

Linking here

Cleaning Handles and Practically Free Nail Polish

I didn't work much on the red cabinet/table this weekend, so no finished pics yet.  They're coming soon, though, promise.  Instead I had some lovely family time, bought some $1 flip flops at Old Navy, and babysat for some friends to earn a little cash.  But I did get around to putting on another (final?) coat of paint last night and decided to spend a couple of minutes shining up the handles.

Don't you love it when you think a project will just take a couple of minutes and it quickly becomes a giant time suck?

That's how the handles went.  I read online about using household supplies to clean brass naturally.

First you make sure you have real brass by trying to stick a magnet to it - brass is not magnetic.  Then you mix 1/2 cup each of salt, vinegar, and flour.  Make a paste.  Spread it on the brass and let it sit for 30 minutes.  Then buff off.

This must work, because I found it a million places online.  But it didn't work for me.  Total fail.  In fact, I think the brass might have actually looked dirtier when I was done.

So then I went for the chemicals.  I can't give you any information about this stuff because it seems to have magically appeared in our house.  I never bought it; the boyfriend never heard of it...  Mystery.  But it works great.  Just make sure not to disregard the whole "well-ventilated area" instruction.  I may have decided that the middle of my house was well ventilated enough and accidentally gotten a little high by the fourth handle.  At least that's how I explained it to the boyfriend, who was wondering why I was getting ecstatically excited over cleaning.


Top have been buffed - bottom before.

It was pretty exciting before the fumes hit, though.  So nice and shiny! 

Oh, and I wanted to share a good CVS score (courtesy of HiptoSave.com).  This week they have a deal on Revlon nail polish that you get $4 ECB (Extra Care Bucks) when you buy one.  A lot of people have $1 off coupons, so that makes for practically free nail polish.

I didn't have the coupon, though.  So I bought one of the "scented" nail polishes (Coconut Crush) - it rang up for $3.99.  Check it at the scanner, though - not all of the scented polishes are $3.99.  So I paid out of pocket for the nail polish, then turned around and got a free milk and 2 liter of coke with the $4 ECB.  I plan on going back later and doing a rolling purchase because there is a limit of 6 on the nail polishes.  If you just want to buy nail polish, that means you can score 6 nail polishes for $4 and still get $4 back at the end to spend on something else (has to be separate purchases).

"Let's Talk About Design, Honey"

This is how the usual "design" conversation goes between the boyfriend and I:



Secrets of a Stylist

 Me:  "Hey honey - I really love the valances in this room.  I think I want to do something like this in the living room."

The Boyfriend:  "I really hate that."

Me:  "Really?  Well, that's what I'm doing.  It'll look great."

Now, in real life, he's not usually very negative and I'm not usually that pushy, but we have the almost exact conversation every time I show him a picture of something I like or want to do with the house.  Lately, I've been catching up on episodes of Secrets of a Stylist that I missed during the move.  (Did you know you can watch them online at HGTV.com - I have no idea why it took me this long to realize this.)  So, in a salute to design goddess Emily Henderson, I did a little style diagnostic of my own last night on the boyfriend.

Only I didn't use props or anything exciting like that.  Instead, I simply asked:  "If you lived by yourself and could decorate this house anyway you wanted, what would it look like?"  And he basically described this:

No offense if this is your house.  Or if you love the pictures and want to immediately go out and recreate the look for your own home.  But I kinda hate it.  In a major way.  It reminds me a bit of "Saved By the Bell" for some reason.

To give the boyfriend his due - maybe in his head his vision is much more upscale and cool looking.  But when you say "contemporary" "sleek" "minimalist" with those colors - this is what my mind sees and then immediately starts running away from.  No wonder I am so dismissive whenever he doesn't like one of my ideas.

Nine times out of ten, once I actually get around to implementing an idea - the boyfriend ends up liking it.  Like the ongoing red cabinet saga (stay tuned for tomorrow's post) - which he initially thought was a terrible idea (even with Jenny's awesome picture) and now is trying to figure out a way to keep in our house.

I'd like to believe that the fact that he always comes around is the reason I'm not crushed by his knee-jerk "I hate it."  I'd rather think that than the fact that I am a terrible girlfriend who could care less about his personal taste and if it is reflected in his house.  (Okay, I do admit to being about 10% this - because, after all, I am letting him build a golf room in our garage.)  So, after our little design talk last night, I made a promise to myself to be more give-and-take with this aspect of our relationship.  I obviously want him to have an opinion because I always run everything by him.  And I love that I can always count on his honest opinion and not just a rubber stamp approval.  It makes our house better.  It makes me pause and think about the choices I'm making, not just if I love something or not.

Like the valances.  They are awesome.  (They looked more awesome on the show than in that picture, by the way.)  But I think the boyfriend is right that they wouldn't look good in our house.  We have an oddly vaulted ceiling and the valances would probably cut the room in half and make the ceiling feel too separate from the rest of the space.  I want the ceiling to kind of fade into the background where you don't notice it, just feel the nice, open quality it gives.

Compromise - the key to any relationship.  I feel like such an after-school special.



Or at least a PSA.

Frivolous Want

I decided to go for the red with the cabinet makeover.  It's about halfway done - so I'll post pictures soon.




9-foot Pagoda Umbrella, $199.95

Pier 1 has this cute pagoda umbrella and I totally want one.  Can't afford to waste money on such frivolity right now.  But that doesn't make me want it less.