Girl In Gold Boots

So the general rule is 5 days sitting atop a trash can = free stuff, right?

Our neighbors (who are either moving out or in, I can never tell) left this little beauty out amidst their refuse. For nearly a week.  I kept eying it and their house, hoping I'd catch someone outside and be able to ask if they were indeed getting rid of what seemed to be a perfectly good item.  T'would be silly to simply knock on their door and ask, right?  I get over anxious about the weirdest things.

  

As my husband is in charge of taking the pups out for their evening business, he waited until dark and snagged it.  So, it's technically pilfered, but if it was being thrown out its okay, right?  RIGHT???

Although I recognized it as a book stand, I'd never seen one with the angled lookit-my-spine shelf before.  I nearly choked on my summer salad when I looked for a similar item online and found this one, retailing for the low low price of over a grand.  *cough*  Uhhh, whut.

Imagine my surprise when I flipped the thing over to remove the felt pads that were making it wibbly wobbly:

Ethan Allen! Quality furniture! Huzzah!

Now it's in perfectly good shape and has a nice finish to it, but you know I can't let sleeping furniture lie.  This thing needed some COLOR.     

                   

Ey. Ey gurl.

Spray paint is my favorite. :)

Digging through the boxes in our cluttered garage, I found my gold spray paint from my MST3K Crow costume and decided to give this odd little item some classy feet.  Meet the Girl in Gold Boots:

My one conundrum was determining where it should go. Should I relinquish it to the boys for their game guide collections?  Stash my cookbooks on it near the kitchen?  Fill it with bathroom reading material?  So far it's just occupying the empty transitional space between the living and dining rooms until I get nice hardbound copies of the Harry Potter collection.  :)

Poop Table and the Spindle Chairs of Tomorrow

In the move, our table went from a barely used and cluttered catch-all in our windowless cave of a dining room, to our only functional eating table (as our kitchen is much smaller and we ditched the tiled table in the breakfast nook).  Only then did all its flaws become glaringly apparent, and a constant eyesore I was forced to gaze upon daily, illuminated by my much-loved bright windowed home.

Hi. I'm Poop Table.

Meet Poop Table (above, without it's 3 extension leaves).  I've lovingly nicknamed it's pre-remodeled condition as Poop Table, because someone prior to me, in their infinite wisdom, decided that the best way to accent the yellowed table legs was with gold splatter paint...

...and there's no possible way that could look like poop splatter, right?

But the table was structurally good and has great curves.  Plus is comfortably seats up to 8 (10 in a pinch) and my inner hostess was screaming "Keeeeeeeep Ittttttt."  That, and we can't afford new furniture right now.

The top of the table had also seen better days:

Peeling varnish, ring marks and stuck on newspaper (god only knows where that came from).  Add a few mismatched spindle-chairs in What-Was-I-Thinking-Ivory and I-Give-Up Original Oak:

I loooove the Federal Era colonial-style spindle chairs - I think I originally got 4 of them for $50.  And Poop Table was technically free with the purchase of these two chairs:

That look WAY better in pictures than they do in person.  I was going to try and restore them, but upon further inspection:

That can't be good...

I tried, I really did:

Then this happened:

CHAIR. Y U DO DIS.

And my Give-A-Shitometer went to negative 12.  So they are being remodeled into kindling (j/k, just being junked on the curb), and now we have four matching chairs instead of six mismatched ones.

I decided to go black and white to match our gray and white dining room with the brushed nickel chandelier.  I'm quite pleased with the color, especially considering what I started with.  Now I just need some kind of protective coating on the table top to make it uniform and keep it looking decent.

My finished dining room set! I'm pleased with the results. :)

Before...

After!

Before...

After!

Before...

After!