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!

Friends Come In All Sizes...

In my previous post, I mentioned scouring thrift stores in search of knick-knacks to spray paint and use as shelf decor.  I'm a fan of monochromatic but brightly colored items, and lucked out finding this guy for $5 at the geese thrift store.

Oh hai. I'm a rhino.

The stamp on the bottom says Aldon Accessories Ltd, New York (made in Japan) 1973.  Some of these go for $25 or more on eBay, so I consider my $5 find a steal.

You put a hit out on the wrong rhino...

But he couldn't just stay boring, rough white porcelain.

Someone toss me a beach towel because my head is swimming.

But my stepdad's not mean he's just adjusting.

You want to tell me about The Rhino?

And here he is looking fabulous in my downstairs half bath.

I still think the best part of this adventure was the conversation with my husband:

Dining In The Deep End

CHANDELIER

Recently, we moved into a lovely new(er) home, embarking on a weekend moving endeavor like no other. (My friend Jen can attest to this - at one point the television said something and I went to go answer the door - I was delirious). After weeks of relocating, unpacking and cleaning, I was faced with a new dilemma... most of my old stuff didn't "go" with my new house. What's a girl to do???

Fortunately, there's websites like Design Sponge and Apartment Therapy, and super creative people like Jen to help me envision new ways of using my old furniture & decor.

I wish I had a before picture, but alas, none exist- my chandelier was completely black. Black bars, black chain, black shades, etc. Looked very chic next to the stark whiteness of my old, 1942 cottage home, but in our newer, brighter, warmer colored dining room, I needed something that would mesh with the cream colored walls and honey oak trim.

Voila! New shades (actually picked out by my husband) for $2 per shade at Stein Mart, and some spray paint ($3) was all it took, plus a cord/chain hiding scrunch ($10- Stein Mart). Again, $15 makes it look like an entirely new piece.


Can you imagine this thing completely black? Ugly chain exposed, no life at all (hey, it was $10 at a Sticks N Stuff store closing, I snatched it!)


CHAIRS

Since obtaining the new dining room table, and inheriting two chairs with it, I felt the need to recover them as well. The table was $75, but technically, the chairs were free.

Here's the Before...

Not terrible, but very worn & dark.

After a few coast of spray paint ($6 for 2 cans) and fabric I found on a HUGE roll at the City Rescue Mission thrift store (a 60K square foot mecca of thrift and materials - its probably my new favorite, and it's NEVER busy), the chairs were saved!

Brighter, happier, healthier...

...more productive, fitter....

FANCY.

And fancy meeting YOU here...

I love the cane back on these chairs, and am in the process of searching desperately for a set of 4 to coordinate (not match precisely). The fabric was a lucky find, and I have enough to cover the other chairs & possibly make a table runner/place settings. Love thrift stores!

Accidentally on Purpose

Sometimes projects are so simple, I question whether I should even post them.  This was one of my favorites, however, and I'm super pleased with the results, so here you go.

This floor screen frame was an unintentional acquisition from my ex-pack rat boyfriend.  I shudder a bit every time I remember the brief time we spent together, in which my office resembled an episode of Hoarders (because I wouldn't let him take over the rest of the house with his "salvaged" junk).

Anywho, this Oriental frame lacked fabric, was too short and too wide, and had been cheaply painted with dim gold flecks and fans on the bottom slats.  I guess those pokey tetanus-riddled hooks on top were once intended as a coat rack substitute:

But since I don't own a Chinese restaurant...

I saw its potential, however, and decided to make something I actually needed - a headboard.

First I ripped off the hooks and the bottom veneered panels. By disassembling the frame, reassembling it into a single pane and giving it a matte coat of dark brown paint (spray paint to the rescue, about $6), this Wang Chung throwaway became a chic modern headboard.  I mounted it to the wall directly behind our king-size bed, where it fit perfectly.

See?  It's pretty much my favorite.  Sweeney likes it too.

Excuse the messy bedroom - I think we had just moved in and I had nothing else set up.  Ugh, that brown carpet - gotta love the building boom of the 1980s.