Curved Bookcase

Last fall, my company was rearranging some of the store fixtures in the bookstore and we had some leftover shelving. It was just sitting around and there was one bookcase that was different than all the others. It had a curved top and it gave a really nice look to the piece. After it sat around for a couple of months, I asked my boss if she was interested in selling it. She told me to just take it for free. See what happens when you just ask!

Anyways, I had it delivered and here is what it looked like:



Actually, those doors that are sitting on the lower shelf were attached to the front of the bottom shelf. They had locks which didn't come with a key. Since one door was broken, Boyfriend squeezed himself inside and removed the other two doors from the inside. Thank goodness for skinny Boyfriend - although I probably would have figured something out.

I don't have pictures of the whole process, but I removed all of the extra boards around the doors and the hardware. Filled all the holes and sanded the entire unit. Although the wood on this cabinet was very nice, it was a little too traditional for my taste. I decided to go with a nice Coffee Brown paint to finish the shelves. I think it turned out quite nicely. It only took 3 coats of paint and a couple of nights after work to get this taken care of.



Total time spent - 4-5 hours
Total expense - less than $10 (would be more if you don't keep basic supplies and tools on hand)

Inspiration - Old Maps

Earlier this week I was walking around my work on break. I must have found 7 or 8 new things I wanted to buy. Everyone must have been restocking, because I walk around every few days not to miss anything. I restrained myself. However, I did come across some really cool maps.



I recalled a photo I saw in a magazine a few months ago where someone had used old maps as decoration on a wall and ceiling applying them with wallpaper paste. Magazine and decorating books are a great source of information. I have a little notebook where I clip photos of elements I like and keep them all together to refer to. However, after my recent foray into wallpaper removal, I wasn't anxious to do that again - so I opted against pasting the maps directly to the walls. I decided not to buy the maps since I didn't have any better ideas.

Later that night I mentioned to Boyfriend that I saw some cool old maps, but didn't know what to use them for. Suddenly while brushing my teeth, I had a fantastic idea for a large scale piece of artwork involving the maps.

The next day I returned to work and picked out several cool maps from around the world. I also went by the craft store to get a large canvas (with a 40% coupon courtesy of my friend, Paige).

Stay tuned to see how it comes out...

My latest find: Mid-Century Edward Wormley Dunbar Sofa

In April, my boyfriend and I started talking about moving in together. I had been looking in the new furniture stores for a sofa suitable for my boyfriend's house. I was cheating on my work at another local Antique Shop, when I stumbled upon a hideous lime green sofa that was barely visible under a pile of stuff.


This photo was taken on my phone, which is great to do when your out shopping

I moved things off of the sofa and climbed over some other furniture to sit down. It was surprisingly comfortable. The upholstery was hideous and a little frayed on the corners. The sofa had a great slightly curved shape and was really low.

I checked the price tag and couldn't believe my eyes - $250. A great price! I left the store to think it over. I went to get some lunch because antique shopping makes me faint and I stopped in the nearest fabric store. They happened to be having a 50% sale on all the upholstery fabrics. I found one in a sale bin for $5 per yard, which I loved. I decided to go back and buy the sofa. And then I took a separate trip to the fabric store and got the sale fabric.

A few days later the sofa was delivered to my house. I turned it over and checked under all of the cushions for marking and to see the condition. I found a couple of interesting things:

1. the price tag for the person who bought it before me - $50. An even better price than I paid!
2. the signature Dunbar fabric used under the cushions and a label.

I set to researching the couch online. Turns out this sofa was made sometime during the 1950s and was designed by Edward Wormley for Dunbar Furniture Company. It is truly a great specimen of Mid-Century Modern furniture and in great condition. The sofa turns out to be worth a great deal of money as well, so I was extremely happy with my good luck.

Unfortunately after I measured the sofa, I didn't have enough fabric and since I bought the entire remaining roll of the sale fabric, there was no more available. The fabric store was nice enough to let me return it since it was still whole. I ended up visiting another upholstery fabric store on the suggestion of a coworker and I found so many fabrics to choose from. The selection they had was overwhelming. I finally found another fabric I loved. It wasn't as good as the original price, but it was a good price for upholstery fabric at $12.99 per yard.

Now I am all ready to go with the re-upholstering project, but since I am planning to move in 6 weeks, I am going to wait to begin after the move is complete. So, I'm afraid you'll have to check back in a couple months to see how it turns out.

Boy's Bedroom Makeover - The Implementation

Day #1 - I arrived at my boyfriend's house and unloaded all my pre-purchased wares from the car and set to work.

Here is what I was faced with (THE BEFORE):



The room was much more messy than the last time I was here. It looked like someone left in a hurry. I first had to pick up all the toys and take everything down from the walls. I piled everything in the middle of the room and started doing a little cleaning. I took out all the nails, screws and push pins and patched all the holes. Then my boyfriend and I managed to take down all of the wallpaper border. (You cannot see it in the picture) This was a lot easier than I expected, but not what I would call easy. It took us about 2 1/2 hours to do the whole room. If you have never tried it, I highly recommend using a scorer and wallpaper removal gel for a project like this. I have done it with a steamer, and the scoring method was much quicker.



Day #2 - My boyfriend had to work late, so I was left to do the painting all by myself. First I had to sand the spackle from Day 1 and clean up all the dust. Then I set to painting. I got all of the walls painted in about 3 hours. By that time I was exhausted and my boyfriend was still at work, so I went home.



Day #3 - This was our day of rest - although we did finish putting the G photo collage together while watching TV.

Day #4 - I started out by taping off and painting all the trim, door and window frame in a nice glossy white. They really needed some sprucing up. My boyfriend put together the first of the cube shelves, so we could get a better idea of how big it would be. I had hoped to get more done today, but in the light of day, the walls needed some touching up - so we ended up putting most of a second coat of blue/grey on the walls.

Day #5 - The last real day of work time. There was a lot to do on the last day. We had to clean up, move all the furniture back into place and do the decorating and organizing. Needless to say we had to stay up a little later than normal. The end result was worth every minute.









Total time spent, about 4 hours of shopping & making art, 25 hours of labor.
Total expense $238 ($200 budget) - I overspent a little, but there were some unplanned expenses.

UPDATE: Nearly two weeks later the room still looks great. The makeover has inspired the owner to keep the room tidy and the bed made. Hopefully that will continue. The boy was totally surprised and looked like one of the people you see on TV makeover shows. He told me he could barely recognize that this was his same bedroom.

Boy's Bedroom Makeover - The Preparation

This week, my boyfriend and I are making over his son's bedroom for his upcoming birthday. It is a surprise, which I hope he loves. He is turning 10 years old and has had the same bedroom decor (other than a bed instead of a crib) since he was born. This includes some kind of girlie butterfly wallpaper border, which really needed to go.

So, I began planning the makeover about a month ago. Since it was going to be a surprise and he is there on the weekends, everything needed to be able to be accomplished in 5 days or less. After talking it over with my boyfriend, we decided on a budget of $200. We didn't need to replace the bed or dresser, so most of the money is being used for aesthetic improvements and storage.

I started by searching for a bedspread/comforter. It is actually quite hard to find something for boys in the bedding area. Most bedding labeled for boys has star wars, sports or camo. Anything that is not themed for children is 90% girlie - like pink, flowers, you get the idea. After searching through most of the local stores and finding nothing I liked, I started searching online. I found a really cool quilt that was white with blue and green circles on Overstock.com. The price was really good at around $50 for a set, which included a pillow sham. I wanted to show it to my boyfriend before purchasing it. So we looked at it that evening and then when I went back the next day to buy it, it was sold out. Strangely it wasn't even listed as low on stock when we were looking at it. I was really bummed about that because I had to start over from scratch. I ended up going into Bed Bath and Beyond to scour the store for anything that might work. What I ended up with was actually better than the one I had originally picked out. With a 20% off coupon, I was able to get a pretty good price, although it was a little more than the one on Overstock. Here's a picture from their website:



Of course, now the price is even less than I paid with my coupon, but the twin size I needed is now sold out - so I guess it was good to go ahead and purchase it. The base of the quilt is navy blue with circles in grey, light blue and tan. This was my jumping off point for the rest of the room.

I decided to paint the walls a nice blue grey color. Originally I was going to go with the same blue grey that is used in the quilt, but it looked a little dark for the room.

In addition to bedding, I needed shelving for toy and book storage. I was looking at a cube shelf from Ikea. Unfortunately, we don't have an Ikea here and getting it from out of town would involve renting a van or truck and driving for hours. I looked into getting it shipped, but a shelf that costs $89 at Ikea ended up being nearly $400 with shipping and taxes, which is just ridiculous. Instead, I was able to find a similar unit at Target, made by Closetmaid. It was a little smaller than I hoped when I saw it in person, so I decided to use two of these units.



The closetmaid system at target has a lot of different pieces that all work together. They also sell little storage bins/drawers that fit the cubes perfectly and come in a whole array of colors. I decided on dark blue and light blue for my bins, which will be used to hold lots of toys.

Then came the things I had not accounted for in my budget. My boyfriend wanted a new lamp for the room. I decided he needed an area rug for playing on the floor. And without all the crayon marks and kiddie drawings hanging on the walls - we were going to need some decorations to make the walls a little less bare.

Unfortunately, this boy does not like much of anything except Legos. It's hard to create a design based on legos alone. Any kind of inexpensinve artwork, like posters, are primarily sports themed or girlie. While I was walking through work one day, I saw a large metal letter from an old lit sign. I thought, that would work great, if only they had a G for his name. There was no G. So I started looking for the same thing online. I found the exact letter I needed on eBay for around $35. I was watching the item trying to decide if it was worth such a chunk of my disappearing budget. I went for a walk through my work again and someone had brought in not one, but two Gs just that day and they were only $15 each. To make it even more perfect, the outside was a nice blue color which should look great against the paint.

Along the same theme, I decided to create a custom piece of artwork for the largest wall. I wanted to get pictures of Gs in large signs and make a collage. I was able to find several hundred pictures of Gs online. Amazingly some people take photos specifically of letters as a collection - so it wasn't as hard as you might think. I was able to get a large size frame on sale and I got the photos printed at the local drug store. The custom art piece ended up costing about $20 total, which is pretty cheap. The impact should be huge.

Thonet Bent Plywood Chair

Many months ago, I was walking through the store at work and noticed this chair. It was actually significantly more grungy than this picture shows, since I had to up the brightness to compensate for a poor exposure.



I sat down in the chair. It was comfortable. It was unusual. I loved the short arm rests and the way the arms and legs were all one piece of wood. The black paint was wearing off and the white vinyl was grungy and a very poor covering job. The price was $90. I walked away.

Later that day, I came back and sat in the chair again. For a plain slip chair, it was just so comfortable. I finally decided I had to have it. My coworkers tried to talk me out of it, since they didn't think I would enjoy the recovering project. I told them, "I am a project girl", but I guess they didn't believe me. I threw the chair in the car and took it home - excited to start tearing it apart.

The next day after work, I went to a local fabric store. I had envisioned covering this in a large pink paisley fabric. They didn't have anything like that at the store. I originally bought a red/gold/green/brown piece of contemporary fabric for the chair. After taking the fabric home, I decided I really didn't like it. So I returned to the fabric store again the next day and found this lovely fabric of a cream/pink/green polka dot pattern. Even though it was a bold pattern, I thought the chair was bold and could handle it. I'm so glad I did. It turned out really well.



This chair was unusual in it came completely apart. Since the arms and legs were one piece of wood, I had to completely remove everything. Besides, I wanted to give the wood a nice new paint job of dark espresso brown to match my bookcase. The seat of the chair was easy enough to recover with only a little trouble near the curved corners. The back portion was a little more difficult, since it was rounded all the way around and curved in the middle.

While in the process of revamping this chair, I was looking at a design book and noticed a bent plywood chair, which looked similar to mine. It didn't have any covering and the arms were not short, but it could be the same style. The chair in the book was made by Thonet. The most common Thonet bent plywood chairs look like this:



I pulled my chair out to look for a tag. I found the original tag listing the maker as Thonet in New York 16, NY. I did some research and found that Thonet was the inventor of the bent plywood chair, which is the style of this very chair. The term "New York 16" was used in the 40s and 50s...so clearly this chair is from that era. Although I have been unable to find this exact chair online, I have found many like them listed for prices starting at $250. Truly a mid-century piece of history.

I love the way the chair turned out and what a find at a great price! Sorry I didn't take pictures of the recovering process, but I will next time.

Total time spent - about 5-6 hours
Total expenses - $90 for the chair plus $60 in upholstery, paint and other supplies

How it all began...

To be honest, it didn't really all begin here, since this project addiction has long been an affliction of mine.

I have been a project person for years and years. I love to keep busy. I'm crafty and handy and not afraid to take on any kind of project that peaks my interest. When I split from my long time boyfriend (of more than 10 years) in 2007, I decided to ditch everything we had acquired together and completely refurnish and redecorate my house. I bought my own tools - I took to building things. I painted every room a different color - something he had always hated. The house was beautiful. Then I decided to move. So everything went into storage.

I stayed with my parents for a while and still managed to continue my projects. I redecorated 2 rooms for my niece - one at her dad's house, which I painted pink on pink stripes and a disney princess theme and one at my parent's house, which is a nice lavender color and decorated with fairies. I painted the room my parents had me sleeping in. I talked my step mom into packing everything up from the living room with the plan to rearrange the furniture and paint, but we never got around to the actual redecorating before I landed a great job back at home.

So I began work at one of the coolest places in my town. It's a two part company - a book distributor and what would be called an antique mall - although it is not like any other antique mall I've ever seen.

My mom has long been a lover of antique stores. She has taken me to many of them and they were always filled with old furniture and knick knacks and smelled of grandmas. The antique mall I work at is filled with eclectic pieces, some new but mostly vintage things. With a wide variety from old modern pieces to grandma's old furniture.

Here are some shots of the mall for your reference -





Along with getting a job at a really cool place, I also found a fantastic place to live. A house which was ripe for decorating. I was so happy to get my things out of the storage unit, all my furniture and art pieces, which I had used for less than 2 months. It was all like brand new to me again. I painted every room a different color, this time with the assistance of my very sweet boyfriend - who doesn't mind having some color on the walls. Once the painting was done, I began finding pieces and things to fill all the extra space.

All of this is just background to explain this blog. All the time people ask me for before and after photos of stuff I'm working on. They want to know how to do something. People are generally afraid to try to do some projects themselves and want to know how it was possible for me to do it. So I intend to share my project addiction with the world.

There will be all kinds of posts - some will be of past projects, some of current projects - everything from art work to home decor and gingerbread houses. I do it all.

In addition, I have a major project in the works right now, which is writing my own cookbook. If you're interested in following the process of creating recipes from scratch, then please check out my other blog.