Never Listless

Thursday, February 21, 2013

The Living Room Chronicles: Introduction to Step 3: New Coffee Table

Things are getting crazy around here again. It's Thursday and there is a post up! Let's just call this an introductory post. I want to prepare you for the awesomeness that is going to happen in tomorrow's post. I will just tell you that it involves a car packed full of shipping pallets at the drive-in movies about 5 years ago.

I was in the market for a new coffee table and I went looking high and low to find one. But, it turned out that finding a reasonably priced 36" x 36" wooden coffee table was impossible.

I checked out a dozen or more thrift stores in the area and went to town with Google.
The closest thing that my Google-mania produced was an Ikea coffee table that was just the right size, but only came in white or black. It is now on sale for only $99.99!

Ikea has since come out with this beauty of a coffee table for $199

Here are the rest of the coffee tables I found that inspired what I came up with and will reveal tomorrow. Or... surprise ruiner... you could just check out the after photos that I posted at the end of this post. Remember that this was before the days of a Pinterest-infested world so the inspiration pictures were pretty stinkin' hard to come by!

This is before the day that the world decided to use shipping pallets to make every single piece of furniture in the world. So, I thought I was pretty clever coming up with the idea of stacking a few pallets on top of each other to make a coffee table. I don't know how to make furniture (despite the awesome benches that my BFF Mali and I made in about 5th grade. You had to sit on them at just the right angle so they didn't collapse). So, I consulted with my Handy Man Extraordinaire. He thought I was more than a little bit crazy, but he agreed to do the job.

I will continue this thrilling saga tomorrow!

Do you want to check out all of The Living Room Chronicles steps?

Here you go!

Step 1: Move in. Put in whatever furniture we had. Hang art.

Step 2: The Craigslist deal of a lifetime

Step 3: New coffee table (Step 3 Introduction found here)

Step 4: DIY remote control holder. A tiny, tiny step, but we are still calling it one.

Step 5: Should we change out the fireplace?

Step 6: The plant table and the plants

Step 7: Finishing touches

Monday, February 18, 2013

The Master Bedroom Chronicles: Step 7: Make Some Wedding-Related Art

Last week, we jumped back into the Master Bedroom Chronicles with headboard-making in process.

Waaaahoooo! I know it didn't take all that much work to put a rug behind the bed, but man oh man was I excited to get that crossed off my list.

With the headboard started I was on a roll to make the master bedroom better looking. I set my sights on some lovely art to go above the bed. At all times, I have at least 1,000 options of things I could hang up in the house. So, I consulted my stash of the goods and a few lists of other wall hanging ideas. And, I landed on wedding related art. Vague enough for you?

Scott and I got married almost 5 years ago and people do not lie when they say that time flies!

In the wedding invitations, I included a hand drawn map. A friend of mine was nice enough to draw a picture of each location that needed to be included on the map (the hotel, the reception site, and the ceremony site). He did an unbelievable job and I have always wanted to do something with his drawings.

I scanned them into the computer and played with them a bit in Photoshop. In the end, I used just one of the drawings (the ceremony site). I colored three prints differently to bring in some of the colors in my bedroom. I used yellow, blue, and brown.

I bought a few different pieces of fabric that went with the color scheme in my room. I put mats in the frames and I figured out which fabric looked best with which print. The fabric got introduced to the ironing board so I could be sure it was looking its best.

Mom, I know you're going to comment that I need a new iron and ironing board.

It seemed like something was missing. Construction paper to the rescue! I made little border of construction paper matting around each piece print. Then I glued the print onto construction paper so it would stand out a little more. Yep, construction paper was the first thing I thought of to use and I had plenty on hand because I am a 3rd grader.

It turned out to be a little tricky to get the construction-papered prints to stay on the fabric. So, I cut a hole in the center of the fabric (making sure I did it in a place where it wouldn't be seen). I put a piece of paper behind the fabric and glued that piece of paper to the back of the construction paper. I am 100% positive there was an easier way to do this, but that was what I came up with.

I measured and hung them. It is never perfect on the first try so there may be an extra hole or two behind the paintings.

We are just a few steps away from crossing a Chronicle off our list!

Here are the steps from the whole process:

Step 1: Move in. Throw a bunch of random stuff into the room and live with it for a while to figure out how we wanted to use the space.

Step 2: Rearrange the furniture and add a seating area.

Step 3: Redo a desk with a funky chevron pattern.

Step 4: Redo an old chair for the desk.

Step 5: New comforter and lamps.

Step 6: Headboard, Part 1

Step 7: Make some wedding related art.

Step 8: New entertainment center.

Step 9: Add some new art

Step 10: Headboard, Part 2. Finishing touches. Try to bring it all together.