A Splash of Color

As mentioned in my last post, I have a bit more love for antiques and old world charm where as my boyfriend likes modern, industrial, and a more simple look. So I try to blend our tastes as best as possible when I can.

This second project we took on this winter was more on my end of the ascetics scale but we were happy to be working on another project together and he knew I fell in love with this piece as soon as I saw it. Now it just needed a bit of flair and a splash of color to bring it to life.

This piece came from a Craigslist ad. Another steal at $20!! 

I fell in love with the ornate detailing and metal finishings on the drawer.

Did I mention I discovered this was a Lane Furniture piece??? Retails for $600+ new and $200+ used at antique stores! 

I already liked the antique white that was used on the table but I just wanted to pull some color from the room and tie the piece in.

I have this beautiful plum colored Rosette comforter from Anthropologie that is so soft it keeps me from getting out of bed on some days.

This color was perfect. I knew painting the whole piece this color would be overwhelming so I had a couple thoughts to do just the legs, just the drawer front, but I finally settled on just refinishing the top of the table.

I set off to Home Depot with my comforter in a bag and headed straight for the paint department. After matching and rematching my comforter with Behr's sample cards I finally found it. 

A great thing these days is that you can get a small sample container for around $3 of any color you want. In case you want to try the color out before you paint the whole wall or room. These also make small refinishing projects like this one really affordable. I didn't needed to pick up a gallon of paint but just a small container that would be more then enough to get the job done.

I picked up some more paint brushes, some more sand paper and brought all the goodies home.

Breaking out the hand sander again, we got to work removing the finish and white paint from the top of the table. Just enough to give the new paint a rough enough surface to adhere to.

I did three coats to even out the paint and left this to dry in the garage for 3 days just to be on the safe side.

The piece looks perfect next to my bed. Amazing what adding a splash of color will do. I plan to do this to a couple more piecing in the future so stay tuned!

My boyfriend and I have planned to move in together in October of this year and not sure if my end table or his pair will win out but either way this piece will find a place to be admired and loved by me!

Bedside Manners

My boyfriend and I took a trip to Jamaica in January and they take no less then 1000 pictures of you on the resort if you let them. 

We also signed up for a complementary sunset photo shoot which was so much fun and we got so many great shots. But the question is always what to do with those photos once you get back home?

Remember those end tables we refinished and painted?

Well they were looking a little bare so I decided to take our favorite photo, in the complementary Sandals frame, and pair it along side this beautiful Conch shell I found on one of our walks along the beach. 

Usually tourists or beach wanderers look for perfect shells but this shell really caught my attention because, although it is what some would consider broken and flawed, it shows off the beautiful and complex architecture hides on the inside of one of these shells.

Just two daily reminders of the amazing vacation we took together as well as decor that adds homey qualities to the room.

A Bit of a Face Lift

After college, my boyfriend and I were among the lucky ones to get jobs we love shortly after graduation. His took him to Pennsylvania and mine brought me to New York City. 

Needless to say when he moved out of college, out of his childhood home and into a new apartment, he didn't come with much. With our student loans weighing on our wallets we couldn't exactly afford to walk into West Elm and furnish his whole place. So instead we have been finding pieces here and there at estate sales or off Craigslist. Great prices for solid furniture.

I am partial to older pieces as things were built a lot differently then they are now. They didn't use cheap press board or ply wood and they built things to last. These same pieces are outliving the families that owned them and making their way into the hands of people like me who will give them a bit of a fresh face lift, bring them out of the antique world and into the modern living space we call home.

The first piece we went in search for was a pair of end tables for the bedroom. We searched a couple discount furniture stores but the things we did find were cheaply made and over priced. It took some convincing to get my boyfriend to start tagging along to the estate sales and start looking on Craiglist with me but we finally found these really cute and simple matching end tables one weekend during my hunting.

I got them both for $25, TOTAL!

What a steal right! They screamed old world charm though and he was a little skeptical that we could make these more modern when he saw the scalloped bottom and the antique drawer pull. I assured him that he wouldn't even recognize the tables when we got done with them.

We went to Home Depot and picked up some sand paper, paint brushes, and some black paint. We have a hand sander which is the saving grace for time on projects like this. I couldn't imagine sanding all the surfaces by hand.

I gave him the hand sander and we got to work sanding away the original finish and giving us a clean canvas to start with. After the first coat we let that dry overnight in the garage. We gave it a second coat the next day and let it dry two more days just to be safe.

The hardest part of this project was finding new drawer pulls that we liked because the tables we found used holes that were not measured in the majority setting. We settled on a simple brushed silver piece that really helped finish off the whole look. $1.99 each!

The end result was better then we could have anticipated!

These now sit proudly on either side of his bed, finally giving the lamps something to sit on and a bedside for me to decorate!

Clumsy Boots

I spend a significant amount of my disposable income on shoes. I want every pair to last me as long as possible.

The clumsy boots in my closet never like to stand up straight. The always flop over leaving the leather creased and misshapen. 

Well I found the perfect fix for this problem on one of my favorite websites, Pinterest. The goodies on there are never ending.

Boot shapers can be costly so this was an easy and cheap fix to my floppy boots.

Things You Will Need:

1 Pool Noodle

1 Hand Saw or Serrated Bread Knife (either work)  

My lovely pool noodles cost me $1.59 each at a pool supplies store.

Take a pool noodle
Stick it inside one of your floppy boots
Mark the noodle at the mouth of the boot to get the right height before cutting
Cut noodle where you marked it
Measure out a second matching length noodle to have a pair.
Place the cut noodles in each boot

 Done!

As you can see, mine were not perfect but they get the job done. 

This little trick helped to organize my boots on my new shoe rack as well!

Bottom of the Closet Black Hole

I recently realized that my shoes had started to go missing in the black hole that had become the bottom of my closet.

I gave in and ordered a shoe rack off eBay to help give some type of organization to the mess that was cussing morning delays in getting ready for work. The one I picked was just a simple canvas and piping set up.

It arrived in the mail in a lot of pieces...

I grabbed myself a large glass of wine and got to it. After staring at the directions for a good 15 minutes, it started to take shape.

I quickly figured out that the intended sizing of the shelves was not going to work with the type of shoes I own. It would be good for sneaker and sandals but not for boots or heels. So I used different size piping that was provided to make the shelves taller to fit all types of shoes.

After finding a good height for each shelf and a good overall height to still fit in my closet without crushing my clothes, I built myself a simple shelving unit to keep my closet in order.

 I must say my shoes are easily accessible and the right one is always with the left one :)