70's Bar cart Redo

I went out on my first outing by my self today after being laid up for a week. Where did I go? The Salvation Army near my house where I recently found the Thomasville dresser that I am using for shoe storage and our new coffee table, you can see them here if you missed it. Today I did not buy anything. I am trying to live like the Amish until the wedding, plus I have so much stuff I should be working through that first. Plus Mikey says that the condo is really full now. There were two things that I considered.

1. Ceramic Bunny, It was not vintage like I though and I don't really decorate for Easter besides the wreath on my door, go big or go home, which happened to put this bunny back on the shelf.

2. 70ish Brass Rolling Cart (this is not it but similar)

{via}

The one I saw today was brass like this one, however the wheels were more generic and the handle was smaller and low rise. I want a table to go on the right side of the sofa. There have been several ideas about this. Before I saw the cart the plan was to make one with my childhood kitchen table legs that my mom gave me before they moved to Texas. It would be a simple rectangle with the shorter side facing out and the long line following the sofa. it would have a single small drawer for our current five remotes and one day one harmony remote. The top would be travertine to match the coffee table maybe even in a herring bone pattern. I would then find a vintage metal basket fix wheels to the bottom of it and put in rolled up blankets. 

 I was in a bit of a stew today thinking about all the work that has gone into and still needs to go into the dinning room chairs. To add to that stress I have only been working on four of them and have already logged seven or so hours and had help from Miss. Technically one of those chairs is not even for the dinning room; it is styled the same though so we can pull it out in a pinch and not have it look funny.

I find that whenever I am tackling a huge project that is taking FOREVER and I do not really have anything to show for it. After the seven hours I had put in and the two more I spent out there today I only have one chair that is almost ready to be painted. I mean primed, painted, and then put a poly topcoat on. Then I start lusting for a quick project that will give me something to post about. Re enter the cart.

I saw this cart a while ago and filed it because I love it. 

{Urban Outfitters}

So today I was thinking I could take out the glass inserts spray paint it hammered black, get some pallet wood or old fence posts cut them down fasten them together and put them where the glass would have been. Quick project, cute results. There would be some issues with this:

• I would not get to use my childhood table legs. Not only are they sentimental and sitting at that table with my mom I learned so many things, a lot of which I utilize in this blog. Secondly in taking the legs it made that table less useful to someone else, they won't be making the same kind of memories and I do not want to waste them. 
• Where would the remotes go?
• No more cute vintage basket, which I am really looking forward to. 

So I left it there, and I am really not having any regrets. The new plan is everyday this week, weather permitting, I want to spend at-least an hour in the garage working on those chairs. Hopefully by Saturday they will all be completely prepared and ready to go. I do have to work this weekend but that is irrelevant. I also want to finish preparing a silverware box that I bought a long time ago and get that finished this week. I also need to work on a pillow project that has been in my dinning room since early January. That is the new plan. 

Shoes Storage and a new Coffee table

I sometimes get a little punky after reading other blogs and seeing some of the amazing deals that they find. It makes me a little bitter when I see that for example Kristy over at A Little Bit of Sanity and A Lot of Chaos found a darling crystal chandelier at Goodwill for $6.99 it was not without a ton of elbow grease that she as able to turn it in to fabulous fixture for her closet. Meanwhile when I find individual crystals they are marked at $3. I had pondered last week on the way home stopping at the Salvation Army on the way home, I did not really feel like it however. It is not like the good stuff stays. So I went to check and I am so glad that I did. Do you remember one of my first posts was about my bafflement on what to do for shoe storage? Well I found a Thomasville dresser for $75. The tag said that it had just been put out on the floor that day. I wanted to buy it that exact second the craftsmanship was equisite dovetailed drawers wood burned branding and art deco hardware which I love even though it is brass but Mike is not fond of. I wanted his approval so I texted him and told me to call me on his way home so that we could go look at a few things. I was terrified that when we got back it would not be there, they do not hold and once you buy you cannot return. I have been working hard to create our space in the new condo, and I wanted his approval since this and the coffee table would be very prominent elements.

I took FOREVER for him to get home that day. Then we rushed over everything was still there Yay! I showed him the coffee table first:

This was the herringbone travertine tabletop that had me at hello...

If you remember I had been on the hunt for the perfect ottoman, however the times of the table and the substantialness of it, it is 44 inches only 4 inches less then our dinning room table when the leaves are not in it. 

I hate the color of the wood it is so seventies. I will strip and sand and then have Mike stain it black if you had not noticed the pictures of it at home on our rug already he agreed that it was wonderful and we should take it home it was $30 which it a pretty good price considering it is so solid. I love the line under the table and how it mimics the line of our dinning room table, which it will soon match even more. 

Then I brought him over to the dresser, he was unsure at first for a few reasons, he did not like the art deco hardware:

Which I think is fantastic, sure maybe some primer and paint if they were silver or black he might be more inclined to like them.

I still think that I will use these for the upcoming desk project maybe I can get some copper spray paint or have them plated to match the penny top. I always wanted that desk to have three drawers. Anyway with out any further delay the pieces de resistance:

I love the grain and while origionally I thought I would want to strip, sand and stain this black as well I love how it brings out the darker tones in the floor. Mike wants hardware that will match the entertainment center. So we will be on the look out. The left double doors have his shoes the right mine.

We just took the shoe dividers out of the generic white shoe holders that we had and put them in. Unfortunately right now they are a little to big to fit the way we want eventually we will cut them down and then they will fit lengthwise. 

First drawer games that Squabble box has five Scene it games in it. 

The second has some of my favorite flats. 

The third Dyson accessories. 

Bloggers day of Silence

For Josh and Midori.

Ding-dong the hutch is done

Remember this project?

Well it is finally, finally done. (See the process below)

First I stared to sand this. I even bought one of those handy sanders that claim to keep the sawdust in a bag. See how in the before picture this was inside. Because we had scared our wood floors TWICE brining it up I was not about to try and have it moved again. 

I started painting with those foam brushes as I had a million of them. I could not find my purdy brush it was on top of the dryer, why I put it there in the first place? And just to clairify we have a stacked washer and dryer, the dyer is taller than me, and not many things are. So I did not look there. I like to use what I have but after I broke 7 or 8 of those foam brushes and then did a coat with the purdy I realized how much time I had actually wasted. It probably took less time to to do the third coat of brown then the primer coat and the first two of brown. All of the paint I had in my collection the brown was Bitter Chocolate (790B-7) from Bear in eggshell that I have had for a while, I cannot even remember what I bought this for originally, I did use it on my last dinning room table that is now back with Annika, and I have used it on this hutch and the floating shelved that went inside. I felt pretty crafty for that as one of the glass shelves was broken. The floating shelves were from my room at my parent's house. Through the 2 moves after that the hardware was missing. So I put them on the back of the hutch so we could drill them in. Then I was able to use something that was not able to be used before . 

Our Purdy brush is not very pretty anymore, and we have only had it since last February. It has been though a lot.

Here was one of the steps along the way, this took many coats. I primed the whole thing and then there was three coats of brown and cream.

There were a few spots where the caning had popped up a little Gorilla Glue and they went right were they were suppost to.

Thank goodness by the time I had gotten to this part we had found the brush because making sure that I got in to every little square in the caning took a lot of work. 

It really looked great once it was done. 

The drawer had some issues and I wanted to store electronics in there so I wanted it to be soft but textured to make sure things would not just slide around. 

This was one of the place-mats that I had gotten when I had purchased the tropical bedroom set. You can see more of the motif here. I added the bits to the side so that it would be the same depth. 

Then I trimmed it out with indigo blue ribbon. 

The ribbon I had taken off some of our Christmas ornaments now that this blue is not part of our main color scheme. 

So this is the finished product. 

I put in plenty of our books which I covered in brown matte paper from the container store. I write the titles on them with brown sharpie so you can see them up close but not from afar. 

Then I filled it in with picture frames and other accessories. 

I am linking this to the following parties:

Piece of Work Wednesday at Primitive & Proper

Tuesday Treasures at My Uncommon Slice of Suburbia

Restored it Wednesday at Restore Interiors

Power of Paint Party at Domestically Speaking

Transformation Thursday at The Shabby Chic Cottage 

March 2011 at the DIY Club Inc

Free For All at Young and Crafty

Friday Flair Linky Party at Whipperberry

Remodelaholic's Anonymous 63 at Remodelaholic

Sunday Showcase Party at Under The Table and Dreaming

Think Pink Sundays No.2 at Flamingo Toes

My Perfect Wedding Location

There are always quiz's in magazines, something that I usually do not partake in. However I did take one from a Brides magazine and it was spot on:

State Park Amphitheater you say? Have you met my ceremony venue?

When it rains it pours, right now I wish I had an umbrella

So we all know the saying and it definitely applies to me right now. The last few weeks have been tough, and I know that it is not going to just get better right away but I have been counting the days down to the change. Then on Friday I found out that everything might be pushed back. WELL THAT DID NOT MAKE ME HAPPY. Actually it made me frantic, sad, mad, and made me cry a lot. My wonderful friend Melissa came over today to try and help distract me. So I would get my behind off the couch. That is how I have been spending too much of my time lately lying on the couch watching TV, hiding out waiting for things to change. Today Melissa came over and we were on the couch less that twenty minutes. Melissa is a true friend that I am very grateful to have, you can read more about some of the arduous tasks that she has done for me for our upcoming wedding here.

Miss came over and was uber patient with me it was not really ready for her to come over, or I guess I had just not gotten everything ready yet. So we kind of fumbled around for a while, getting things set up, bringing up the frame for the cork project (Which you can read about here even though the title is misleading as it stated that the project was coming soon and that was November and it is now March...) This project I really need to get a move on (kind of like my taxes) of course I want it done before the wedding, just like all the chairs for the dinning room, because let's face it a lot of people will come for your wedding and that might be the only time they see your house so it better be good. Plus I like things to be coordinating or complementary to each other and I had the best loot day a few days back (post soon to come) that resulted in a herringbone travertine round coffee table that stylistically tied in to our kitchen table. It will also bring in the herringbone pattern else where in the condo. Even stylistic elements need friends. Do you notice that my rambling is kind of like what Miss went through today?

So today we worked on stripping four chairs and four table legs from my childhood kitchen table. You can read the story of my collection of these particular chairs in this post. I did not take any pictures of the table legs yet and it will be a LONG time before that project ever gets done but that side sofa table will hopefully have a herringbone travertine top to coordinate with the coffee table. Stripper works on different surfaces in different ways:

Enter blue chair, we only worked on stripping one today, see how it is cracking and bubbling the paint? That is one thing that it can do. To see all of my blue chairs open this post, that second to last one is not making the cut for the new dinning room. So I showed Miss how to deconstruct the upholstery as I am saving it for another project, I will save the story of why it is so sentimental for that post since this one is SOOOO long and honestly not really close to being over yet. 

This chair invoked a chemical reaction that involved the stripper turning green, weird. I was trying to explain to Melissa how funny I thought this chair was. Originally it was black and I am pretty sure it was from World Market, then someone bought it and painted it cream. They did a really shotty job too. Not that I can claim to be above that because I bought it at a thrift store and proceeded to paint it black, without striping, sanding or priming it first. Which is very unlike me. Mikey always says that if a project is not super complicated then I am probably just not that intrested in doing it. I think I got this chair right after I had finished making over all of my blue chairs and I was probably really sick of all of that. I just found it humorous because it was black then someone painted it cream, to have me buy it and paint it black only to now be stripping it to be painting it cream. Does anyone else think that this is funny... anyone?

Oh and then there are the little rose chairs, you can see me post about them here, which is kind of a lie because one of the chairs went home with Melissa tonight so I really only have seven and I will need to find one more to make eight. Also the fabric that I am going to be using to upholster all of these incredibly glorious  cream chairs are on that post. You can also read about how gross/unloved/under appreciated they were by their previous owners in this post.

Well after doing three coats of stripper on each chair and really only completely finishing two. We decided that it was time for a change of pace. So we came inside to visit with Mike and make some almond butter in my blender. Melissa made her's just fine. I decided that when I was making mine I would take the top off, well I blended my tamper. BAD move. I Luver my blender as you can see me talk about it here, here, and here, there are also three other mentions under just blender but if you are really that interested you can put it in the google bar on this page. I am pretty sure this post is a record of some kind for the amount of links it has. Mike promply ordered me a new tamper for the blender. I love that man. But I was still fuming at my stupidity. 

This is when we decided to change our activity again, Melissa wanted some floating shelves for her living room and we had decided to go thrifting today and look. We went to four of my favorite (well nearby) stores.   One shelf was found at the last store and until that point we had only donated, no purchasing had occurred. To be fair the shelf she got was not floating it will need brackets but it was solid. I usually just look through the housewares, I never go through the clothes, Miss was looking for a sweater when she came across some seven for all mandkind jeans that were, wait for it $4.99. They looked like they might be close to my size so she gave them to me to try on and they fit like a glove. YAY! I also found a cute guess sweater for $3.49. So we were in pretty good spirits when we headed back to my place. Then we sat in the hot tub for an hour. 

When we were cleaned up I went to the kitchen to get some sparkley water only to find out it was not cold, at all. DUNT DUNT DUN... Tut tut it looks like (more) rain. I started feeling things in the fridge nothing was cold. Crap. We had been having some adjustment issues with our fridge freezer lately where it did not seem like it was cold enough in the fridge so we adjusted the setting and it seemed way too cold in the freezer so we adjusted that setting. Well now the freezer was on the lowest setting but was really cold and the fridge was on the coldest setting and it was warm. Just for added suspense I had a really large grocery shopping trip this week. Mike and I took everything out of the freezer and he realize that the vents that go from the freezer to the fridge were frozen solid. How that happens I am unsure. He took off the ice maker and the back of the freezer and this is what we found:

Umm, not good. Fast forward to an hour later after boiling water and a very tired blow dryer:

The good thing about the situation was I had been meaning to clean out the fridge/freezer for a while, which I finally did, we got rid of somethings that were past their prime and I made really good marinade out of two Asian salad dressings and orange marmalade. I also planned out the meals for the week based on using things we need to get rid of. I also found a jar of apple butter and found a recipe that I will make for tasty Tuesdays one of these weeks. For now I am going to try and got to bed, it is spring forward weekend so it is not 1:25am right now it is 2:25am I have to be up in 4.5 hours to get ready for work and I have not slept yet. Please let me sleep and if possible can tomorrow be sunny without the chance for rain?

50% off day at the Arc

I got these one day when they finally went 50% off at the ARC. Originally they were $1 and I felt like that was a little steep because these were not for me. Then they were marked down 50%. I think that they were maybe decorative plate frame, now they are a project for the circle room.

$1.30 day at Salvation Army

Ok I will admit, it was not really $1.30 day. What happened was that out of everything that I wanted only one thing had a price so they just charged me $1.30 for each thing I had found.

• A bunch of disco balls for a flower arrangement during the holidays. I love disco balls do you remember the disco ball Christmas ornaments that I made? Well I think these will accent those really well and they can still hang out for New Years.
• Brass Snowflakes.
• A teal and brown ceramic tray, I think it was originally a sushi tray. 
• A snow blanket.

I really suprised myself earlier in the year with a couple of other purchases from the ARC for the office. The At Once and Later brass clips and this three section divider. I used to loathe brass you can read my whole post about that here. I do not plan to paint any of these either. 

On a completely different note do you remember those cute little rose chairs that I got at the ARC? What you don't? Oh well that is my bad. Here is a reminder.

I got them for $7.99 each, here is a little detail:

Well I decided to start this project and as I started stripping away the layers I got irritated with how many layers there were...

I must say that that these have been sitting in my garage for a few months, and they may have been covered in some dust. However, I would NEVER (or expect anyone else for that matter) cover more fabric over dust and dirt. This was nas-ty. So gross. After I pealed back the many layers of fabric, batting and    plastic I decided that none of that had a chance at staying in our house. Sadly though neither will the wood on the bottom. Hopefully I can get new one's cut. I was frustrated but not completely derailed. I took them out to strip them I started with one and that is were I stopped after three coats of stripper that I scrapped off and it is still no where near being done. Then I stopped. Hopefully I will start off before another three months go by. 

Kitchen Sink Quiche

Kitchen Sink Quiche - Tasty Tuesday

I got the idea for this when Melissa and Christy were here for New Years. We had been cooking so much and had so many odd cooked vegetables left over. So I used some pie crust I had in the freezer that time I think that was the very last premade pie crust I ever used. Now I just use the sour cream pie crust I made in big batches and put in the freezer. I take one out the day before and then I roll it out.

This one I made for Mikey and I had bacon, the one I made with the girls did not. Cook all the kitchen sink stuff before adding it. 

For this one I added Rosemary potatoes and carmalized onions to the bacon but you can add whatever you have around, that is kind of the point. 

Then you add the cheese, and cover that with eggs it really depends on how much other stuff you have put in there, whisk them up one by one until you know how many you will need. I usually end up using five or six. 

Then we put it in the fridge and we can eat it every morning for a week. 

Bathroom Linen Closet Redo

There is a double door linen closet in our master bathroom it is one of the things that really drew me to the condo, the master bathroom and the kitchen. This linen closet is AMAZING! If I could change anything I would make it a little deeper. But it is better than anything I have ever had before. 

You can see that it was pretty messy, about wishing it was a little deeper, when Mikey folds the towels the doors won't shut, but how can you say anything when he is folding them. I also store all of my paint in there as we have an external garage and that does not work in Colorado. 

We started shopping at Sam's Club which is great but there is definitely a huge stock pile of toilet paper for just the two of us. I already took a labeler to a bunch of shoe storage to have like items together so I did not have to mess with that this time. 

I also have all of my CDs and Software in there which is kind of weird but since they are all already loaded on my Ipod or my computer they are all just long term storage anyway. 

So I refolded all of the towels, reorganized all of the cleaning products and filled the entire second shelf with toilet paper. 

All of those containers on the top shelf are empty.

On the other side there were sheets (see the West Elm duvets in there), extra products and paint on the bottom I had to put down some of that spongy drawer liner stuff because two of them have rust on the bottom. 

The top two shelves really did not change much. 

Then I added the little hook for our paint key because I am always loosing it.