New life for old stuff. Conclusion.

I know I've been babbling a lot about projects I PLAN to accomplish.  With all my projects approaching in the coming months, I thought I would share with you a past DIY project.

As I mentioned in an earlier post, our current dining table is a rescued piece from my aunt's basement.  Around the time I was moving to my first apartment, my aunt was redoing her kitchen.  Her old dining table (most likely about the age of me) became banished to the basement along with the matching chairs.  I took the table, but abandoned the windsor chairs(not my style whatsoever).  With the finish of the table-top so degraded and damaged, its no wonder that my aunt felt it was time to replace it.  I purchased relatively inexpensive chairs from Target and had lofty plans to refinish the table to match their reddish mocha finish.

It took me almost 4 years, but just about a year ago, I found the time to take my first adventure into furniture stripping.  I couldn't be more pleased with the result!

Hopefully the new house will allow me the opportunity to show you some even greater transformations!

New life for old stuff. pt 2

Ok, so to talk about what I planned to talk about yesterday before I got distracted and went on a separate rant... We don't plan on buying much furniture right when we move to the new house, but a new TV stand is a necessity.  After scouring the furniture store website I found a fantastic, vintage-inspired stand at Pottery Barn picture below).

Now for a back-story before I can continue:

Our current apartment is the first floor of a house built around 1900.  It's been totally and completely gutted and updated with the exception of the basement.  When we moved in, we were given half the basement (divided from the other tenant's half by a wall).  In our half the basement was a pile of old furniture which our landlord told us came with the house when he purchased it.  Knowing I was an interior designer, he told us we could take whatever of it we wanted.  I gave the pile a quick once-over and saw only a few bland chairs from the 70s and headboard.

Flash to 2 years later:

My parents were up the other weekend for the home inspection and my mom, remembering my landlords offer of furniture, dragged me down to peruse the pile.  Lo and behold, tucked in the corner was a buffet covered in cobwebs and enough dust to write a novel in.  Giving it a quick wipe-down, we brought it upstairs.

It bears a surprising resemblance to the Pottery Barn TV stand I was drooling over.  It needs a bit of love and refinishing, but has potential to be our new TV stand.  I'll make the final determination once we get it to the new house, but its definitely coming with us!  If it is chosen to be our new TV stand, in addition to a gleaming new finish, it will receive shelves inside to house the X-Box, DVR, and audio receiver.  Fantastic vintage find that's been literally right under my nose for the past 2 years!

I have far too much swirling in my head right now!   A new house provides me too many opportunities for creativity.  In order to first organize my thoughts before organizing all my  worldly possessions, I created a list of all the projects I'm planning for the house.  I will cross-off items as I complete them and post all the fun pictures on here!

I also planned to include more in this post, but I'm sure I'm losing your attention by now, so stay tuned for Part 3 tomorrow!

*image from Potterybarn.com

New life for old stuff. pt 1

You'd think with all my spewing about antiques that I surround myself with them.  I grew up sleeping in an antique iron bed with an antique dresser in a house full of antiques or craftsman-inspired pieces.  My parents loved refinishing furniture and finding neat pieces at tag sales (or garage sales, or yard sales, or whatever you want to call them).  When I moved out on my own, I needed a change from the sea of beige and antiques that I grew up in- I bought mostly new things and refused to take mismatching hand-me-down furniture just to save a few bucks.  I ended up with a lot of nice things with no sense of history or true character. After moving into our current apartment, I did the same thing, but wanted to infuse the apartment with more character.  Some of the new pieces we bought were vintage-inspired, but still lacked the aura of true antiques.  Hubby and I created a music room out of the unused living room (we used the larger 'dining room' as a living room instead), but left it unfinished.  It housed our piano, Hubby's guitars and other random musical equipment.  I had a strategic plan for the room and painted the walls a turquoisey-blue with a satin stripe faux finish.  Hubby was skeptical about the paint, but I made him a believer!  The room was missing something.  It needed seating and we had a red chair in mind (to pull colors out of the funky area rug in the room), but refused to settle for just anything.  When a friend's aunt passed away, we were given the opportunity to pick from the unclaimed items before the sale of her house.  Sitting inconspicuously in a dark room were an antique red chair and setee the perfect scale for our space.  Our friend was thrilled that we took the pieces which were originally his grandfathers and he was happy to see them 'staying in the family'- we(Hubby) compensated our friend for giving us these pieces by making a sushi dinner for him and his family (yum).  Those pieces completed the room more than I expected.  They were the perfect vintage flare for an eclectic space.  Modern electric guitars on the wall, upright piano from the 40s, funky carpet and antique red seating.

It is through this room that Hubby and I discovered the style of design we both could agree on and enjoy.  We hope to carry the eclectic feel of the music room to the new house.

When I started writing this post, I intended to talk about a different piece of furniture, but got stuck on this tangent- oops.  So consider this part one of this post.  Part 2 to follow tomorrow.