The Bargain Life

recently i’ve been thinking a lot about tables. crazy, i know, my mom thinks so too. our current dining room set belongs to my roommate, so i’ll probably need to get my own this May. it can’t hurt to start planning early, right?

i envisioned a dark wood top, mahogany perhaps, on a base out of square metal piping. the base of the Torsby table from Ikea is exactly it.

but i would want to replace the top with a wooden one. i got all inspired on that ground when i went to Rockler Woodworking with my dad and some some gorgeous exotic woods:

zebrawood (left), and wenge (right)

i also saw samples of Transtint dyes on curly maple that caught my attention since they come in colors like red, purple, green, blue, etc. unlike washes, the color is vibrant but you can still see the wood grain beneath. these would look infinitely prettier than paint.

the base of the table would also coordinate with the Klubbo tables that i want. i would buy them now except that they don’t match our current living room decor at all.

Recently I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about design projects, but not much actual crafting. partly that’s because all my works in progress are at my house in Atlanta. the first of these works in progress is a pair of chairs that I got when my boyfriend moved out of his house. the pant is chipping and the fabric sucks, but they have the potential to be cool with some spraypaint and reupholstery.

I’ve been working on scraping and sanding off the old paint. I went out on a limb and bought a can of bright red rustoleum spray paint, but I couldn’t find a fabric that looked good with it and I realized that it doesn’t match my decor at all. so i’ve nixed that idea and I’m back at start design-wise.

I think I’m going to go with “Harbor Blue” paint:

unfortunately most fabric stores don’t sell big bold prints. most of the fabrics are for quilting or clothing, and the upholstery fabrics are all boring florals or stripes. so that leaves me with Ikea and the internet.

here are my favorite fabrics from Ikea, all at $6-8 a yard:

as far as the rest of the internet, that’s a huge world of choices. I like the idea of making them match the sideboard/tv stand I made (pics here). this fabric is dead on:

there are a few other fabrics with the blue/brown color scheme that I also like:

(ok, so that last one’s not brown)

I’m quite overwhelmed by all of the fabulous choices.

I’ll edit this later with more details on the process, but right now I just want to show off. I got this pair of dressers for $5 at a yard sale, mended them, covered them in Target wrapping paper, and attached some Ikea capita legs. I envision using them as a sideboard when I have a dining room that’s actually used for entertaining. Right now they’re in the living room holding the tv. I’m really happy with the result, though I’m worried about their durability.

I just got back to my family home in New Hampshire and I plan on staying for about a month, so there won’t been any more furniture projects for a while.

I bought this “kitty skyscraper” at Target last week. It was $30, and I contemplated for a while whether it was worth it, but in the end my ridiculous love of cats beat out my cheapness. I’ve loved cats my whole life, but couldn’t ever have one (mom’s allergic and dad hates them). Now that I finally have cats I’m obsessed. I am 21 and already a crazy cat lady.

While I’m showing off cat furniture, here is my cat Ted’s little corner.
Ikea Bastis tent – $6.99
Lova bed canopy – $14.99
and usually there’s a $2.49 Irma Blanket in the bottom of the tent.
Ikea has some seriously adorable pet furniture. They just introduced cat tunnels that match the tents. I would have picked one up last time I was in the store, but they were out of stock.

I figure I’ll start things out by posting the project I’ve most recently completed. This is a white laminate dresser that I got of of craigslist last summer for $10. I hadn’t had any plans for it except to replace it with a better dresser (Ikea Hemnes maybe?) when I had the spare cash.

My initial vision was to decoupage it with torn up newspaper, but I was concerned about it yellowing, so I used text from magazines instead. It’s just torn up magazines and matte finish Mod Podge. I left the sides and top white to keep it from looking too busy. I could replace the drawer pulls, but I don’t want to put much money into poorly-made laminate furniture.

(eek, so messy!)