Items for sale!

Indistrial styled tables, great as a coffee table or end tables!

Turquoise dresser, heavy duty piece of furniture.

Grey and white hutch, beachy dresser, chevron side table. 

Cheap Wall Art

I'm constantly looking for new, and unusual ways to decorate my walls. I love framed art but I'm a firm believer that art doesn't always come framed and there are other things that can be added to walls that make a statement. Plus, framed art is pricey! Even if you go the cheap route, and by cheap route, I mean Ikea, you're still going to be in for some dough, especially if we're talking about the whole house. So in my constant hunt for things that can be added to my walls and my irrepressible desire to be frugal I came up with this idea for the wall at the bottom of our stairs leading into the living room. In addition to being cheap I got to use LETTERS. May I just take this time to say I love letters. I would put letters up on every single wall of every single room. I won't but I would if I thought I could get away with it. It's probably a phase but what can I say, phases are consuming. And I'm still digging letters.

A Little Confession......

So, I have a confession.…..I hate recycling. I hate it so much. The only reason I even do it is because I’m afraid I’ll get in trouble with my husband if I don’t. And sometimes when I do skip it, I notice that he finds my un-recycled items and pulls them back out of the trash and separates them properly. Then I feel guilty and I hate feeling guilty (almost as much as recycling).  My lazy ass decided not to take the time to sort something out and then he had to do it for me and he could hold that over me later. And what is marriage if not a place to tally up the things you can hold over your spouse? Wait, that’s not what marriage is and anyway, that is not the point of this post. The point is, that I hate to recycle. It’s not so much the concept as it is the actual act. I hate separating my trash. Shouldn’t there be some sort of giant machine that does this by now? I envision it being some sort of large slide. It would sort and distribute trash appropriately, by pile, or bin, whatever.  Second, given that pretty much everything is recyclable now a days, why are we putting things in the recycling bin, shouldn’t there really just be a bin for trash and a separate container for the few things that aren’t recyclable? Wouldn’t that make more sense?  You see these are the questions that come to mind every time I put a toilet paper roll in the trash and realize it should come out. Now before you judge me too much, please note that despite hating it, I shall continue to do so. I mean, I care about our children’s children, and the ocean, and rainforests, and all of that. I just hate actually having to separate my trash.

Here’s the thing though…..I am a bit of a liar. Because really, what I really love, is saving furniture from the trash. Now that falls in to some other sort of category, except it doesn’t and the truth is that for all my talk, I am really nothing more that a furniture recycling addict. Which brings me to my final point, I love nothing more than saving a piece furniture that someone else has decided to throw away and turning it into something usable.Which is what we have here, a piece headed to the garbage, which now serves as my "all things front door" related holder.

So this is what it looked like when I picked it up off the side of the road:

Click below for finished product......

Mid Century Modern Dresser

I'm a little in love with anything mid century modern lately. I love the lines, the angles, and how modern the furniture can be without feeling cold. In a world where I live in a fantastic loft that over looks central park, my loft would be full of modern sleek lines and it wouldn't seem cold just fresh and hip. But I don't live in a loft. I live in Michigan and my house here would just look silly stocked full of contemporary pieces. So instead, I'll just use touches of modernism and I'll be sure to include mid centruy modern pieces as I am convinced they can fit into anyone's decor.

I also love that there seems to be an endless supply of pieces out there that people are trying to get rid of. They're at garage sales, consignment stores and maybe even a few lawns on trash day. With easy to find pieces it gives me the opportunity to try all sorts of ideas. Sometimes, it's hard to make a decision on how to redo a piece but if I know there's something similar out there, I'm less daunted by that task knowing I can always find another piece to try my other ideas on.

Anyway, I knew exactly what I wanted to do to this piece as I went looking for something like it for our master bedroom. So it wasn't hard to find, and it was pretty easy to redo as well.

Here's the dresser before:

Click below to see the finished product: