Tag Archives: Goodwill

Round but Petite: Painted Coffee Table

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Have you ever had one of those projects you were so excited to get started on and completed, and surprisingly started it and completed it in the same month? And then gotten so excited about sharing the project with all of your loyal blog readers (Hi Mom!), in the same month the project was started and completed in? Yeah, I only got the first thing done. So here a year later, I shall share with you the saga of the round coffee table.

You see, I’d been looking for the perfect round yet petite coffee table to place in the petite but not round living room. I had been using an old Lane cedar chest to act as a coffee table, but with a dog that was oddly curious about the blonde veneer (she enjoyed the occasional lick) and sweating glasses of sweet tea it was time to find something a little more durable and less cherished. I toyed with the idea of using  the ever trendy ottoman in place of a coffee table, but that didn’t quite work out as planned, a tray does not provide enough hard surface for our needs. We spend a lot of time in the living because, well, that’s where the TV is, and where ever we spend time we are going to be doing little projects that require a hard surface. So, I knew we needed a true coffee table, one that could with stand sweating sweet tea glasses, and even tho I don’t like to think about it, dogs that enjoy tasting the furniture (“Sharona, wipe!” Don’t ya miss Monk?).

Last year around this time, I was perusing through our local Goodwill and came across this beauty for 9.99.

Needless to say, since she’s in my backyard, I was all over that deal like Goldie fur on black denim. But, the finish was a little too dark, as in the exact same color as my couch.

See…

So, I needed a little contrast. Plus, I really wasn’t diggin’ the fake wood top and the scratched up legs.

 

I could have made it work, but honestly I just wanted to experiment with painted furniture. So, I read up on different techniques, I found that Centstational Girl has some good pointers on these types of things. You may know a lot more about this than I do or have another resource you found more helpful, but in my case her simple pointers were a life saver.

First, I decided that since the top of the table was super shiney, I would need to prime it before painting.

Then once the primer was dry, I painted my precious with Behr Premium Paint in Gardenia White semi-gloss. It’s a nice white, not too white, but not heavy in the blues or the pinks, it’s juuuust white. (Qwiet I’m hunting wabbit!) To keep from having those pesky roller or brush marks on this piece I used Floetrol. Essentially floetrol helps to sort of thin the paint, it makes for a slightly longer drying time but it’s worth it.

To apply the paint, I used a small trim brush for the sides and the legs, and a small sponge roller for the top. Nothing fancy, I know the experts say you should use good quality tools, but I’m too lazy to wash out brushes and rollers, so I pick mine up at the dollar store. Once I’m done painting, the brushes and rollers go away. Not exactly green, I know.

Anywho, I love how it turned out! Did I mention I finished this project in the fall?


Let’s just pretend I’m ahead of the game and this picture was taken more recently than a year ago.

Naw…I can’t lie,here’s how she looks now…

Here’s a closer view, also I just wanted to show off my yellow cow again.

The coffee table has held up pretty well over the past year, there are a few knicks and scratches. But that’s a given seeing as how much this table gets used, plus I didn’t bother to seal it with a latex paint sealant. I may repaint it, and  use that sealant to further protect from those knicks and scratches, and also to help with the stickiness. Latex paint has a little bit of a sticky feeling at first, so if you’re like me and can’t wait a few days for the paint to fully cure, a sealant would prevent decorative trays from sticking to your newly painted coffee table. Not that I’ve ever had to pry a decorative tray off of a newly painted coffee table…

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Thrifting Thursday:Chair Twins

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In this installment of Thrifting Thursday on a Friday(click here for the first thrift-centric post), I wanted to brag about a pair of handsome chairs I scored at my local Goodwill. I won’t lie, I purchased these chairs last summer, as in almost a year ago. And sadly, I have done nothing with them except shampoo the dickens out of them. But I have tried them “on” in just about every room in the house. I still have no idea where to put these beauts, maybe I just need to take the plunge and finally change them up into something I really love. Oh yeah, you probably want to see what I’ve been jabbering on about. Here are the twins:

Please ignore the dirty grey floors, these were taken in my sunroom which is patiently awaiting a makeover. Alongwith the rest of the house.

I love their shape, and their size, they are compact but big enough to hold a large-ish girl like myself. Granted, they aren’t the type of chairs you really want to curl up in and read War and Peace. They seem to have a slight whoopie cushion quality to them, but minus the rude sound. And were pretty dirty when I brought them home from Goodwill.

See…

Yeah, that dark stuff on the back of the chair is not a shadow, it’s dirt. I suspect these guys lived in a garage for a while before finally being donated, or something died on them (eek). So, I pulled out my trusty shampooer and shampooed the daylights out of these little guys. Most of the dirt came out and they smell a lot better now. But after a year of holding on to these little chairs, I’m still not sure what I want to do with them. I originally wanted to paint or re-stain the exposed wood frame, and then reupholster them in a modern fabric. Sorta like this:

Source was Pinterest, which was originally pinned by another user from a Craigslist posting. Sorry, I tried to find a better and more linkable example but this one was too perfect.

The current upholstery is a floral velour that has seen better days, the print is pretty and I am sure the fabric was nice when it was new in 1971, but I’m still not sold on it. Since the current upholstery is kind of shedding and isn’t quite my cup of tea, I played around with some upholstery fabric I had laying around.

I love the boldness, but it may be too bold and too much of a statement to be able to be used in other rooms. I’ve got some white upholstery grade fabric that might work well, but with two dogs in the house that shed and get on the furniture, I’m a bit hesitant to use it. Any piece in my house needs to be able to take a beating, and tolerate two shedding dogs.

So after a year, I’m still stuck on what to do with these guys. Maybe they just aren’t my style at all, or maybe the whoopie cushion-ness of them makes them too uncomfortable for me to even want to keep them. But since they were so cheap, 9.99 each, the cheapskate in me doesn’t want to let them go. The Nester preaches against having fear when it comes to decorating or even re-doing furniture. Afterall, she states that it doesn’t have to be perfect to be beautiful. Oh, how right she is, maybe I will finally take the plunge and do something creative with my chair twins.

What would you do if you had these chair twins in your possession? Would you reupholster them? Paint them? Or simply clean them up and enjoy their vintage quality?

womp-womp

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It’s been so long since I last posted I don’t know if I’ll be able to put words into sentences. But let’s give it a shot shall we?

I will give you fair warning, this post probably won’t make much sense and will have abosolutely NO structure. So, if you enjoy a well rounded post, then I suggest you stop reading here. But if you don’t mind my ramblings and my random photos, then sit back and enjoy the show!

Recently, I’ve been trying to attack a few of my smaller projects. You know, those projects that don’t really take a lot of time, and really don’t make a huge impact. But they still make me feel good for doing them, because darn it, I’m gonna do something fun!

I saw this idea on Pinterest to make your own murcury glass lamps. I love the look of these, but I hate the price tag, so the thought of making them myself out of cheapie lamps was super appealing. The instructions suggested using Krylons Looking Glass spray paint and  lots of water, but I being the independent rule breaker I am, thought I’d try using a metallic spray paint.

Here’s my set-up:

A $3 Goodwill lamp, and her $3 cream brother in the background. And here’s pinky after my little experiment:

Imagine a big wop-wop sound effect as I studied the results of my labor. The process, is pretty simple, you drench the lamp in water with a trusty spray bottle, then spray it with your spray paint before it dries. It may have worked better if I had started out the with the correct product in the first place, and maybe covered the original pinky mauve with another color before water drenching step. So, I’ll be purchasing some Krylon Looking Glass spray paint to try this project one more time. Hopefully, I’ll end up with results that are similar to this:

Aside from getting a spray paint headache, I’ve also been playing around with art in the living room. Over the past year I’ve acquired quite the collection of discarded art from various thrift stores. Some of them are originals and pretty darn good, others aren’t so good, and still others are prints. I’ve decided I may need to be more discerning about what I bring home, and where I place my works of art.

Here’s my living room art wall way back in August of 2011:

Ignore the girls on the sofa, this is a recycled picture from this post. Honestly though, this is a typical scene in my living room, dogs sleeping on the couch and crooked pictures on the wall.

Here’s my little art wall last week before I started tweaking with it again:

Sorry for the poor white balance, it was night time and I didn’t want to wait until I had better lighting. But back to my art wall, as you can see, I’ve got way too many photos up here that really aren’t connected and brought together the way they should be. So, I took them all down except for the one that I knew I wanted to keep on that wall.

Then after fiddling for a while I came up with this:

Now it looks too sparse, and I’m not really sold on the two yellow bird paintings anymore. It might be time to do some art purging. Back to the drawing board on this one too. Chalk this one up to another womp-womp moment.

Hopefully, this weekend I’ll get a chance to tackle these womp-womp projects and make them into woot-woot projects!!

Have a great weekend folks!

Estate of Mind

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With the planning of an “event” that still hasn’t taken place, I haven’t really set aside time to post all of the wonderful things I have planned to talk about.  There’s a lot happening at the Yellow Casa, aside from the big event slated to happen soon (I won’t be sharing a date until after the big event, everytime a date is announced something happens and causes us to change the date. Call me supersitous but I’m not willing to postpone that most special festivity again.), we’ve got Christmas time coming up.

I love Christmas, the smells, the sounds, but more importantly, I love “reason for the season”. It’s truly a time to celebrate Christ, and His wonderous love.

Recently the Sweetie and I hit up the local Goodwill and various estate sales. Here’s a glimpse into some of my Goodwill Hunting and Estating adventures.

First up, milk glass bowls.

These beauties are from Anchor Hocking, and according to e-bay and other “reliable” sites, they could be from the late 1940’s to the mid 1970’s. I have a hunch they are the ’70’s variety. But aren’t they cute with their little handles? And at .59 a piece I just couldn’t pass them up. They are perfect for that late night bowl of Lucky Charms , not too little but not too much. However my jeans would say otherwise.

Next we have the cheese dome.

I’ve really been jonesin’ for one of these. It’s small,  just perfect for a little pretty, and it only set me back $3. For fall, I put one of my many ceramic gourds inside. Much to my brother’s irritation, he couldn’t understand why I would want such a small “cake plate” and then not put cake in it, but a fake pumpkin.  Boys, sometimes they just don’t understand “pretties”.

And some more milk glass.

Have I mentioned how much I love milk glass? Well, I really love milk glass and I seem to be building quite a collection of it. This candy dish was too pretty to pass up. At $5 it seemed a little high to me, but I loved it too much to put it back down. And so, it sits on our coffee table, looking pretty, I even put some Christmas peppermint in it.  So Christmas-y!

And of course, the Sweetie and I can’t seem to leave a yard sale, estate sale, or thrift store without picking up a vintag-y looking book.

This was one of the Sweetie’s finds, he loves books with more than one story in them. So, this fit the bill perfectly for him.

Me and my shaky hands, makes for some pretty fuzzy pictures. This one isn’t as old as some of our other finds, it was last copywrited in 1960. Still a pretty cool book for a buck.

Here’s another fuzzy book. This one was one of my finds.

Alfred Hitchcock’s “Stories for Late at Night”, oooh spoooky! I love the cover of this one. Can you count how many Alfred’s appear?

Aside from estate sale-ing, and Goodwill hunting, we’ve been doing some of this:

Spying on the neighborhood, from the couch. Everything is better when done from your own comfy sofa.

Annie dog especially loves being sneaky about spying on the neighborhood, while lounging on the sofa.

And since the Christmas season is upon us, the Sweetie and I have been decking the halls of our casa.

More to come on Christmas at the yellow casa. We are still working on decking the halls. If we can make time in between our junk shopping hobby this weekend!