Projects!

Ok, so one of the reasons I started this was to document and share my crafty projects. After I was on my way to buying this house, and therefore done with studying hundreds of for sale postings on the internet, my attention turned to decorating this beast (and I use "beast" in terms of size, she's already a very beautiful lady). I started perusing designspongeonline.com and craftynest.com for fun and cheap DIY (do it yourself) house projects. I've gotten some cool ideas, and thought I'd share my before and afters too.

The projects started before I moved in, as I had almost 2 months to be anxious about the fact that I was moving into a huge house with no furniture. Here are the first two creations, which were done over many hours of watching "The Wire" and "Firefly" at the old house.

Project 1: Decoupage Coffee table

I had subscriptions to Baltimore Magazine, Johns Hopkins Mag, Entertainment Weekly, and Wired. I hate throwing things away, so all of these had piled up for about 3+ months (which means over 12 issues of EW). I wanted to put all the fancy patterns and pics to use, then recycle the rest.

I found a listing for a coffee table on craigslist for $10 less than a mile away, so I picked it up immediately. I misplaced the "before" picture, but it was all birchwood legs, with a cheap looking laminate top, and was majorly scuffed and discolored.

After hours of gluing little pieces of magazine scraps to the surface with a couple of bottles of Elemer's Glue and a spackling spatula, applying a couple of coats of a spray laquer, and painting the legs black, voila!



I kept saying that if it was cool I'd be proud, but if it was tacky I could just resell on craigslist. Needless to say, I'm pretty proud.

Yes, Obama is well represented in the table, but its a sign of the times! Magazines love him!

Project 2: Glider chair

While visiting the parents house in June, I was practically glued to their glider chair in the kitchen/den. I found an ugly one on craigslist for $20 and made it a little more dodern and awesome with some nice fabric and black spray paint.

Before:

Achieved with a couple stitches into the original fabric and a bit of "No-stitch glue" because I am lazy. I think it really pops. Gregory loves sleeping on it too, but that is true about most surfaces in the house. :)


Next post: My Arizona Iced tea inspired bathroom.