Author Archives: CT

Clown Car Thrifting

Posted on September 28, 2012 | 1 comment

The last Wednesday of every month is a huge 1/2 off sale at our nearby Value Village.  A lot of times I will avoid going in on these days because it draws in all the riff raff and the store gets torn to shreds.  However now that I’m on the prowl for my booth/parking space at the Green Shag Market Parking Lot Sale on October 20th, I though maybe I should stop in on my way home from work. . . .

And I found a little chair I couldn’t resist.  It was tucked under a large dining room table so you couldn’t really see it.  I pulled it out and started marching my way through the store like a lion tamer with the chair legs out in front of me to clear the way.  The check-out was so slammed with three tired looking cashiers tending to the long lines of bedraggled customers.  Thanks to my little vinyl chair, I had a place to sit while I waited in line (although I looked a bit ridiculous).  But here comes the kicker of the story — after dragging this chair through the store and waiting with the hordes to buy it — I couldn’t get it to fit in the car!!!  Me, a person who does space planning professionally.  It was a sad, sad sight.  I tried it in the front seat, upside down and backwards and it would have fit — except for our little car has a dead seat motor and I couldn’t move the seat back the HAIR it would have taken.  I got desperate and tried shoving it in the back seat to no avail.  Finally I called the husband who came to my rescue (which was no small feat because he was on call and had to bring his whole work laptop in the car after activating and then crashing and then restarting his mobile hub.)

I tackled my new little chair last night with some vinyl cleaner, Simple Green stainless steel cleaner and aluminum foil and now it looks great.  I’ll try to get some pictures this weekend of its shiny new look.  My original plan was for it to go to the Green Shag sale but I’m kind of tempted to keep/hoard it for myself.

Is anyone else in STL going to the FORM show tomorrow?  Here’s their blurb/description: ”

FORM is an annual contemporary furniture, functional object, architecture and design show. FORM is presented by The Luminary Center for the Arts as a forum for exceptional designers to showcase their work, connect with a community of other designers and sell directly to supporters.“

Sounds interesting, right?  Maybe I’ll see you there!  Cheers – CT

1 Comment

Posted in Furniture, Thrifting

Weekend Update & “Big News”

Posted on September 24, 2012 | 3 comments

Hey y’all.  Did you have a good weekend?  Was it sunny and brisk fall weather where you were?  Are you guys ready for some “Big News”?  Well hold on to your hat, it’s coming . . . First, the back story.   I went through a time warp this weekend and got twice as much project stuff done while also getting out to eat and seeing family too.  I wish every weekend could be so amazing.

Weekend update #1:  I turned 32.  Yikes.  Not really yikes.  I like where I am in my life.  The plus of having your birthday fall on a weekend is that it becomes a whole birthday weekend!  JT took me to Farmhaus on Saturday night for dinner.  The food was delicious.  There were little green tomatoes in the succotash that were mind blowingly awesome.  Like little vegetable candies or something.  I also need to mention that JT grilled tofu steaks for us on Friday night that was one of the best home-cooked meals I have had.  Ever.

Then the whole shebang rounded up on Sunday for brunch at Lola with my mom.  We had beermosas which are getting added to my brunch repertoire immediately.  Picture a good beer like Blue Moon with a nice smooth orange juice (no pulp).  It does sound a little weird but tastes great and lets you drink beer in the morning.  Lola had some great live music (trombone and guitar player doing some old-timey stuff and jazz, the perfect pairing with brunch). 

There were also gifts but I’ll post about those later . . .

On to Weekend Update #2: Projects.  Hang in there, I’m saving the “Big News” for last. . .  This weekend saw some big progress on the basement closet I mentioned on Friday . . .

and I got brave and defaced our fireplace during the Emmys . . .

Longer posts to follow on these two when we have some nice after shots. 

Now on to the “Big News”!!! (No Mom I am not pregnant.)

Mark your calendars for October 20th as there will be a Living Analog booth at the next Green Shag Market parking lot sale!!  I will finally be able to clear my basement of all its hoarded furniture in one fell swoop.

Not only that but I also poked around the thrifts and a few estate sales this weekend and dug up a few things that will also make their way to the sale.

A Haskalite serving tray, Harmony House clock and a matched pair of Carrera marble bookends with the old Famous & Barr sticker still attached on the inside.  However all was not smooth sailing in the world of thrifting.  Friday night I swung by St. Vincent de Paul and spotted this little guy.

(Bad iPhone picture as I sized it up).  The drawer was stamped “American of Martinsville” and it reminded me of my Paul McCobb secretary/bar.  But there was no price tag as it turned out another lady had already scooped it up (along with a bunch of other stuff.  Thrift store fail.  I think I missed out on a good one.

And all that happened in one weekend!  Just thinking about all that we eating/celebrating/building/painting/cleaning/shopping that we did makes me worn out.  Now to snooze until Friday and then do it all again!

3 Comments

Posted in Around the house, D.I.Y., Furniture, Miscellaneous Diversions, Thrifting

Soon to be one less disaster area in the basement . . .

Posted on September 21, 2012 | 2 comments

I haven’t posted any pictures of the basement on this here blog because I didn’t want to scare all you nice folks away.  In one corner of the basement (under our bedroom),  the previous owners “finished” off a room and added a walk-in closet.  I say “finished” loosely because there are no doors, no flooring beyond painted concrete and the ducting is attached with duct tape.  Although now that I type this, maybe that is the purpose for duct tape.  This larger closet was coming in pretty handy because the upstairs closets are all teeny-tiny in the style of the 1940s.  But then there was a leak or something in the mechanical stuff on the other side of the closet wall and I noticed one day my closet was smelling funny (and thus my clothes) . . . and moldy drywall was discovered and quickly torn down.

So now we’re here:

And we’ve been here for a while (One or two years?  Who’s counting anymore . . .)  My clothes have been patiently hanging on one of those mobile hanging racks and they want to go back home. 

But there’s good news — (insert drumroll) as an early birthday present,  my father-in-law is coming over tomorrow to help the husband hang the pegboard and some other goodies to put me back on the path to a functional closet.  Yay!  This may put me close to completing one more thing from my 2012 New Years Resolutions . .  Crazy. As always, updates to follow!

2 Comments

Posted in Around the house, D.I.Y.

Fireplace Dilemma

Posted on September 17, 2012 | 9 comments

So I know I’m supposed to be in the basement working on all my hoarded chairs, but I keep looking at our sad little fireplace and wondering what to do with it.  Especially now that we have been flung into cooler weather, an evening fire sounds kind of nice.

Our fireplace is cast concrete with different colors in it  (red, buff and green just like my sorority . . . )  which match the colors in the stained glass transom.  However this poor thing has seen better days.  When we bought the house it had a horrible brass-n-glass fireplace surround covering up the whole front of the fireplace.  We took that off a few years ago and hauled it to the Habitat for Humanity Restore.  It left a big (permanent) stained and sooty mess behind though.

When we were getting our concrete kitchen countertop installed, I spoke with the fabricator about options for our fireplace.  He did have some stains he could use on it but he said they would have to be dark stains because he couldn’t fix the real stains (soot and ash) that have leached into the concrete.

So, I’m wondering . . . do I dare paint it?  Here’s a little Photoshop magic for your consideration.

White?

Grey?

Black?

None of the above.

What’s your vote?  I’ve seen a lot of brick fireplaces that are painted (usually white) quite successfully.  I googled around and found some scary images of painted stone fireplaces but I couldn’t quite find any that match my situation which is not brick and not quite stone . . . . Hmmm.

P.S. Grey is out.

9 Comments

Posted in Around the house, Design Diversions

A little Friday Fun

Posted on September 14, 2012 | 1 comment

Hey everyone.  It’s TGIF which from henceforth will be an acronym for “Thank God I’m Fabulous”.

And for a little Friday funnin’, here’s a photo I shot while we were on vacation in Clarksdale, Mississippi earlier this year.  It is the front porch of  Ground Zero Blues Bar, photographed from the car as we zoomed around all three blocks of downtown.

Have a great weekend y’all and whatever you do don’t make your mamma cry.  Or write on your sofa.  Cheers – CT

1 Comment

Posted in Furniture, Miscellaneous Diversions

Another Project?

Posted on September 12, 2012 | 4 comments

Alright y’all.  I’m done pouting about my Dream House.  Maybe.  No really, I put my big girl pants on and started another project. 

On two separate occasions I found a pair of these chairs in the alley (put out by someone who was de-hoarding only to be re-hoarded by me).  So along with the MCM walnut chair, I have another project in motion to bounce back and forth between.  I was planning on painting them white except for the bottom five inches or so of the legs (which would be left natural).  This plan derailed when JT pointed out we weren’t keeping them, they’re going to the “list”.  He thought Craigslist browsers of our antiquated ass-backwards town might not appreciate my design sensibilities and he’s probably right.  So instead I’m going to work on doing a light restoration.  It won’t fix everything (one has the letter “r” carved in the seat) so they’ll still be a little rustic but that look seems to be pretty popular-ish. . . so we’ll see.  I’ve started in on two of the rougher ones and it’s looking pretty good although I need to get them out of the basement and into some natural light for Round Two to make sure they’re not streaky.

In unrelated news, here’s a cute baby bunny JT unearthed while mowing the backyard over the weekend (it was really tall – the yard, not the rabbit.)  He took his time hopping off but seemed to get used to his legs and made it out through the fence and safely away from our dogs.

Look at his little ears!!  (Pretty much every animal gets a male pronoun with me.  Is that normal?)

4 Comments

Posted in Around the house, Furniture, Thrifting, Yard Work

Dream House

Posted on September 9, 2012 | 7 comments

Well, in a fit of frustration the other night that our house didn’t have enough space for a good rehearsal/recording/band space, I took to the interwebs in search of more square footage.  And then I found our dream house.  A little more room and an MCM pedigree.  A house I could easily picture us living in for the next 30 years while lovingly restoring/updating every last inch.

We made a fatal mistake.  Not only did I ogle it online, we contacted the realtor and went and saw it yesterday.  It needs a lot of work but I’m in love.

And even though it’s not that expensive, it’s out of reach.  I’ve alluded to it before but I’m saying it now.  Our finances are not where I thought they would be at this point in my life.  Due to bouts of unemployment for both the husband and myself, car repair bills, vet bills and just everyday spending, we’ve managed to wrack up a good bit of credit card debt.

We finally have gotten organized and started to take control.  After reading Suze Orman’s “Young, Fabulous and Broke” (of which we are maybe only the broke part), some meetings with our financial planner and also meeting with a non-profit debt counseling service, we will have one of the credit cards paid off at the end of the month.   With a big chunk left to pay down, I don’t really see any way we can get into that MCM house of my dreams anytime (realistically) within the next two years.

As a next step we have decided to sell our baby, “Something Else”.  She’s a 1966 Ford Fairlane 2 door sedan that has been garnering cobwebs in our garage.  The Craigslist ad is here and there’s a YouTube ad here.

We’ll miss “Something Else” (so named after an Eddie Cochran song) but unfortunately the timing wasn’t quite right.  I bought her as JT’s 30th birthday present a few years ago and really an undertaking like her would be more suitable for us in our retirement years.

I’m not writing this post for sympathy although if there are any empathizers out there, I’m with you.  More I thought I would post this up as a reality check.  For the last year or so I’ve been buying a lot of new things for around the house and that is coming to an end.  We’ve made a commitment to bunker down and finish this credit card debt up once and for all.  On the good news flip side, I’ve dedicated myself to finishing up all the 500 projects I’ve amassed in the basement (like the MCM walnut chair I posted about the other day — it’s been down there since 2007!) And as much as we love our little brick bungalow, a little more square feet in an MCM dream will be like the light at the end of the tunnel.  Hopefully when the time comes we’ll be able to find something like it.

7 Comments

Posted in Fairlane

Basement dweller soon to see the light

Posted on September 6, 2012 | 2 comments

This self-imposed bathroom deadline (that I didn’t quite meet) got me to thinking . . . maybe these deadlines/goals/whatever you want to call them could be used to help me finish up all these pesky little projects that I always start and NEVER FINISH!  So September is bringing a new project/goal/deadline.

This chair:

Purchased in 2007.  Yup, 2007 and festering in the basement.  With matching ottoman all for the low,low price of $30.

Poor thing hasn’t seen the light of day for five years.  That should be illegal – chairs have feelings too. 

So this is my September project: MCM Chair & Ottoman Restoration.  Here’s what it needs:

1) Tung oil frames (they are sanded to bare wood currently)
2) New straps like we did to the Baumritter chair
3) New Upholstery!  — This is the step I’m a little nervous/excited about.  Not only am I going to make a box pillow cover with welting, I’m going to tackle zippers too!!!

Step One is already underway and the fumes are beginning to drift up to the main floor. . . .

2 Comments

Posted in D.I.Y., Furniture, Thrifting

Baumritter “Man Chair” updates

Posted on September 4, 2012 | 9 comments

The $13 Man’s Chair in Living Analog’s living room got a little bit of a spiff up.  The straps that the seat cushion sat on were permanently warped down, down, down and they were old.  So old that they no longer had any flex and were now hard, brittle and flaky.  Time for new.  Right Shenanigan?

Did you break one?  No worries.  I turned to my trusty old friend Amazon and ordered this black webbing.  Then JT wrestled with the chair (it rocks so it was kind of hard to hold it in place) and staple-gun strong-armed in the new straps.  Much better.

The chair also had a bunch of finish runs and blobs.  I decided to try out the Howard’s Restor-a-Finish since I had seen it work so many wonders on Mr. Modtomic’s blog.

And wonderful it was.  We picked it up from the paint and stain aisle at our nearby Home Depot.  I just grabbed the first one I saw and it worked out but if you try this one at home be sure to check — the Howard’s Restor-a-Finish comes in different colors depending on the wood finish you’re working with.

So we’re back to sittin’ pretty.

Next up for this guy will be upholstery.  But he’s low on the list — first I have to do the Danish Daybeds I have languishing in the basement. And another project in the basement has also been started . . . .

But if and when Man Chair does get new upholstery, I’m thinking a leather/vinyl might be nice since our leather sofa is going bye-bye soon.  Something like this . . . but maybe in white?

Image via KRRB.com

Enjoy your short week everyone!  Cheers – CT

9 Comments

Posted in Furniture, Thrifting

It’s September. Bathroom reveal day has arrived.

Posted on September 1, 2012 | 4 comments

First, cue the music.

03 The Day Is Coming

Okay.  Now let’s take a look back shall we?

I don’t have before before pictures of the bathroom’s state when we first bought the house but even our first stab at the bathroom was a little lackluster to say the least.

Kinda boring.

Not very functional.

Small.

Small we couldn’t change (well unless we blew out the wall and took over one of our two bedrooms but that hardly seems worth it.)  Instead we upped the ante on function and storage.

Here’s some “after” views from the hall.  Remember this is Phase One — Phase Two and Three will include a new floor, new toilet, vanity top, faucets and shower retiling.  Phase One was more the lipstick on the pig if you will.

The dark color on the walls and ceiling has made the space much more dramatic.   I also raised the shower curtain up to just below the soffit.  The curtain I snagged at Target for $10 and then added a dark, grounding band to the bottom.

Want some more?

The clunker shelf was removed and in its place we put in not one, not two but three acrylic shelves from The Container Store (aka organizational heaven).  They store so much but hardly take up any visual weight like the old clunker.  And while they look decorative and pretty, they also hold a lot of our daily use items like cotton balls, extra toilet paper and even the hairspray.  Don’t see hairspray?

It’s hiding in the vase I faux mercury-glassed at the last Stitch ‘N Bitch.  This was an item we had a hard time storing before the renovation.  We kept it in the giant medicine cabinet before but it just barely fit and sometimes if you pushed on the mirror or shut the cabinet door too hard, you would hear the hairspray hiss out and spray all over the cabinet.

Now for the one “wah wah” moment of this light renovation.

No mirror yet.  The new light fixture is still waiting patiently to go in.  However one good thing we did to increase the function of this bathroom was to add a hand towel ring (picked up for $7.99 on my last Ikea run) by the door.  Previously the hand towel hung from the bar under the clunker shelf.  When you washed your hands, you had to drip your way over the stainless steel trash can, and dry off next to the GFCI outlet.  Now you just turn towards the door, hands still dripping only on the sink top, dry off and you’re on your way.  Much better.

The one downside of giving myself a one month deadline on an unplanned project was I didn’t have the funds set aside to do everything right away (hence the delay on the mirror.)  We did a lot of “unseen” work — changing out all the wood trim, recaulking the bathtub, texturing the walls, changing out both light switches and the GFCI outlet for new white ones — the money kind of burned out fast.  JT and I have been trying to clear up some credit card debt and so I wasn’t willing to charge anything to get this one done.  The mirror should be in place soon though!

But on to more good stuff.  Really good stuff.  My favorite part.

Hello boys.

Of course Keith was the hardest to hang.  A few of these frames we already had on hand.  The rest I snagged for under $3 each (even the big on with Bowie in it — that one was actually $1.51) and then I hit them all with Krylon Satin Nickel spray paint.  One sheet of 32X40 mat board from Hobby Lobby and a bunch of images printed from the Internet on nice paper and a bathroom themed haircut/makeup/toothbrushing “art wall” it was.

What’s going on below the art wall?  Hooky goodness that’s what.  And Turkish towels.

(Don’t forget a new floor is coming.  Picture a 2″ hexagonal Carrera marble floor there.

So all in all, Phase One is wrapped up. For now.  Back to a long, lazy holiday weekend . . . I’ll be pondering the next project to tackle as we hide out from Isaac’s rain.  Cheers – CT

4 Comments

Posted in Bathroom