Wildebefore + After: Floor Lamp

So, that lamp I was priming last week. 
It got a shiny silver paint job, and a $13 Ikea  OLLSTA shade, painted silver to match...

Here it is, tucked into a cozy little corner that is quickly becoming my favorite thing in the newly-rearranged living room. 

(I'm still working on re-arranging everything, and de-cluttering certain areas, and futzing with the houseplants.  My camera's working again, though, for the time being. So that's good.  Real update on that coming soon!) 

HGTV via Pinterest

This was my inspiration.  This is a room done by Candice Olsen, on her show Candice Tells All.  I fell in LOVE with the silver floor lamp back there by the windows.

Obviously, mine's no designer lamp - it's a spray-painted thrift store find with an Ikea fix.  But it's silver.  And I loooove the way it glows through the silver shade.
:)






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Time Out For Some Leafy Business

Seems to be a little problem with uploading pictures today (argh).  So, rather than blathering on about my living room some more, here are a couple of landscaping updates:

The grass on the east side of the yard is getting fluffy and thick and dark, a far cry from only three months ago when I first leveled the ground and started throwing out new seed and laying down fresh sod:

My Mexican Orchid Tree is about four feet high now.  It'll be over my head in another couple of months (it grows fresh from the roots every Spring; so each Winter after it goes dormant I cut the entire thing down to the ground): 

ignore the furniture - it's keeping a certain dog from digging under here

And my Mulberry Tree, which was a gift from the birds four years ago, has gone from this:

March 2007

 To this!   This year it's finally big enough to block the neighbors' view into my yard (and windows) on the entire western half of the yard.  It's huge!  And while I haven't gotten any decent berries out of it yet (and won't, until it's fully mature, which should be next year or in 2013), the birds LOVE the tiny, almost-berries it's producing now.

June 2011

Um...yeah, not much grass on the west side of the yard.  Once the east half is done, this will be the next section I work on.  :)


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In Which the Mini-Couch Gets A Step Ahead...

Starts off on the right foot?  Puts its best foot forward? WHAT?  I'm tired, and I hate post titles.  :P

Anyway, as you may have noticed, the mini-couch is a bit short...

Low to the ground much? 

But, after a few slats of scrap wood and some feet cut from old coffee table legs I had sitting around in the garage...

 Much better!  (There isn't any trim on the sides of the couch in this picture; I attached it after I took the pic).

I attached the feet with these guys: 

good stuff.

But wait...

Just for a bit of fun...

Tada!  

Now to get this sucker slipcovered...


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More Lamps And A...?

As promised, I worked on TWO whole things last night.



A whiskey glass full of warm silver paint.
(6:1 silver, soft gold).

 Some stuff being primed:

1.  That standing lamp from the bedroom I told you about, which is going to end up in the living room (see, I worked on the living room like I said I would).


2.  Gee, what's that other thing, Laura?







More on both of these projects after the weekend, which is the next chance I'll have to work on them.


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Tale of a Lamptybeast

So, once upon a time, there was this lamp...

When Daisy was a puppy, she chewed through the cord.  While the lamp was ON. 

Little bugger was lucky she didn't fry right then and there. Facepalm.

 So, last night I fixed it!   I had a set of spare lamp guts in a box in the garage - all I had to do was remove the cord from this little lamp and replace it with the cord from the box.  Yay!

This is the shade I made for it a million years ago.  It makes a really nifty blue glow at night when it's the only lamp on, but I never liked the shape of it:  it doesn't balance the base at ALL.  Plus the fabric's gotten all pulled out of place over the years, and I REALLY didn't feel like taking it off and re-arranging all the pleats.

This was much better, but it needs work.  I have no idea where this thing even came from, it's been bouncing around in my stuff for so long.  It was boring.  And a bit grubby.  So I brushed it clean.

And then I did this!  :D   My friend Nadia has this gorgeous lamp in her living room, which she decoupaged with some ink drawings on rice paper, and I've wanted to do something like that ever since I first saw it.  Hers is covered with Buddhas and lotuses and things, but I wanted mine to be more henna-esque.  I sketched out the basic shapes of everything onto the shade very lightly with a pencil, and freehanded the rest with...*drumroll*...a brown dry-erase marker that I swiped from work.  (Don't worry, I brought it back this morning!  And yes, the marker will probably fade from the light and the heat from the bulb - I think it might just look pretty cool. And if it doesn't, it's not like I can't just re-do the lines with something else).

It lives in my bedroom now. Um...ignore the phone charger.  Oops. 0:)   It also replaced the standing floor lamp that was by the bedside, so that I can give that a makeover, too, and use it in my living room.  Stay tuned. :) 

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To-Do List

By the way, I'm still working on the craft room, little by little, as well as the mini-couch and plans for re-arranging the living room.   One thing at a time...or, rather, one thing from each room at a time.  I've got a looooong list from which to choose.

In the meantime, here are some cool pictures of blue things from Pinterest.  Guess the relevance. ;)

Sweet Home Style

 

Delight By Design

Apartment Therapy

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Eureka?!

Work on the MiniCouch proceeds apace:  in addition to having fixed the arm, it is now [fully] cleaned and ready to be covered and footed.  Whee!  That'll happen next payday.

In related news, this little bit of Ikea that popped into my life a few weeks ago seems to have solved all my furniture placement problems in the living room.  I picked it up off the curb thinking I'd stash it in a corner or under a window and make it sort of nook-y, but, well...

made with Icovia Space Planner                 

This is my living room as it stands right now.  There's an office/music area at the "bottom" (North), a main seating area kind of central, and my little meditation corner under the windows at the "top" (South).

The seating in the seating area is complete bollocks.  Don't get me wrong, I love my little Ektorp couch that I re-covered last year; but aside from that, the only seating I have in there is that little green-and-black rattan chair (also refinished last year)...which isn't terrible comfortable or supportive--it's only there in case of extra butts.

Also, and I think I've mentioned this before, I hate that the seating area  is arranged parallel to the room itself.  It makes the whole thing seem more like an indoor football field.  It also has the effect of having nearly all the furniture in the entire room up against the walls, except for the couch floating out in the middle of nowhere.  Hate.



 But then...

Enter the Minicouch--that's it there on the left against the wall, where the tv console used to be.  The TV console is now perpendicular to that wall, backed by a turquoise fabric screen that separates the area from the office/music area.

The Ektorp sofa is still opposite the tv, now perpendicular to the wall, back to the windows, rendering the little meditation area back there a leeetle more private (awesome) - and I'm thinking of doing an art wall above the Minicouch, too.

Couple of floor cushions...and a rug? I have a rug.  There was a dog accident if you take my meaning, a couple of years ago--I took the rug outside and rinsed it off, but all the dye came out of it and it ended up looking like it'd been in a fire.  I still have it, and it's in great shape (it's one of those hand-woven cotton "chindi" rugs)...I was thinking maybe I could dye it again?  Can't hurt to try, right?





The first step will be to finish the Minicouch, and then to re-arrange the furniture.  I'm thinking the art might end up being my own art - I have a billion untouched and half-finished canvases I could whomp up into one big sectional thing, I think...hmmm...


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Wildebeests: The Minicouch From Beyond the Curb (Part I)

Hey, remember this guy?

free Ikea minicouch!

Oh, yeah, by the way, I'm back from vacation.  It kinda sucked, actually.  MOVING ON...

*poke*

So, Homecouch had a bit of an issue with the right arm being...flaccid?   Hollow! No padding?!  I mean, how does that happen when there's no tear in the fabric for the stuffing to come out of?  WHERE DID THE STUFFING GO??

SCARY

I cut the stitching on the seam of the cover and peeled it back to reveal a gaping chasm rimmed with shattered bits of MDF and hardboard...

And this, waaaaay at the bottom.

The slab of MDF nailed to the hardboard frame had split and fallen down inside the arm.  Given the tiny footprints on the seat of this thing, I suspect someone was walking or jumping on it and broke through.

All I had to do was fit the broken piece back into place and secure it with glue and some heavy-duty staples.  Once it was solid, I tucked the foam and batting back over the arm where it belonged, and sewed the seam back up:  

Yes, the stitching shows.  No, it's not the same kind of stitch on the rest of the couch.  Nor do I care, since this will be covered when it's done anyway.

But for now:  functional minicouch arm! 

I also started cleaning it this week.  Surface stuff, so far;  later this week the upholstery actually needs to be scrubbed and brushed.  After that, I'll add a wooden base and some feet, to raise it off the ground, and then make an awesome cover for it.



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IT LIVES!!!

I've told you how I'm spending this year trying to fix up the lawn in my backyard.  Last time we visited it, I had just fenced off a section of yard, leveled it, put down fresh soil and compost, and a metric ass-ton of seed, and it looked like this:

egad.

About two weeks ago, I gave up on the seed--it had never come up at all--and decided to get a few pieces of sod at a time and try that way.  The sod tried to die on me, but then started coming back;  and around that same time, all the grass seed started sprouting! Hooray!

LOL

Funny; if I hadn't bought sod and then nearly killed it, this whole quarter of the yard would be FULL of soft, green, fluffy grass right now, and I could move on to the next section.  Whoops!  It doesn't look like it in the picture, but the sod is actually doing quite well, and the whole area should be all green and fluffy in another week or week-and-a-half.  (A friend of mine who saw my yard recently asked, "Hey, when did you plant the squares of dead grass?"  LOL).

YAY!



P.S. - I'm about to take my yearly camping trip, so I'll be gone for the next 7 days!  See you with pics when I get back. :)


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Wildebeests: Free Sh*t

All hail the Craigslist/Thriftstore/Dumpster-Diving Powers That Be!  I was bored at work yesterday afternoon and poking around Craigslist for a big chair to stash in a corner of the living room (more on that later)...and I found a couple, but one was too big, and one was manky...I mean, WAY grosser than I'm willing to deal with cleaning up. Granted, it was only $20, but STILL.

Oh, well, I thought.  And then I drove home and discovered this baby out on the curb down the street:

FREE.

 
Doesn't look like much, I know.  Looks better underneath: 

cleaner than my garage floor

The structure is sound, and aside from a slightly crushed arm rest, it's in great shape.  And it's clean, aside from some small, grubby footprints on the seat where a kid was either walking or jumping on it, hehe.  No nasty stains, no smell - just some footprints that can be cleaned off easily.

This is, in case you don't recognize it, Ikea's KLOBO loveseat.  Not exactly my style - but I've seen really great things done with this and with the similar KLIPPAN sofas, and I have a *fabulous* idea for this little guy.

I love the product care instructions for this thing on Ikea's website, by the way:

Care instructions

• Do not wash.
• Clean with upholstery shampoo.
• Do not bleach.
• Do not tumble dry.        <---- DRAT
• Do not iron.
• Do not dryclean.

Bonus:  for some strange reason, the people who had this loveseat before me covered it (a) by stapling t-shirt fabric all over it, and (b) right before they got rid of it, apparently:  the fabric is BRAND NEW.  I can use that, too.

Score!

To be continued...


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