The Slowest Couch Update EVER

So, sometime around April or May of 2013, I nabbed a sofa off the side of the road, and, looking back over this blog, I realize I never actually TOLD you about it. Oops.  The short version:  it was free, one arm was moldy and gross and I spent about three weeks cleaning, bleaching, and fixing up the fabric on that arm, and it came out great. Stained, but still great.  The couch looks to be an old Ikea piece - I can't find anything like it in the catalogs for the past five years, so it's at least older than that.  It came with two seat cushions, and no back cushions - no cover, either, just the basic under fabric that Ikea furniture comes with.

Fast forward to...yesterday.  Tired of both sitting on the floppy, thin cushions this sofa came with, and of that damned Day Sofa from World Market (I never like anything I do with it, and every time I decide to fix it up I get bored with it before I'm even finished, anymore. It's in the garage now), I took the loooong seat cushion that I made for it in 2012 apart, and used them to build and bulk up the white sofa's seat cushions.

Creating a long cushion for the convertible Day Sofa. 

All four of these pieces were made by slicing a pair of very thick salvaged seat cushions in half horizontally.

For the white sofa, I sliced the two larger seat pieces in half horizontally again, angling them to make a wide wedge, to build up the white sofa's cushions all over, but with the thickest part at the back to help reduce the steeply pitched angle of the sofa seat (I couldn't get up!)

Trying out pieces and shaping. 

A pic of the dry-run, with the wedges, a bit of rolled-up batting at the front edge to soften the transition between pieces, and a thin layer of batting (later doubled) wrapped around the whole thing to smooth out the seams between pieces.

After I was sure of the result, I used spray-adhesive to stick all the parts together and smoothed out all the edges.

Then I used an old cotton sheet to make a cover for each cushion, to hold it all in place.

Yes, I fixed the wrinkliness of the one on the right. It was just on weird. 

Now THAT'S what I call seat cushions.  They're about 2" thicker than the old cushions, smooth, soft, and squishy.  They look a bit slapdash in the pic, here, but keep in mind, this whole sofa is meant to be used with a slipcover, and the seat cushions are the same way.  This thing is so comfy with the deeper, softer cushions, that when I lay on it to chill later in the evening, I fell asleep right away and woke up covered with cats.

The next step will be to create back cushions out of the remaining two pieces from the Day Sofa in the top picture. After I'm satisfied with those, I'll be on the hunt for some fabric to cover this entire piece of furniture.  I can't wait!  This thing has needed a lot of work, but I adore the shape of it, and I'm really excited about getting it covered.  :)


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Speaking of Rugs...

So, I totally missed Bulk Item pickup last week.  Totally forgot about it.  I managed to throw my old kitchen sink out to the curb before the trucks started passing through, but that's about it.

But then, on the way home from work that day, I passed a pile that hadn't been there before, and on top of it was this:

DON'T JUDGE ME.  I know this whole picture looks like grandma's house.  The chair and the chaise are soon to be reupholstered in fabric FAR less grannyrific.  Just hang in there.

Look at the RUG.  That's a free, 9x11" area rug.  It's a cheap rug.  It's a thin rug.  But overall it's in great shape.  I don't know why someone chucked it to the curb, except that maybe they just got a new one, but it's perfect for my big living room, and looks fantastic.  (The Surya rug that I won last year is now in my guest room; and I'll be talking about that more later this week).  It needed some serious vacuuming, and I used the shampoo-er/steamer on this rug, too, and now it's fantastic-looking.

It's also a bit more wine-colored than it looks in the picture, which is kinda BRIGHT RED.

But anyway - yay!

So, more on the guest room, and about some more free furniture later this week!


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Laura's Home For Wayward Furniture

Wow, I should totally just name this blog that. 

This armoire was given to me by a friend whom I helped move houses last weekend, as she no longer had a space for it.

Neat!   Tall.  Free.  Like.


Idk if you remember the craigslist dresser I refinished and put into my closet when I re-did it in 2012;  I had pulled it out and put it on this wall instead after a while, freeing up some floor space in the closet, and wall space on which to hang a scarf organizer last July.   I've moved it to the opposite side of the bathroom door in the bedroom (you can see the floorplan in the first closet link).  Show you when it doesn't have a pile of junk on top.  ;)

Anyway, this armoire is MUCH better on this wall than the dresser (and pile of blankets next to it in a plastic tub) was.

It needs a wee bit of work.   There's water damage on the top and on both sides, all  of which are thin plywood, and will need to be entirely replaced, one day.

It will also need to be refinished, due to some regular wear-n-tear (regular if you're a family of wampas (and no offense to Moving Friend, it was like this when she got it from Craigslist).

And also some places where the finish has just flat out peeled off.

The design up top is painted on, below the finish layers.  I guess this was supposed to be kind of art-deco-looking?

I can't tell where this thing came from or exactly how old it is.  It's solid oak and oak plywood, with iron locks. There's no maker's mark anywhere, inside or out.  Hm.

Until I get a chance to really put some work into this thing, though, it still makes a great blanket-holder.

You can see the line around the middle where it needs a shelf.

It could use an upper shelf, too.

The least I could do was slap some knobs on it for now, because, I shit you not, I cut my finger on a peeling piece of old, dried varnish at one point when I pried the door open by the edge.  O_O

That'll do, for the time being.  (And yes, they're level.  The picture is a really weird angle).


I'm hoping that I can find some keys for these keyholes, and maybe a keyhole cover for the door on the right in this pic (the lock is in there, but the cover is missing).
So pretty.




So what's the plan?  I have no idea.  Right now the plan is to keep blankets in it until I finish the other nine-million projects I've been doing lately and THEN worry about  

*

One of my "lines" (you know, those things you always say that your friends rib you about - like me painting things blue) is "Hm.  I could put a plant there."  That happened like six hours after I set up this armoire, lol.  So I did this:

P.S. - Don't even think I've forgotten about all those light fixtures I started in January.




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It's Lighting Time Again!

I believe I mentioned that I have a couple of antique (maybe?  Not sure exactly how old they are, maybe 1960s), homemade light fixtures given to me by a friend last Summer.  In an effort to get some of the project backlog in my garage dealt with (because my garage is starting to look like a junkyard), I decided to tackle cleaning up and refinishing both of them this week.

This is the first.  It's a really lovely little design - I took the candle fixtures out before I took this photo; basically the lights "bloom" from lily flowers springing up from the base of the fixture and "growing" out along the frame.

The whole thing was painted gold and then gilt by hand;  both finish layers were peeling, rust was setting in, there were splotches of ceiling paint on one side where someone painted and didn't bag this thing beforehand.  The candle covers themselves, once white, were yellowed with age and cracked in a couple of places.

There was a LOT of disassembly on this light fixture (it seemed at the time), and cleaning it was rather difficult.  I scrubbed the whole thing down with steel wool and a toothbrush, and sanded the rust off of the worst of the rust spots; the cleaning also removed most of the gold leaf that had degraded and was already flaking off.   You can see in the above picture the difference in  color and tone, between the two round pieces in the foreground of the photo, and the lily flowers and chain in the back, which hadn't been cleaned yet.  Big difference!




The second chandelier was much simpler in basic design, but positively encrusted with glass crystals, all wired together with, I discovered, jewelry headpins.  Points for ingenuity, maker!

Believe it or not, but this photo was AFTER I'd already spent a good fifteen minutes removing crystals.  It may not need to be said, but I don't plan on putting all of them back!

THAT IS A LOT OF GLASS, PEOPLE.

The base underneath all that is pretty simple.  And it's in great shape.  The only thing I'm going to change is the color - I don't like this coppery gold, I want a paler gold, almost a champagne sort of color.  Fewer than half the original glass is going back on this thing (the rest is already earmarked for another lighting project), and what does return to the fixture will be arranged quite differently.

I don't have pictures of exactly where I'm hoping to take these pieces, but for now, here are a few inspiration photos:

(I'm kidding) 

More on these as work progresses!


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A Very Girly Lamp

I believe I mentioned that I have several new lighting projects lined up;  here's the first:

Before 

This is an antique "oil lamp" style lamp that was given to me over the summer by a friend.

It has a pink milk glass body, a horrifically tarnished and somewhat rusted brass base, and a modern brass cup at the top that someone at one point used to replace whatever was there before.

The glass was in great shape; but the brass base was really, really gross.  I tried everything to clean it, from lemon juice to scary chemical cleaners.  I got it clean, but I couldn't restore the finish - and it was certainly never going to match the bright gold color of the modern cup at the top.

Spray paint to the rescue.

After

A thin coat of silver metallic-finish spray paint, light enough to allow some of the dark, tarnished brass to show through in the relief of the fluting and pierced feet;  and then a light dusting with a brilliant gold spray paint over that, to warm up the silver to almost a metallic-champagne color (since the silver paint by itself is very blue-gray, and not really silverish at all).

 I *love* the way it came out.

And I ADORE the little key-shaped switch.  Hee!

New super-girly bedside lamp!

And this light bulb, while VERY cool (and I WILL find a use for it), is nooooot working with this lamp base, LOL.  Bit ridiculous.  I don't have a shade that works at all;  but I'll figure something out, hehe.


Nice base, though.  ;)
















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New Life For That POS Footstool

You know the one.  Just a quick refresher:

It took way more than a coat of paint and a new top (see previous post) , but, well, here's the after:

Tada!   Blurry photo, sorry.  I'm not using the damn phone camera anymore, I apologize for all the crappy pics.

It's repaired.  It's black.  It has a bigger (and structurally sound) top.

And it's covered in music!  :D  (Can you guess which room it's going into?)

This is all sheet music from my musical exploits in the SCA.  So, it's Medieval stuff, mostly canonical, with a couple of popular love songs of the day (various days);  and where there are visible lyrics, they're in Italian and French.  Because: nerd.  

Plain ol' decoupage, nothing fancy.  Homemade medium (craft glue +  water, sealed with polyurethane).

via

And la piece de resistance?  Well,  I was thinking something like this, but for storage of music books and small musical instruments, instead of plants.


What ended up happening was more of a "fishtank on a table with junk in it."

...yeah.

It just needs some cool decoration.  And a more organized method of music storage than "just dump it all in there for now."

Update soon. :)














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Stuff N Thing, Part Troix

Before:  

*DRUMROLLLLLLL*

After:  

Coffee table.


The story is, and you got some of it a while back, that my existing coffee table, though lovely, and dear to my heart, was just too large for the current living room arrangement, and the furniture therein.  I plan to keep it, though I don't know yet what I'll do with it - probably just store it until someday when my living room expands again, or something.

Meanwhile, between an old trunk which became a shelf, (and then another shelf), a bulk-trash-day side table find, and a whole bunch of spray paint, a new, smaller coffee table was born.

the new table receives a cat scan

The dog loves it.  Her favorite spot in the house was under the coffee table, and I was worried that the new one would be too short for her to get beneath, but it works great for her.  Hee.

Truth:  it IS a bit small for the couch, LOL.  But honestly, functionally, it's *exactly* the right size.  And it's pretty.  And it looks awesome with the wing chair and the little gold side table between it and the couch.  Even though it makes the couch look enormous, I really love my new wee coffee table.  (And to be honest, the couch doesn't look so large without a bunch of old blankets draped over it.  Hopefully there's slipcover news in the near future).

I really  should think up a tag/label for "furniture that's been cobbled together from parts cannibalized from parts of other stuff."  But shorter.

Aside:  No shit, a friend of an ex, years ago, was the WORST at mis-using words.  One night while the boys were gaming, I overheard him describing a pirate ship that had been "galvanized" from parts of other ships, and I just could NOT keep from bursting out laughing.  I was dying laughing, and yes, I had to explain why - and then I had to explain what "galvanized" and "cannibalized" meant, and he didn't believe me,  and he was SO MAD.  Shitforbrains. 

"Let's Re-do That Footstool Tonight!" I said.

I actually got quite a number of little, piddly things done last night.  I re-aligned the strikeplate for the deadbolt on my back door, which was making it really hard (and frustrating!) to lock the door.  I cleaned up the kitchen, and re-organized a couple of the cabinets to make a new place to put my pots and pans (well, pot and pan. I'm not a huge cook).  I tightened the bolts on all my dining room chairs, since a couple of them had legs that were getting loose.  I took my liquid-sander to the pieces of that little side table I told you about the other day.

Then I decided to tackle that little footstool - the one I picked up at the same time as that side table.  I got the thing entirely torn down before I remembered that

1. I no longer have a staple gun, because my other one was such a piece of shit that I threw it away the last time I used it, promising myself I'd get a new one soon.  *crickets* 
2. My spray paint stock is woefully depleted - I'm down to like two drops of a turquoise that's way too bright, a couple of silvers, and a really gross, poopy brown color that I don't even remember buying

Yeah, there's no refinishing the wood on this thing.  And I can't finish the project without spray paint and a new staple gun, but at least it's torn down and ready to re-boot.  In the meantime, let's talk about what a galloping piece of shit this footstool turned out to be: 

Clockwise from top left: 

1. First of all, the sides are laminate.  Crappy laminate.  Peeling, cracking laminate.  Sigh.  
2. And the laminate isn't even the same *color* as the stained wooden legs.  What?!?
3. It's not even MDF underneath.  It's pressboard.  UGH. 
4. The piece de résistance: one of the legs once split, and was "repaired" really, really badly.  Basically someone just squirted glue all over it and hoped for the best.  The leg was stuck to the frame, and some of the scrim cloth from the bottom of the upholstered top was glued to the wood.  This glue job will hold, but it'll never hold weight.  There goes the idea of this being my new piano stool. 

Then there's the seat itself.  First of all, under the wood was a bunch of crap and leaves and shit.  Spiderwebs, dead bugs...this thing must've been in a garage or storeroom for a looooong time.  

The scrim covering the bottom of the seat was glued in place all the way around - I had to rip the thing to shreds to get it off, and to get at the staples underneath. 

Speaking of staples...was this really necessary?!  Every corner was like this.  Most of the staples aren't even IN the fabric.  

HAHA FUCKERS. 

Was it the busted leg, or this nastiness, that made the previous owner chuck this damned thing?  This is GROSS.  The foam and fabric aren't just dirty - this is MOLD.  EWWWW FUCKING EW.  Into the garbage with both pieces.  

But wait! 

BWAAAAAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!! What the crap!?  This is three pieces of...scrap!...glued to a thin piece of luan to form the base board of the seat.  The largest piece has a hold milled out of it - it looks like a piece left over from building an Ikea piece the wrong way.  The other bit is a drawer front, I'm pretty sure.  The dark strip along the end - I have no idea WHAT that thing is, but the wood-tone on it is a strip of corrugated plastic with a laminate wood-grain backing.  Seriously, what the hell.  

So, I have three options: 

1. Replace the foam and fabric, paint the frame and legs, and make a new footstool out of this. 
2. Paint the frame and legs, create a new top for it with no upholstery, and maybe use it as a very small table somewhere, probably out on the back porch.
3. Chuck all the pieces and call it an exercise in whatever the reverse of "don't judge a book by its cover" is. 

LOL.  Wow. 

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Table Time

This is my living room coffee table:

This is my living room coffee table on drugs:

I adore it, don't get me wrong.  In fact, though it was covered in nicks and scratches, I spent about two hours the other day scrubbing the top, running a thin sheen of stain over it to cover up the marks, and then oiling it to a nice, slick shine again.  This table's not going anywhere.

But it IS too large for the seating area in my living room right now.  I'm not sure what I'll do with it next, but it's got to come out.  I'm ready for something new.

If you've been following long, you might remember the trunk table that I turned into a small shelving unit for my printer and computer supplies.  I kept the doors that I removed from the top, thinking I might use them for something one day.

So I had an idea the other day.  I took apart that two-tiered side table I found last bulk day...

That was easy.  The legs unscrew, too, so this thing will be really easy to refinish, when I get to that stage.  First the top, though.  I had thought about a round top, like this:

Pinterest, via Helt Enkelt

But then I thought, what about those door pieces from the old trunk table?

Not sure.  Two of them will make a top exactly the right size to be useful but not [as] prone to clutter, without being too large for the base.  (All three is definitely right out).  The original top is too small.  I don't have a sheet of plywood large enough to cut out a circle...but maybe if I put the three trunk doors together and then cut a circle...Hm.  Just not sure yet. 

I'll be at an SCA event tomorrow; I'll work on this some more Sunday.  Ta! 

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