camel-back loveseat makeover COMPLETE!

the pages of my "to do" list are now ½ a page shorter. i found this camel-back loveseat on craigslist after an
exhaustive search for something within our price range that would fit up a narrow stairway.

once we removed the legs, we hauled her upstairs to the front sitting room where i refinished her.

my inspiration for this project was a sofa covered in bennison linen via cote de texas...

and this image taken by melanie acevedo.

the printed linen fabric came from joann's and online fabric store. i took a chance on the possibility of getting two different dye lots
by splitting up the yardage because the price couldn't be beat, however i don't recommend doing this. thank god, they matched.

 i used 3 books to help get me through this (see below) and got a little help from shelly at ModHomeEc.

next time...should i ever do this again...i'll get a proper stapler to replace this one, and instead of working directly on top of a wool rug,
i'll put down a drop cloth, so i don't spend hours picking up staples!

there were times when i thought i was in way over my head and i contemplated sending it out to a professional. btw, if you're reading this
and do this for a living, i have great respect for what you do!

i cried...yes i did, and i have a few war wounds from the ply grip (this guy makes it look so easy.)

my first upholstery project ever, but totally worth it.

loveseat $30
delivery $20
fabric $50
books $38
paint for the legs $8
ply grip $3
cord for welt $2
cambric for the bottom dust cover $2
total: $153

these are the books i used. not one had all the info i needed, but reading all 3 complemented one another and cleared up a lot of confusion for me. in hindsight though, i wish i had checked the library for these, because i highly doubt i'll ever read these again!

reupholstering at home
professional upholstering
singer upholstery basics

the world is a wonderful place

this past friday, chloe and i had a yard sale. 

have you ever had one? if so, you know 

how much effort it takes to put one together.

before i began preparing for it, i had grand

aspirations of having everything priced, 

fending off the early birds, and selling it all!

the craigslist post and the signs we put up the

night before advertised the sale as beginning at 

10:00. 

by 11:00 a.m., one person had haggled 

me down to $3 for 27 jars of testors paints. 

by noon, i began to think i had wasted a lot of 

time for nothing.

but as the day went on, things gradually picked

up. though it didn't come close to my expectations 

of hundreds of people and hundreds of dollars 

made, i did come away with a few wonderful 

experiences and learned a few things.

1) giving things away isn't costly and a waste of money
since we weren't about to bring it all back in the house, g. and i went next door to our neighbor and told her she could take whatever she wanted. she chose some books, including a copy of david sedaris's me talk pretty one day, a sisal rug, and a messenger bag she said the boys would get a lot of use out of. all these things had been sitting in our basement forgotten for months. the rest went to big brothers big sisters. to know that someone will actually use these things makes me wish i'd done this sooner.

2) from here on out, we'll buy less because we don't need as much as we thought
how many candleholders do we really need? i told g. the next thing i buy will be something to replace something that's old, like a new cardi-jacket, though i'll need to have a few more yard sales before i add this to my wardrobe.

3) objects that commemorate a life i aspire to but do not have are a burden
there are many, but a perfect example of this is the pilates ball i bought five years ago and used only once. i want to tone my abs and increase my strength, i really do. really? what about the pilates abs rower i  purchased last april? turns out no one wanted either one, so i kept both. in this case, the guilt continues.

4) objects that commemorate a life i once had are a burden
i designed jewelry that was picked up by upscale boutiques and anthropologie, and i loved doing it. but that time in my life is over. i have other interests now like photography and writing. all the drawers of beads and lace remind me of this. not that that's a bad thing, but why hold onto these things when people like amy (my last customer) could make her own necklaces from a collection of vintage czech nailhead glass beads?

5) i love talking to people

this was the highlight of the whole day and gave me a chance to meet our neighbors and others who share some of the same interests...like krystal who bought some of g.'s screenwriting books for a friend moving to l.a....and the girl who bought our t.v. combination vcr so her boyfriend could watch his old anime videotapes.

when you take the time to get out there and listen to peoples' stories, you realize the world is a wonderful place.

good things come to those who wait

we've had this gilded frame
leaning up against a wall
in our studio for a couple
years now. i've been saving it
for something magnificent.
i finally found it rummaging
through g.'s paintings he keeps
stacked on a shelf. and in this
room she now gazes out at us
preserved behind glass.
i love her.

art wall + stairway = accident waiting to happen

feeling inspired after seeing what
jen did with her new brooklyn
apartment in just 4 weeks, and hating
myself even more for having
empty frames on this wall for almost
a year, i finally filled them with still
lifes, photograms, a sun print, a marbled
endpaper from an old book, and my absolute
favorite...a drawing g. did.

here's a peek of it through the banister.
it's the one of a lady with a tattooed neck
right above the moth.

it lay sequestered away in one of his
sketchbooks until i did a barbaric thing
and released it with an exacto blade.

already, i've nearly toppled a few frames on my way
down the stairs when i should be looking at my feet
and not the art. i'm a bit on the clumsy side, so this
just further complicates things.

in our last apartment, i fell down a flight of stairs
while painting the walls. naturally, i took the gallon
can of chalky white paint with me, which meant the
dingy brown stairs went next on the list of things to touch up.
it ended up being a huge improvement and so it was meant to be.

room makeover - part III

it's been awhile since i posted about the room makeover, and though we're mid-project,
i thought i'd show you where we are at the moment.

below is a shot of the room as it looked once we moved everything next door. in the corner
is some crown molding we decided to add. g. did an amazing job, especially since he's
never done this before. naturally, the walls aren't true and the miter saw we have is
dull and rusty, so we used molding blocks at the corners to connect the molding.

here is the room mid-makeover with some furniture. for the wall color, we chose a match to
farrow and ball's off-black. it looks black but is in fact a deep, dark prussian blue.
for someone who normally chooses shades of white, gray, and blue when making over rooms,
i didn't know what we were missing! if you're brave enough, you may want to give it a go.

there's still more to be done, like replacing the wood blinds with fabric shades, but next
i'll tackle the walls and hang some art. a couple months ago, i found some antique e.j. lowe
fern prints, which i  recently spotted at okl's barbara barry tastemaker sale. the few they had
sold out within the first hour. i nearly fell off my chair when i saw the tag sale price. $649!
the regular price was $1800! though i still need to frame ours, the prints i found locally cost $12.
even if i were to choose a larson-juhl frame & filet, with museum glass and fabric mat,
each framed print will cost around $100. i haven't made up my mind yet, but ours won't
come close – then again, i'm not barbara barry.

i'll never do this again

i FINALLY finished a project i've been putting off for a long, long time. i won't even say how long it took me to do this, let alone the fact they've been up a year and a half, packaging wrinkles and all. 

we bought some drapery panels for the living room windows, but they weren't long enough, so i thought, surely it won't be any trouble to get an extra panel, cut it up and and add length to each one. well, there are 6. i'm not good at sewing. i'm too ambitious for my own good. i would rather be doing something else. 

i debated over how to cover the seam and where to add the length. initially i planned to buy some trim, but i couldn't find the right width and color at a price we could afford. so instead of letting that hold up the project – did i mention it had already been a year and a half! – i got started and went with a french seam near the top, because i wanted the wrong side to be finished, since the fabric is sheer.

i read the instructions over here, and started on the first panel. it wasn't until i had spent an hour and a half sewing and cutting that i noticed my mistake. instead of putting WRONG SIDES TOGETHER (she clearly noted this using caps), i did the opposite. this is always what happens when i sit down to sew. but the beauty about this is that i no longer had to worry about covering the seam with tape or trim, because the french seam was facing the outside...and didn't look like an accident!

here's a before shot. forgive the dim picture. it was overcast that day.

as you can see, the original panels had a rod pocket treatment at the top, which i thought i would keep, but once i  re-hung them, i didn't like how scrunched they looked. complicating matters further and prolonging this project to the point of being intolerable, i decided to add drapery rings. what i didn't know is that little rings of metal run $3 apiece. i needed 50. so i went through my stash of chain and found some circular brass links, which i cut apart and sewed on.

now they touch the floor, are wrinkle-free, and are coming with us if and when we leave this house, because i'm never doing this again.

room makeover - part II

here goes part II of our room makeover. the room  is presently g.'s studio, but is small, which is why he's moving next door to my old studio, whose contents are now scattered here and there throughout the house. my soon-to-be-realized-too-lofty ambition is to make it into a library/den/room to retire to for after-dinner drinks.

here is the room as it looks now.

i haven't even begun and am already a little overwhelmed, but once we clear everything out, i'll start on the walls and molding. though it's a small room, i loathe painting, so midway through i'll begin making the shades. this is my usual approach to projects like this. i'll start one thing, then another...and another. i realize this isn't exactly efficient, but eventually it gets done. 

i found instructions for the shades here, but after reading the how-to, i already have questions. if anyone has made shades like this, please feel free to share your tips in the comments.

i hope you'll come along with me as i suffer through convert this room from bland to beautiful.

room makeover - part I

taking inspiration from tom scheerer, i'm about to transform one of the bedrooms into something that i hope {remotely} resembles this beautiful room...minus the michael thonet designed café daum side chair.

though nothing like it - in quality, design or spirit - this rickety old chair may be its humble substitute, after a few coats of black paint and some wood glue.

this faded allover floral paisley is the fabric i'll use to make the shades. 

there are two windows in this room. sewing is not my forte, nor is it something i enjoy. hopefully, i'll get it right on the second one.

for the walls, i have my eye on a couple benjamin moore colors - black satin & appalachian brown - and farrow and ball's mahogany.

i love the look of lacquered walls, but like the aforementioned thonet chair, that's not in the budget, so i'll have to settle for high gloss on the walls, and possibly eggshell on the moldings - all the same color. 

stay tuned!

the dirt(y) truth

i first became obsessed with gardening and the latin names of plants when we lived in seattle. we lived at the back of the building on the first floor and could crawl out our window whenever we pleased. 

when we moved in, there was green astro turf on the ground and a raised bed of  noxious weeds along with a weed tree that although from a volunteer tree, had sited itself perfectly, so i left it to grow and planted around it.

what raised the bed above ground were broken bits of cement.  if it were't for a lack of funds, i would've replaced them with a proper stone wall. instead i planted moss and vines. elsewhere, i planted daffodils, a katsura tree (a wedding present from co-workers), hydrangeas, and trillium. 

if anyone is actually reading this, and happens to also live in seattle, and feels like getting out for a drive, the address is the chelsea on queen anne @ 620 w. olympic place. i'd love to know if the katsura is still there.

 

here's another garden we planted in san francisco. we covered the wood fence with rolls of reed fencing, and planted it with vines like creeping fig and cobea.

fast forward to present day and a garden that is the biggest we've ever had, and one that we oftentimes don't know what to do with. this is partly due to spending years living in cramped 500 sf apartments and growing sunflowers in 5" terracotta pots.

here i'll share our horticultural triumphs, future plans, and blunders…like planting four lombardy poplars in a row within inches of the city sidewalk. i cringe every time i see someone walking by and being attacked by their already wide-spreading branches. naturally, it wasn't until after we planted them and saw how quickly they grew that i decided to learn a little more about this proliferous plant. a google search turned up an about.com link titled – "reconsider planting lombardy poplar in your yard". there are four more in the backyard.

blunder  no. 1 or make that 8.

 

this is last year's stand of amaranthus or love-lies-bleeding. so many people ask about this one. i keep a bag of seeds to give to those who do. it's a  beautiful rogue that will return year after year, just like the morning glories on the side of the house.

{image 1 above: smithsonian institution on flickr}