Furniture

Double Take: Revamped Cobalt Blue Nightstand

Posted on August 7, 2012 by Kahli Posted in Before & After Projects, Decor Inspiration, Furniture, Our Apartment, Painting Projects | 15 Comments

It’s been a long long time since you guys have seen me around these parts and an even longer time since my sister Milla has visited! But here I am to do what I do best, which is write posts about items in Milla’s room haha. At least the current post I’m writing is connected to her in someway. You see this nightstand used to be in my room.

But as you know my room has changed quite a bit since last year and my nightstands now live in Milla’s bedroom and with a new look!

The color is a custom color matched from a fabric swatch and it’s beautiful. The two of us hand painted the pair of nightstands a few weeks ago after days of debating on cobalt blue or turquoise. Blue won out. I love it in the new bold color over the subtle gray!

Milla is also the new owner of my teal lamps, which used to live in the hallway for a while. She really hit the jackpot on my compulsive buying and painting projects. The nightstands were painted to match the cobalt blue desk vanity also in her room.

We moved the turquoise cane armchair next to the desk for a colorful vignette and Breeze vastly approved of the new look besides he will follow a chair to any corner. Read more

I love Chairs!

Posted on April 25, 2012 by Kahli Posted in Furniture, Thrift Shopping | 4 Comments

If you’ve been coming to this site for awhile you would know that I have a problem with collecting chairs. Sometimes I don’t have a place for them and they sit in the corner. I don’t always buy every cute chair I see, but sometimes I can’t resist, like the black and white houndstooth armchair I spotted last week. However, a chair with french details and caning is always hard to walk by.

french cane chair

It took an hour to convince myself to buy the chair because of the other chair in my room, but I’ve moved that into the dining room for now. The chair looked great in my room, but I felt like the caning was such a great feature that I removed the upholstered back.

Doesn’t it look better, now that the beautiful caning is exposed? I have no idea what I’m going to do with the chair at the moment as far as giving it a makeover. I’ll add it to my long list of indecisive ideas. My bedroom is in shambles after the flooding on Friday. Milla’s bedroom was hit worst than mine but we didn’t have any major damage besides Breeze’s new box of cat litter. Speaking of Breeze, animals are great in the time of emergency, in fact if it wasn’t for Breeze I wouldn’t have known that water was leaking from my neighbors’ apartment into ours. He alerted me early enough to where I could move the important things. The neighbor had unknowingly left the water on for over 30 minutes in a clogged sink….

Yay for renter’s insurance. Now that the carpet padding has been replaced we can resume our projects.

Ambitious Projects….

Posted on February 20, 2012 by Kahli Posted in DIY, fabric, Furniture, Thrift Shopping, Upholstery Projects | 4 Comments

I can’t believe that we’re down to only posting once a week! Where is the time going? The days are going by faster and faster and it seems like there is not enough time left in the day for us to complete the abundance of unfinished projects that are still looming. One of those projects include two wing back chairs.

These chairs need to be completed by March 24th to be used as props for our party. I think we’re on schedule as of now because we removed the fabric from one of the chairs. We found the chairs on Craigslist for $20 a piece and they are the exact same. As you can see we’ve already removed the fabric from one chair. I hate removing fabric because there are like hundreds of staples in this chair and we all have several bruises. With four people assisting in the removal process it still took a few hours. Read more

The Gift That Keeps on Giving: Lucky Vintage Finds

Posted on February 13, 2012 by Kahli Posted in Furniture, Thrift Shopping | 3 Comments

Hey there! I bet you all have been wondering where we’ve been for the past few days…we’ve been super busy planning our birthday party. Birthday planning is hard work! We’re turning 25 and that’s something we felt needed to be celebrated. As I stated last week, our theme is a vintage french theme, so we’ve been continuing to collect vintage inspired furniture and things. We were essentially planning our party in a backwards fashion, buying before booking the venue. Last Wednesday we began to get discouraged while searching because nothing was going as planned and we had a bunch of vintage items sitting in our living room like a second hand store. But the good news is that we did finally find a venue!

Now onto the point of this post…this lovely vintage tea cart we purchased via Craigslist for an absolute steal! This beauty was $40 and in excellent condition!

Thrifty Finds: Fabulous Cane Sofa & Chair

Posted on January 31, 2012 by Kahli Posted in Furniture, Thrift Shopping | 4 Comments

Who loves thrifty finds? We certainly do, and look at this beauty we scored on Craigslist! For a mere $65…

and it included a matching chair! Jackpot! This set will live comfortably in my aunt’s home.

I really love the details, everything from the finials to the caning. We have plans to reupholster the set. We’re thinking something bold for the side chair and something subtle for the sofa.

I’ll be back later with some inspiration photos hopefully…the search begins!

You’re So Vain: New Vanity Desk

Posted on January 14, 2012 by Milla Posted in Furniture, Thrift Shopping, Vintage | 8 Comments

Hi all, Milla here! How are you guys? Me? I’m just glad the weekend is here.

So lately it seems that I have a knack for showing up here at the end of week to do a post. I’ve been at my parents house every Friday for a while so maybe it’s inspiring me. However, we are not talking about their decor because that needs major work. Maybe it’s the brand new computer. The screen is huge! Anyhoo, the point of this post is to continue showcasing our thrifty purchases from this week.

Over the weekend, Kah and I decided that I needed a desk for my bedroom, because you know we’re impulsive like that, so on the hunt for a desk we went. And it actually didn’t take us long to find what I had mind. I was looking for a vanity type desk, but not a traditional vanity with the mirror attached. Remember in my last post I discussed moving that huge mirror from behind my bed? Well, my plan was to purchase a desk where I could prop the mirror against the wall on top of the desk. Below, is how it currently looks in my bedroom:

1930's Vanity Desk

Missing in Action: The Good Excuses Post

Posted on January 13, 2012 by Kahli Posted in Furniture, Thrift Shopping | 8 Comments

Where in the world have the twins been all week? You may have noticed that we haven’t updated in a while! Yikes. I’m here to tell you that we haven’t just been sitting on our butts (well not for the entire week anyway).

This is what we have been doing:

Cleaning, cleaning, cleaning, oh and buying. The two of us spent the entire weekend helping a relative clean her bedroom. That may seem like an easy task for most people, but we’re talking about 10+ years worth of crap. Our cousin is 29 going on 30 (or 25 as she likes to believe) and she is what we like to call a hoarder. Not the compulsive or disgusting type, but the type who keeps things with the intention of “using” or “needing” it in the future. Needless, to say it was very liberating to at least get her to fill up 3 trash bags, “winning”!

Speaking of winning, we’ve been hitting the jackpot on furniture purchases lately. I’m only going to share one item because I didn’t get to take pics of the others. We purchased a buffet for our neglected dining room from craigslist. This is the first purchase for the dining room in some time, because our dining room served a better purpose for thrifty finds than actual dining. Remember, that tidbit earlier about cleaning, well our dining room got some much-needed attention.

Five random pillows, six random lamps, and ten pictures frames later, we now have space for the new buffet.

dining room buffet

Isn’t it lovely? I love the style of this buffet and it only cost $55 plus for $35 delivery. It really does suck that I could have saved $35 if we had a bigger car, but I would have most likely spent near that amount on gas for the 25-30 minute trip each way. And me and Milla didn’t have to activate our twin power to haul it in ourselves. Read more

Confessions of a Chair Addict(s)

Posted on December 29, 2011 by Kahli Posted in Furniture, Thrift Shopping, Vintage | 10 Comments

Remember that debate between my sister and I concerning the placement of the bookcase? Well it’s still currently part of the gallery wall as I insisted. Yay! However, that left the corner behind the sofa very sad and lonely. Just look at that stupid thermostat!

turquoise white gray yellow living room

Breeze has really been enjoying his portrait, he takes a stroll across the mantel, admiring himself on a daily basis.

Anyway…I thought of possible decor items to fill the space; a large wall mirror, more gallery frames, a chair…a chair? You may be thinking how many chairs does one need in their home. And my answer is, as many as your home allows. You can never have enough chairs and I found the perfect one to bring our living room seating total to a comfortable eight. Read more

Revisiting the Floral Chair Disaster

Posted on November 18, 2011 by Kahli Posted in fabric, Furniture, Inspiration | 4 Comments

Not too long ago, I made a post about an ugly floral chair I planned to reupholster in a charcoal gray fabric. Well fast forward to the present and I have yet to find a charcoal gray fabric that I like. It was either too light, too dark, lightweight, or void of texture. I was looking for a medium weight linen look fabric, but since that didn’t work out for me I have to come up with a plan B. Plan B means a new fabric choice. I’ve mentioned several times that I am very indecisive and I tend to go back and forth on decor choices. So, enough rambling…what did I pick? A bold black and white stripe fabric. I completely went away from gray.

I really hate to put your eyes through the agony, but here is what the chair currently looks like:

thrift store armchair

Here’s the fabric I purchased Canopy Stripe Black/White by Premiere Prints:
black white stripe fabric Read more

When your day doesn’t go as planned…(Makeover Sneak Peaks)

Posted on November 1, 2011 by Kahli Posted in Before & After Projects, DIY, Furniture, Painting Projects, Thrift Shopping | 2 Comments

You all are probably wondering why it has been three days since we’ve updated the blog. We’ve had a hell of a last few days that took up a lot of time. Friday, the morning began with our car not starting. The battery was shot because I left the interior light on or so I thought. Milla’s boss came to pick her up for work because she loves her or because she would die without her at work. I called roadside assistance to give me a jump and all as was well for the rest of Friday. Fast forward to Saturday night as we prepare to live it up at multiple Halloween Parties, the car again decided to be a pain in the rear and not start. Why? You guessed it, the battery again, but this time I didn’t leave any lights on. Thankfully our cousin came to pick us up and we enjoyed ourselves until 5 in the morning.

Later in the morning we had the car battery jumped again and took it to Advanced Auto Parts for a new battery install. Yay! The installation took about 5 minutes and we were off to enjoy a day of football with my brother. The day ended well when we scored on a 10 dollar mid century style desk on Craigslist.

Monday morning I drove Milla to work and then stopped at Lowes to pick up some supplies to paint the desk. When I came out of Lowes the car would not start! It’s one thing being stuck at your house with a car that won’t start, you can pass the time watching tv and completing diy projects, but it sucked sitting in a public parking lot. It sucked even more as I waited in the car for over 2 1/2 hours for a tow truck. There’s a good ending to this story however, the tow truck guy fixed the car by noticing a sensor connection loose on the battery. The bad news is that I didn’t get the chance to finish the three projects I wanted to work on.

I have three sneak peeks for you all though!

You may remember this sideboard from a few posts ago. Well I finally got around to painting it. I haven’t finished polishing the hardware however. Read more