Before & After

Refinished Living Room Media Console

August 06, 2012

You may remember back in May I introduced you to the new-to-me console for my living room that I bought on Craigslist. After it's introduction I worked on it pretty steadily, and it began its new life as my media console in July.

Here’s how it started:
My new Craigslist console
Here is the little piece of missing trim around the front:

Damaged trim
Here is the damaged piece of veneer on one side:
Damaged Veneer
The damaged veneer - it's about the size of a deck of cards
And here it is, in all its refinished glory:

refinished Craigslist console
My refinished Craigslist console
The damaged trim – fixed.
repaired front trim
And you’ll never guess what I used to repair it.
chopsticks to repair trim
Yup, those are wood chopsticks. I had been planning on using wood dowels, but they were just a wee bit too thin. I always have wood chopsticks around because I use them to stir small cans of paint and varnish. The chopsticks were the perfect size – I just cut them down and attached them with wood glue. After staining they’re not a perfect match as they’re a different type of wood, but from a distance it’s not really noticeable.
chopsticks cut down for the repair
The damaged veneer has been fixed as well. I replaced the entire section which was a little bit of an adventure. I definitely learned some things. Here too it’s not a perfect repair, but given it’s location on the piece I’m not at all concerned.
repaired veneer prior to staining
Repaired veneer prior to staining
One other thing I did was build a shelf for the inside. I knew there was originally a shelf inside, but when I bought it there were only the supports remaining the shelf was removed at some point. I carefully measured the inside of the cabinet and then had Home Depot cut down a piece of plywood to fit.
plywood for interior shelf
The plywood shelf before staining and edge band
I then used the walnut edge banding left over from my dresser project to finish the visible edge of the shelf.
Applying the edge banding
Applying the edge banding
After being sanded, stained and protected I can now use the entire space again for storage.
console with new interior shelf
And now a few more pictures as I'm pretty happy with the end results.
Refinished media console

close up of the brass hardware
So there you have it – my second furniture refinishing project completed. What do you think - not bad for a $40 Craigslist find is it?
Refinished sideboard in place

Blogging

On Blogging, Life, and Vandalism

July 30, 2012

When I created this blog about a year and half ago I did it mainly to keep my parents (but really my mom) up to date with my attempts at decorating my first place. I admittedly thought it would be quite neat if I could get a few other people to come by and comment every so often, but that wasn’t my goal. As time has gone by I’ve fallen into a trap, one I’m sure other bloggers have experienced - the numbers trap. Over time, I’ve had a few posts appear on some major blogs (my Dollarstore bookends were listed on Babble, and my Craigslist dresser was featured on Apartment Therapy) and those generated quite a bit of traffic to my little spot in cyberspace. For those of you non-bloggers traffic is measured in various ways, but it boils down to numbers, and those numbers can get addictive. When your numbers are going up it’s a great feeling, but conversely when your numbers go down your emotions can too.

I didn’t write a post at all last week which can be attributed to a few things, including writers block, plummeting traffic numbers leaving me feeling like this blog is pointless, and a few other things, one of which I’ll get into below. I think since I started my blog, last week was one of the few weeks I’ve missed posting even a little something. It’s an odd feeling – strangely I feel like somehow I‘ve failed. I’m not quite sure who I’ve failed, but the emotion is there, and it’s interfering mightily with my desire to blog at all.

I’ve never shared on my blog that I’m a member of the Board of Directors at my Co-ownership. Normally it’s not a big responsibility – we meet about every two months to go over the finances and deal with any issues that may arise. That said, we’ve decided that it’s time that the building have its windows replaced – ours were installed in the 80’s and don’t fit the Spanish Colonial style of the building. I’m the board’s representative on the window committee, and as such have been attending meetings with vendors to try to determine what type and style of window is best. My brain is literally overflowing with information on wood-clad vs. vinyl vs. fiberglass, casements vs. double-hung, simulated divided lights with interior or exterior grills, and cottage vs. regular split windows.

Last week I had one regular board meeting and then met twice with the committee to listen to potential vendors. That’s a lot of hours in one week to dedicate to a building, but I have always believed that the efforts of those of us who serve on such boards don’t go unnoticed. And then this happened:
vandalism - stairway
vandalism in our stairway
I took these pictures with my cell phone so the quality isn’t great, but it’s what it looks like – someone in the building took a marker and drew two huge marks on the walls in our front stairway. What makes it worse – the board had just weeks before had all the interior common walls repainted at a cost of several thousand dollars. I know it shouldn’t, but this vandalism feels like a slap in the face. Our building is small – just 23 units. We know pretty much everyone (there are a few renters), so the fact that someone would deliberately do something like this wounds me. I and the other members of the board take the time out of our lives where we could be doing all the things we enjoy to help ensure all of our homes are well looked after. The vandal may as well have written ‘SCREW YOU’ in big black ugly letters (it actually feels like another word, but I try to keep this space PG).

Sigh. Alright. Enough venting. Sorry about that.

In other news I bought myself some lovely sunflowers yesterday.
sunflower close-up
Do sunflowers make you happy?
a bunch of sunflowers in a white vase
I’m not sure what it is about sunflowers, but they make me happy. I’ll be sure to look at them tomorrow after I get back from the emergency board meeting that was called in response to the lovely new art of our walls, and then maybe, if I feel up to it, I might draft a blog post about something that make me happy. Wish me luck.

Life Lately

A Glimpse of My Vacation Out West

July 19, 2012

Today I'm doing my first ever guest post for Brittany over on her wonderful blog - My. Daily. Randomness. You can check out my post here

Last week I was lucky enough to get to spend a little time with my parents in beautiful British Columbia. I had a great time relaxing and doing a few new things and I thought I'd share a few pictures from my week off.

My journey across the country started with a stop in a few airports where I discovered that the rumour about cops and Donut shops is true, and in Toronto Pearson the cops can drive their cute car to get some.
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I brought my golf clubs with me. This was during my first go with them since last fall. When golfing one MUST have cute head cover, they're even more important than your ability to swing a club.
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My mom and I visited a lavender farm while I was there. I'd never been to one before so it was neat. They were just starting to harvest, so the plants were in full bloom.
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Who said frogs can't golf? This guy might need custom mini-clubs though.
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There was a pretty impressive storm one evening - this was the sunset as the storm ended.
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My dad and I went cherry picking. I LOVE cherries, and they were just in season as I was there. I may have eaten a few more than I put in the bucket.
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When we went to the beach Bambi came down to have a snack. She seemed unconcerned about the strange, almost naked people gawking at her.

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This was the start of my journey home. I flew a little plane over the Rockies before hopping into a bigger plane for my trip back east.
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So there you go - a few snapshots of what I got up to on vacation. Have you gone away anywhere so far this summer? Did you have as much fun as I did?

All the pictures about were taken with my phone. I'm a little late to the party, but I've recently joined Instagram. I'm Sweetsuite10 if you'd like to follow me, but I can't promise that any of my 'regular life' pictures will be as fun as the ones above.

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