White, bright, and out of my sight

I had a wonderful pair of Ikea Urban chairs on my porch the whole summer.  They were lightweight but not flimsy, pretty comfortable for an un-upholstered chair, and apparently are made out of some reinforced polypropylene.  I think they look a little futuristic.

Whatever, they were nice for the price of $0.  With fall rolling around I thought it was time to do a little patio rearranging and increase the light transmission into the living room for the winter months in the hopes of keeping the remaining houseplants alive through the winter.  So the chairs went up for grabs and some friends with a large deck and a penchant for dinner parties snagged them.

Here they are on the patio, just waiting for a party!

Happy Halloween, and Happy freestyling.

5 shades of [Isunda] gray

I resisted owning a couch for a long time, well into the post-college years, well well into adulthood. Couches represented some sort of commitment to a space that I never expected.  Multiple apartments in multiple states can attest to my lack of residential continuity.  But, finally, in April I finally took the plunge and bought a couch.  Well, an Ikea couch - which is like 1/4 of a real adulthood couch - and it was only $200 on craigslist, so a little more than a really nice pair of shoes and about 1/10 of what you would spend on a quality piece of couch-ness.  Be that as it may, I have for some months now been the owner of a 'sand' colored Ikea Karlstad couch.  Who buys a beige couch? I did, because it was one of two decent options for sale at the time.  It is very comfortable for napping.

There it is in the background, doing not much of anything, blending into the other-tone-of-beige wall.

I've wanted to get a grey cover for the couch, but they retail for $150. What??? 

That Isunda Gray though, it will haunt you.

It seemed wrong to spend almost as much on a cover as I did on the couch itself. So I covered it with throw pillows and a blanket and realized it was ok-meh just being beige.

Then, one night, I was looking for picture frames and I saw this....

 Oh Lord. There it is. Having had to disassemble and then reassemble the couch when I bought it, the size and shape were very familiar.   Please please please please please don't be covered in parakeet vomit and mysteriously technicolor stains. Please.
(I approached cautiously, waiting to be disappointed)
....

No parakeet vomit.

No smells.

No pet hair.

All the pillows present and accounted for.

Some random extra wood screws in places, ok, I can handle that.

No legs, who cares? I'm not here for the couch.

Is this really here, and happening?

Yes.

Off I went, to get my tool kit so I could loosen those hex nuts just enough to separate the armrests from the center section. I stripped off that cover - easy as pie - its only attached with velcro anyway.  In one place the previous owner had screwed through the armrest cover, but it is in a spot you can't see once the pieces are assembled.  10 minutes later the pieces were in my washing machine and on their way to becoming part of my living room update.

We'll see if the guys even notice once I change it out. That's a story for the next post.

Happy freestlying, don't be afraid of a lil' bit o late night disassembly.

Ikea Lack table makeover with adhesive paper

The Ikea Lack end table, already the subject of many a makeover (aka "hack"), but here is one more for the pile.  I found this free table in a discarded furniture pile, a few chips and scuffs, but in relatively good shape for something made of particle board.

 Originally I thought about painting the table, but then I remembered that painting is messy and I'm less than enthusiastic about cleaning up from painting. So, no to painting.  Then I thought about covering the table with marbleized paper and securing it using modge podge.  Then, again, I remembered that using modge podge is pretty much like painting and that  I'm still lazy when it comes to furniture crafting .  So how to transform this boring and too dark end table into something decentish?

One night in design blog land I read about people covering tables with contact paper, ding!  Easier than painting, and all the fun of giant stickers.  In the name of thrift I decided against purchasing the beautiful and expensive faux marble paper that cost 5x more than the original table, and went with one of the options available at the local hardware store.

 Covering the table took about 1.5 hours since I was moving slowly and trying not to bang things around.  I used almost the entire 9 foot roll to cover the table (21x21 inches square on top) and the 4 legs. I also added the green felt floor protectors to the bottom of each leg. Stickers on top of stickers.

Below is the partial reveal of the finished product.

  I actually think the trellis pattern is nice, interesting but not too crazy.  I selected it because it reminded me of furniture with bone inlay or interesting painted designs. Some examples are shown below. If you close one eye and squint with the other maybe my table will look as cool as these.

 

via houzz 

 

via 1stdibs 

 

via Miss Mustard Seed 

 via ba stores

Pretend that I was thinking of all of those cool pieces above when I picked this design.  

The finished product is shown below.

Ready to hold your stuff and things.

The brighter stripe down the middle is not a figment of your imagination, it is where the two pieces of adhesive paper overlap.  Luckily the paper is re-positionable, otherwise there would have been zero hope of coming close to matching the pattern.

  It would be nicer if the paper wasn't so sheer, or if I was ambitious enough to do 2 layers and have the white be brighter, but I think $4.99 is enough of an investment for now.  My plan is to use this as a coffee table (which we didn't have before), but it might get pressed into service holding plants on the balcony.

Happy freestyling!