64 Arts

37 House Furnishings and Decoration | Pillow Fight!

64 Arts

Anyone can have a sofa. A couch. Maybe even a love seat or a chaise. And the smart decorator selects solid color or neutral pattern so you don’t get locked into just one style for the rest of your sofas life. But nothing says come in a get comfy like a scatter of throw pillows you just can’t not touch.

But with so many options, how do you choose?

Throw Pillow Ideas

I put together these 4 groupings in polyvore just on a quick search of “throw pillows” and they all have a few things in common:

  • A mixture of complimentary colors
  • Different sizes and shapes
  • Contrasting textures and materials
  • An eye for what patterns can work together

I think it’s best to start out with one focal point–either a big pillow with a strong pattern (like the zebra-stripe in the top right corner) or a smaller accent pillow with a stand-out motif (bat-signal anyone?). Then you can branch out by finding colors that work with your first pillow. Choose at least one solid or otherwise monochromatic pillow to keep things from being to confusing, but don’t be afraid to mix a geometric with a natural, like the blue set in the lower right.

And then sometimes it’s just worth it to be fun, like the ruffly yellow pillow in the top left or the giant pear pillow below.

Things don’t have to always be so matchy-matchy, as long as you can find a common thread (hah!) between them. Throw pillows and curtains are one of the quickest ways to change up the look of your room on a whim.

But once you’ve got them, what do you do with them?

Care of Feeding of Your Throw Pillows

First, fluff your throw pillows on a regular basis. Never fluffed a pillow before? It’s quite simple, really. Just squeeze the pillow from the sides a few times–kinda like playing an accordion really fast–then give the pillow a quarter turn and repeat. This breaks up any matting or compression that might be happening as the pillow gets leaned-on, hugged, or otherwise smooshed.

Airing pillows out is also a good idea, just be careful of doing so in direct sun as the colors in the textiles can fade. This can work in your favor, though, if you want to whiten linen or wool pillow covers: the sun will act as a natural bleach without the weakening of fibers.

For keeping them nice and clean, I’m a big believer in the power of Scotch-Gard–especially on fabrics that cannot be easily cleaned at home. I hate paying for dry-cleaning of those few pieces of clothing I bought that can’t go in the washing machine, I’ll be damned if I’m going to pay dry cleaning on throw pillows!

Second best is to make or buy pillow covers that can easily be slipped off and cleaned independently of their stuffing. This also has the added benefit of being easier to change out your pillow-schemes for seasons or occasions on a whim, and less to store in the linen closet.

If deep cleaning is required, there’s a good cleaning guide available at Overstock.com.

One last tip for today: if you’re looking to insure a match between your curtains and your throw pillows, buy another curtain panel (or panels from coordinating lines) and use it to make simple pillow covers. A perfect match every time!

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So I sent my first ever Helper Monkey Network Newsletter out on Sunday. Each month I’ll be highlighting a favorite post from each of my blogs, plus news and other tidbits. If you want to subscribe and make sure you get all the fun newsy bits, find the subscribe link in the sidebar of this and the other sites in the Helper Monkey Network.

Guest Appreciation: A Seat for Every Seat

64 Arts, Projects

With one foot still in carpentry we’re going to take a half-step towards the next art for this next project before fully immersing ourselves in

37 House Furnishings and Decorations

When we entertain it’s important that all of our guests have a spot—be it to stand or sit really depends on what type of gathering you’re having. As most of our get-togethers involve a meal or playing games (not of the sporty type), having seats for everyone becomes kind of important to the size of our gathering.

I’ve rented chairs for big parties, and happily do so since the cost is low and it saves us having to store them. We have a couple of folding chairs in the garage that we can bring out for the occasional extra keister or two, but they don’t sit as high as the rest of the dining room chairs, so it’s not the best solution for large family dinners.

Ergo, it’s time to make over my $3 chair.

My $3 side-of-the-road antique store chair.

My $3 side-of-the-road antique store chair.

I bought this chair from a little antique shop that’s no longer in business and, yes, paid a whopping $3 for it. The original plan was to clean it up (it still had a seat then) and use it as a spare chair in my sparsely furnished apartment. That didn’t happen, so it’s spent it’s life in multiple garages and storage rooms until the seat’s rotted out and it’s collected more cobwebs than I really want to think about.

So when I started stripping the antique school desk to refinish it, I figured I’d kill two birds with one stone, and save myself some grief.

Well, that’s not exactly how things worked.

After the first round of stripping and scouring, the chair didn't look that much different!

After the first round of stripping and scouring, the chair didn’t look that much different!

The first round of stripping and sanding barely made a dent in the paint and varnish combo on the chair, so then next weekend I tried again with a heavier stripping pad and even a scraper. I still only got partway through the finish and, by that point, I was so very over this process.

And I reminded myself it was only a $3 chair.

New plan! Screw the refinishing, let’s just paint the sucker. I started out with 2 coats of matte-finish spray paint in a dark brown as an undercoat.

After 2 rounds of stripping and scraping and sanding and 2 coats of paint, it sorta looks like where we started. Not for long!

After 2 rounds of stripping and scraping and sanding and 2 coats of paint, it sorta looks like where we started. Not for long!

That’s where things are right now, since the weather isn’t exactly cooperating—it’s been either too cold or too wet to get any more painting done, plus I need Todd to cut a new seat for the chair and fashion new braces for the legs.

(The brace being the cross-piece between the front and back legs. One was missing when I bought the chair, and we were unable to find any turned braced the right size or length to match, so we’re going to sub in a round dowel rod with the ends cut to fit the existing holes, and go from there.)

The pieces for the rest of the makeover: 3/4" plywood and 2 " foam for the seat, and a 1-inch dowel for the braces.

The pieces for the rest of the makeover: 3/4″ plywood and 2 ” foam for the seat, and a 1-inch dowel for the braces.

Once the new seat and braces are cut, the entire chair will get a coat of a light blue paint and then I’ll distress the edges so that the brown underlayer shows through a bit (like this project from Crane Farms, but not quite as distressed). I thought about using a crackle medium, but didn’t want something quite so shabby chique as all that. Instead I’ll go for simple distressing for a nice aged look.

Then I’ll seal it to prevent more paint than I want from coming loose.

I’ve also picked up some thick foam to cushion the seat with. I’ll cut it to the needed size and shape, bevel the top edges so it’ll look prettier, and then cover the seat with some plush, dark-brown microsuede (I’ve got an entire bolt of the stuff from another project that went nowhere).

Theoretically this chair will match the triptych I painted for the living room (of our last house) that now hangs above our television. The chair probably won’t live in our current living room, but at least it’ll look nice when we bring it out for guests (though I keep starting at a particular corner wondering if I could make it fit with the desk.

This is a rough mock-up of how I see the chair ending up. We'll see how close reality is to idea.

This is a rough mock-up of how I see the chair ending up. We’ll see how close reality is to idea.

Obviously I’m not done with this project, but I want to stay on track with the blog schedule I laid down for myself, so next week we’ll be talking about another facet of home decorating. Once the chair project is done I’ll post that update on the nearest Thursday.

Cool? Cool.

#36 Carpentry | I Get Weak: Shoring Up a Slacking Leg

64 Arts

When you’ve been living with hand-me-down furniture and mismatched this and that, the first bits you buy yourself–even if they come from IKEA’s flat-pack heaven–can mean a lot. So it was that many years ago (at least 6–I don’t really feel like digging through my file boxes to find the receipts, so go with me on this one) I got my first glimpse at an IKEA and decided to snap up a table and chair set for my dining room at a really good price.

Jokkmokk table and chair set

image via IKEA.com

It survived the trip home from Atlanta, me putting it together all on my own (I also bought a spunky orange tool set on that trip–smart!), 2 moves and many parties. And after all of that it’s still going strong.

Well, all but one of the 4 chairs.

Broken chair leg

Oops!

It was just before the holidays got into full swing when Todd leaned back in his chair to hear an unfortunate cracking sound. Thankfully he did not end up sprawled on the floor–the crack had formed along the back/leg right where it angled in to meet the seat. By the time the holidays were over the crack had gone clear through the wood and it was in need of some serious repair.

Now, with most chairs this one long piece would be separate bits and we could just replace the one board and be done with it. Not so much with this piece, so we did the next best thing:

Gorilla Wood Glue

Our glue of choice, hoping the super-tough hold does

Half of having furniture–wooden or otherwise–is taking care of it when (or before) it breaks. To heal busted wood you need two things.

  1. Something to knit the fibers back together.
  2. Pressure to hold the fibers in place until such time as they’re strong again.

Basically, we’re wood doctors healing a broken bone. Instead of a plaster cast, though, we opted to use something a little different.

First we thought regular clamps would do, but the split was in a more-than-awkward spot for such a fix. Then Todd was going to use something called a pipe vise but we were short the needed pipe. What we did have was a strap usually used for tying down stuff in a trunk or truck-bed, it’s got a ratchet on it so can get very tight which is perfect for our needs.

Todd squeezing glue between the broken bits.

Todd squeezing glue between the broken bits.

First we put plenty of glue onto the break.

Tightening the ratchet strap to use as a vise.

Tightening the ratchet strap to use as a vise.

Then we secure it by tightening the strap as tight as possible to keep the glued pieces together.

Check the bottle of wood glue you’re using to see how long it’s supposed to take to dry and then leave it under pressure a little longer for safe keeping.

After that, if you want to reinforce the section with an extra screw into the wood above or below the break as insurance, it might not be a bad idea.

Ideally we would have caught it when it was just beginning to crack and fixed it then. Since we didn’t, we’ll take these steps and see what happens. Worst case scenario? I have a reason to go visit IKEA in Orlando.

At least it beats duck tape, right?

#35 Woodworking | A Little Spruce (or Pine, or Oak…)

64 Arts, Projects

aka Refinishing an Antique School Desk

Since I was about 9 years old or so I had this antique school desk in my bedroom that usually served as my bedside table. When I started moving into homes where more than just one room was mine to do as I pleased, the little antique desk became an occasional table, usually stuffed with programs, take out menus, instructions for assembling furniture, and any other spare part sort of things that would more-or-less fit.

It was, essentially, a junk drawer.

And, over the years, it’d started to look a little worse for wear. For the last 2 years it’s been hanging out in our garage because there was no place in the house for it to be.

Top of the antique child's school desk, scarred and stained

Poor little antique school desk.

Originally I thought the desk had been something Mom had picked up along the way, but it turns out that the piece of furniture goes back at least to my paternal grandmother, and possibly to my great-grandmother (Mom said it was kept in Mamie’s room, which became mine when we moved in with grandma when I was 3). Apparently it was there when my aunt (my dad’s baby sister) was little and she used it growing up, but didn’t know where it actually came from, either. It was the place coloring books and crayons were kept for the grandkids until it eventually moved with us to Florida.

Knowing how far back the desk goes makes me feel more than a little ashamed at how it’s been treated over the years. There were stickers applied, candle wax melted on, wet glasses set on it, teeth marks in the top (an unfortunate incident that involved my brother jumping on the bed) and the cubby stuffed so full that the bottom long since gave way and had to be reinforced more than once. (Aunt M did mention that she also had a habit of over-stuffing the desk, so I don’t feel quite so bad about that one.)

I’m happy to report, however, that this tale has a happy ending. I’ve spent the last 2 weekends giving this old desk a makeover and not in the spray-paint it glossy white sort of way that seems to be so popular these days. No, no, I stripped what was left of the finish from it, had Todd cut a new, solid bottom for it out of matching oak (once we cleaned it up Todd was able to identify what sort of wood the desk was made out of from one of his book), sanded it 4 times, stained it (and parts of myself) a deep, rich brown (Kona, to be exact), and am now in the process of giving it a full 3 coats of polyurethane varnish so that it will be nice and pretty for a long time to come.

Antique Wooden School Desk Stained but not Varnished

It’s not quite finished, yet–I still have 3 coats of varnish to add, but it’s close! (The hinges are just there for show.)

You see, it has a very important role to play this fall, as we’ll be including it with our wedding decorations (right now the plan is for it to hold the programs). Until then, though, it will sit in our living room as I’ve recently made room for it by moving one of the armchairs into my office. Coincidentally, that corner is also the one that holds the silver platter from my Easter remembrances from that same grandmother’s house, so it’s fitting they’ll be reunited again.

Having accomplished this task to the best of my abilities, am I ready to hang out my restoration shingle? Not hardly.

I’m not going to lie, this was hard, sweaty work and not something I’d like to spend every weekend doing. I will say, though, that the getting started parts where Todd and I were working together to remove the 50+ nails holding on what was left of the original and repaired bottom of the desk was quite fun. So it’s not out of the question that we might tackle something like this in the future.

I took plenty of pictures during the long, messy, process; have a look-see:

What’s left is 3 coats of polyurethane and adding the hinges back on with new screws. We were able to salvage the original hinges, though they still need a bit of cleaning. I don’t want to clean them up too much, though, since then they might look too new. I’m not going to do any distressing–something tells me that will happen over time as we’re not exactly gentle with our stuff–but I think if it’s lasted at least 50 years and many kids that we know of, this facelift should hold it for quite some time to come.

#36 Carpentry | Project | Stuck On You

64 Arts, Projects

jwalker_gluestand_glues

I really do love it when a plan comes together!

We’ve been blathering on about woodworking for a while, now, and I’d been meaning to get some projects done but not succeeding very much. You’ll be happy to know that has changed, and I’m going to go ahead and throw the next art into the mix, since it’s so simple (I don’t know why I didn’t post ’em both together to begin with).

36 Carpentry

Sawing planks to make seats and beds.

In the mind of the list originators, woodworking was the fancy, artisan-level stuff and carpentry the more functional. It’s not a seat or a bed, but I do have a functional carpentry project to share with you today that solves a need as well as gave Todd and I a chance to work together on a project.

Of course, when I say work together I mean I dreamt it up, he did most of the carpentry work while I took pictures, and then I added a few details.

First, let’s start with the problem:

I often use liquid adhesives (as opposed to tapes, etc.) and once the bottle starts to approach the half-full point, it seems like it takes forever to get the glue to start to flow–especially when I’m mid project and impatient.

From time to time I’ve stuck the glue upside down in a cup to keep it ready-to-go, but that’s cumbersome and the cup (unless very heavy itself) would tip over if the glue wasn’t put in just right. Annoying.

Then I found that I could sort of wedge some glues more or less up in this tray I’d picked up years ago, probably at the Dollar Tree, but it was still a clumsy, klugy work around.

And then I found my inspiration:

Image via Amazon.com

We have a plastic test tube rack like the one above that I got from American Science and Surplus several years ago to use in our Halloween decorations (gotta have that mad scientists lab, doncha know). What if we made something like this to hold my glue bottles upside down and ready to roll, whenever I needed them?!

So we did:

wooden glue stand on a blue desk with cutting mat in front

All loaded and ready to glue!

Because I have a combination of tall and short glue bottles, we designed the stand to nave two levels. The base is a 6″ x 18″ piece of 1/2-inch solid wood from the hardware store (pine or some other solid wood would do), the legs are 4″ and 3″ cuts from a 3/4″ dowel rod. The top levels are 3″ strips cut from a 1/4″-thick piece of 6″ x 18″ plywood we picked up at Hobby Lobby, and the whole thing is held together with 8 wood screws.

The holes were cut using a hole saw, which is actually just a special drill-bit that works on any power drill. We Todd used 2 different sizes, one for each level, though admits the one saw of his set that was missing would have been a better size for the lower level. The holes drilled are 2 1/8″ on the upper level and 2″ on the lower level. We could have gone much smaller on the lower level, but this way I can actually store more larger bottles on both level, should the need arise.

Cut and drilled pieces of wood, pre-assembly

Ready to assemble glue stand, courtesy of Todd

One of the great features of the test tube rack was that there was a little bowl or divot underneath that kept the tubes from slipping around. While I suppose we could have sanded out a similar feature using a Dremel, I decided to use bottle caps, adhered with a 2-part epoxy, to act as stops to keep the tips of the bottles from sliding around too much.

Now, you might wonder, as I did just before we finished this project, if something already existed that would have saved us the trouble of making our own. Surprisingly, not really. I found some bendable metal stands that would work well for super-glue and other small-nozzled bottles, but not for the types of glue I use. Then I found a couple of 2-bottle glue stands, meant for 2-part epoxy but they would have worked for me, if I only had a couple of glues to concern myself with.

And how many crafters do you know who only use 2 glues?

Glue stand, filled, slid into a narrow spot on a shelf

Tucked out of the way but still ready at a moment’s notice!

Finally, when we were deciding just how long to make the stand, we took into account that I won’t always need this stand out on my worktable all the time. Since the shelving units I have in The Abyss are 18″ deep, that became our maximum length so I could easily slip the stand onto the shelf when not needed.

It’s still bare wood right now because I haven’t decided how exactly I want to finish it. Right now I’m leaning towards decoupage–that seems somewhat fitting!

And some process pics for the curious (click on any of the thumbnails below to enlarge).

Have you made anything interesting lately?

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And with that, we’re back to our regular blogging schedule. Thank you for your patience while I took January off to work on various behind-the-scenes projects (one of which was the look of this site). I’ll have a new post up on Thursday, too, so make sure to come back then to see something else I was up to in the off-season!