DIY West Elm style pouf

I love these dhurrie poufs, at West Elm. I dunno why exactly, it's like all the fun of a bean bag, but with the sophistication of an ottoman. I mean, how cute is this?

But I don't love the $249 price tag. For that price, I could get a real piece of furniture!

So one day I was eyeballing my old memory foam mattress topper and wondering what the heck I should do with it, when it hit me - I should make a pouf!

I used my electric bread knife to cut the foam into 24 inch squares, and then layered them all on top of each other, like a layer cake (using spray adhesive where the frosting would go). I had to clean up the edges a little bit, as (much like my layer cakes) my 7 layers were a little lopsided.

Then wrapped the whole thing in a layer of batting, and used an old mattress cover to make a little pillow case for the stack of foam. This will keep it nice and tidy inside the final slip cover, and disguise any unevenness in the edges of the foam.

Finally I used a dhurrie rug that I got on sale from Urban Outfitters (only $89!) as my material. It frays like a maniac, but the texture is consistent with the West Elm pouf. And unlike those other poufs, I outfitted mine with two zippers on the bottom, so that I could easily remove the cover for washing.

All in all, it only took about three and a half hours. And look how cute!

My only regret is that I had but one mattress topper to give to this craft project.

Craigslist Crawl: Card Catalogue!

I have always had a soft spot for old library card catalogues - something about the tiny drawers just seems so purposeful. Unfortunately (for me) the rest of the world has caught on to the romance of these pieces, and the prices are going through the roof. Stupid old supply and demand!

In one of my regular Craigslist crawls, I actually found a unit for a very respectable price, but I thought "I have too much furniture as it is... where would I even put this?... what would I put inside of it?..." and all the usual methods of talking yourself out of something you really REALLY want. Then, almost by destiny, I stumbled onto this article on Apartment Therapy. Clearly, the universe was trying to tell me something.

A few days later I drove to a remote Public Storage unit in Gardena, and came home with this little beauty...

The graininess of that Craigslist pic doesn't even show the years of dirt, tape, pen markings, and scratches that couldn't mar the potential of this gorgeous piece. I took it straight home and got to work with some Scott's Liquid Gold (which is really a miracle product) and Goo Gone. I couldn't believe how the much the wood glowed, when I was done!

I also added some simple legs from Lowes, and stained them to match the color of the cabinet.

This is totally my new favorite piece (aren't' they all, though?). And yes, I did use it to organize my life, and take back my kitchen junk drawer (which had actually expanded to two junk drawers!).

Now I have a place for every thing, and a thing for every place. Just the way I like it!

Disaster Watch 2013: Bobcatting!

The holidays are over, people, and so is the time for slacking off! We've been chipping away at the World's Worst Backyard, while fervently hoping that someone from HGTV would just whisk us away on a luxury vacation and install water features and fire pits while we're getting spa treatments. Apparently there is no Santa Claus, because that did not happen.

And while we'd been eating holiday cookies and sipping eggnog, our weed collection has been thriving! Check out Garrett, attempting to stem the tide (pun intended).

No, that's not grass he's standing on, those are geranium weeds that he's chopped down to the nub. Seeing how much work there was still to do, and feeling a bit overwhelmed with it all, I decided to put aside the wimpy weed whackers and wheelbarrows, and call in the big guns.

That's right, we rented a Bobcat! I had first answered a craigslist ad for a Bobcat operator who would also haul the dirt away, but he wanted over $1500! Then I found American Rentals, who rents and delivers Bobcats for the bargain price of $441.50. After renting a dumpster for $166, I was still at less than half of the price of the first estimate. Plus we got to drive the Bobcat, which was good fun. 

The trickest part was getting it up the driveway, under the patio cover, and into the yard, without unintentionally tearing anything down. But we did it! And after a long day's work, our Disaster is a little less dire. 

All the stumps and plastic bins of questionable contents have been removed and disposed of. I never though it would be so nice to see a backyard composed entirely of dirt!

Christmas in New Orleans (the House Highlights)

Merry Christmas, from beautiful New Orleans, Louisiana! Instead of flying to Florida to spend time with Garrett's mom, we all decided to meet in New Orleans and have a little Christmas vacation together. None of us had been here before, but we had our preconceived notions - I envisioned the whole city looking like Disneyland's New Orleans Square, and people partying in the streets all night long.

Not that I was entirely off. The French Quarter is beautiful and very Disney-esque, but it's only a very small portion of the city. And yes, there are people partying on the streets, even two days before Christmas, but we're told it's a very small crowd, compared to the onslaught of people they're expecting for the Super Bowl and Mardi Gras this year.

Nevertheless, getting out of that part of the city felt pretty good. We hopped in a cab, and told the driver to take us to Chartres Street - where we'd heard the fancy people live. It did not disappoint! Check out some of my favorite houses from our impromptu tour...

You know I have a weakness for yellow houses, and check out that turret! Even the carport is adorable!

But there were many others that were arguably more grand...

Porches are definitely a big thing here, though we didn't see anybody rocking on them, or drinking mint juleps while fanning themselves. Maybe it's just not the season... 

Disaster Watch 2012: Um, what?

I may have mentioned that I sometimes find evidence that people have been traipsing through our yard. Sometimes it's that things are moved, sometimes it's beer bottles or cigarette butts. But today I saw something that made my heart stop a little bit. 

My first thought was "how did my crutches get out here?" Then I looked closer, and saw that these were not my crutches. Just to be sure, I went inside and checked - my crutches are in the closet, right where I left them.

So someone entered my yard with a pair of crutches, possibly used them to vault up the side of my neighbor's garage, and then left them behind, laid neatly in a little stack.

Is it just me, or is this a little chilling?

What to Do With an Ugly Floor Heater

This week has been filled with highs and lows. And I don't just mean the artificial highs I've been getting from prescription pain meds. 

Last week I went under the knife (and some lasers) to get a torn tendon repaired in my ankle. It ended up being a lot more painful than I had anticipated, and I'm supposed to be couch-bound for at least two weeks. Not exactly a vacation, but my dad and Monty did decide to get in a little housework while I'm laid up.

The biggest job will be installing the ductless heater / air conditioner unit that I purchased in a moment of heat wave induced desperation. And they couldn't have picked a better time - with these bulky bandages on my leg and not being able to take a real shower, things are going to get ripe really fast!

Now that I am getting a brand new heating system, I figured I could finally stop procrastinating about removing the horrible floor heater in my living room! I wish I had a picture of the gross metal grate that had been covering it for probably fifty years. Under that grate was a hulking old beast of a floor heater that probably hadn't worked in over a decade. How did the last owners live without heat??

Anyway, I had Monty work his magic with some scraps of hardwood flooring we had left over from the garage renovation, and look how it turned out!

Monty used his planer to take off the top layer of stain, which was a heck of a lot quicker than sanding them all down, and then measured and cut each piece individually before laying it. Pretty cool!

I rubbed on a walnut colored stain and then immediately wiped it off, to get the grain to darken like that, and then went over the patch again with a golden pecan stain and varnish in one product. The match is pretty darn close!

I knew we'd never be able to seamlessly patch the hole, so figured why try? I think this is a little more interesting anyway, and no one is scared to walk on it - what a difference!

A Very Chair-y Seating Situation

It wasn't very long ago that I was on a desperate search for dining room chairs. The two that I pulled out of the dumpster didn't quite cut it in my new, larger, dining room. And buying them new is expensive! So I did what I do, and went to the flea market.

There, I found a set of four chairs in reasonably decent shape, just needing new seats - piece of cake! That same weekend, my mom showed up with two more chairs, of a similar style but with higher backs, also needing new seats. Presto, I have a set of six dining chairs!

A few weeks later, I wound up the lucky recipient of four more dining chairs that had previously been owned by my grandmother, and were not only in perfect condition, but were also delightfully Mid-Century Modern. Now I have ten dining room chairs in two very different styles. I think this is what they mean when they say "an embarrassment of riches."

But while I had a plethora of indoor seating, I was sorely lacking in outdoor seating. That is, until I had the idea to combine three of the chairs into a bench for my back porch! Here's what I did...

First, of course, I removed the existing seats, gave the chairs a rough sanding, and cut down the legs on the middle chair a bit, to make the heights all even.

I'm going for a shiny metallic finish, and I read somewhere that a coat of black paint underneath the metallic will help it shine. They don't really make black spray paint primer though, so I just used regular black spray paint. We'll see if it works! 

Then I had Garrett help me cut a piece of plywood to the right shape to stretch across all three chairs, including the little notched out piece in the back of the middle chair. 

Looking like a bench already! There are some reinforcements under the seats that you can't see - the plywood wasn't a sturdy enough base to keep the chairs from wobbling around when you lifted the whole thing up. We cut wood blocks and used them to attach the bottoms of the chairs together with long wood screws.

Once the seat was cut, it was time for the fun part - upholstery! I bought the fabric on etsy, and ironed on this vinyl coating, to make it waterproof. I didn't want to simply use outdoor fabric as I knew it would get dirty really quickly, living outside. And I didn't want the foam to get wet and deteriorate. With this iron on stuff, you can just hose off the seat when it gets dirty! The only bummer is that the vinyl only comes in 18" widths, so you have to cut two pieces and overlap them a bit. It's not hard, just a little time consuming. 

I used three inch high density foam (also from amazon, which was way cheaper than Joanns), spray adhesive, and my trusty staple gun to attach it all to the plywood backing.

I attached the seat to the newly assembled bench through the original seat screw holes, and voila! A totally cute outdoor bench that seats three!

Now all I need is a cute outdoor space to put these in.