Archive for the ‘craigslist’ Category

DIY NEON TABLE

Friday, October 5th, 2012

I made a new coffee table for the den and so can you! You know, if you want to or whatever. I don’t care! It’s your coffee and a place to put it, homeslice.

The den has always been my nemesis in terms of awkward layout, weird wainscoting and overall browntown-ness and remained so despite a year living with that gorgeous tulip table. Sometimes marble isn’t able to solve all your problems, so when I ran across this wood slab top on Craigslist I thought, hey, why not throw in some more brown to browntown and maybe – just maybe – add a touch of neon pizazz to fix this mess of a room.

WHAT YOU’LL NEED 

– Table Top (I found this slab on Craigslist – eBay is a great source or THIS might work for you, but any top can work)
Hairpin Legs (Logan from OneFortyThree made these ones – oh, and check out his shop too)
Florescent Spray Paint
ScotchBlue Painter’s Tape
3M Advanced Abrasives Sandpaper (I used the 150 and 220 grit)
3M TEKK Protection Saftey Gear (gloves, mask, ect.)
Orange Glo Spray Cleaner
Howard Feed & Wax
Cordless Drill
– Tape Measure
– Screws (length and type best suited for your table top)
– Rags

HOW TO DIY 

1. My wood slab had some surface scratches and vintage grim that needed to be ‘refreshed’, so I started hand-sanding with the rougher 150 grit sandpaper to knock down the majority of the damage and finished up with the very fine 220 grit for a nice smooth finish.

*Tip Corner: Depending on how rough your wood is or if it has any sort of lacquer or stain finish, you might prefer using a power sander to expedite the sanding process. Wear some eye protection and a mask if power sanding off any kind of preexisting finish, ’cause seriously who knows what it is or if you should ingest it (you really probably shouldn’t FYI). Anyways, my wood was in pretty good shape and didn’t need a ton of sanding to look and feel good.

2. After sanding, go ahead and remove all the dust and icky stuff with some Orange Glo Spray and a clean rag in order to prep the wood for the final buff.

3. Sometimes when refinishing wood I’ll use Danish Oil to restore and treat the wood and then buff it, but this slab was already in pretty good shape and didn’t really need it, so I finished up by buffing on some Howard Feed & Wax (aka my favorite thing ever).

*Tip Corner: After years of gross oil hands turning into gross oily hobo hair (when I inevitably touched my hair with my oily hands) I finally threw on some gloves and avoided the whole situation. Now I am an adult. An adult doing things safely or something.

4. After the top was all finished up I flipped it over and roughly placed the hairpin legs to eyeball where they should go.

5. Once placement was decided, I taped off the legs at 4″ to prep them for the neon spray paint.

*Tip Corner: I taped the legs all the way down in order to avoid any over-spray. Why? Because I’m a messy and lazy spray painter, duh.

6. I threw on some gloves to avoid that messy nozzle spray paint finger thing that always happens and then gave each leg a few coats of paint. Also, go ahead and wear a mask and some eye protection for extra safety – you know, if you go all willy-nilly and spray paint crazy and want to protect stuff like your health. SAFETY.

*FYI, florescent spray paint seems thinner than normal paint and ended up taking more coats than I expected.

7. I screwed on the legs and then pulled off the tape.

BOOM. Done.

Easy-peasy custom neon fun times.

I’m super happy with how the coffee table turned out and really enjoy this little florescent touch to what has always been browntown central. Now if that lame wainscoting would just disappear without me having to do anything…

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This post is a collaboration with 3MDIY. To learn more about safety and preparation, visit 3MDIY.com

PUP & STUFF

Friday, September 28th, 2012

PUPPY UPDATE

We decided on a name! The name is annoyingly ridiculous! Apologies in advance! Ok, so what is it?

Bea Arthur ‘Featherfoot’ Beepers

Yeah, well, we mainly call her ‘Bea’ for expediency or ‘Beepers’ when she squeaks or howls. Occasionally we’ll throw out a ‘Featherfoot’ when shes acting like a creepy hippie. She’s spayed, fully vaccinated, flea free and generally incredibly amazing, but we are  now officially crazy dog herding people. For reals.

CRAIGSLIST UPDATE

It’s Friday, otherwise know as the official round up day of the internet, so here’s a little peak at some of the stuff I’ve been rounding up on the old Craigslist.

Of course, I’m a compulsive CL scavenger and save an insane amount of listings while sending a ridiculous amount of pointless email inquires considering that I rarely buy. I mean, really it’s like 5% of the time that everything works out and I find something I want at a good price, drive out and grab it and then somehow don’t get murdered. Anyways, it takes a delicate combination of price, ease, need and willpower for me to follow through and meet up with a stranger to buy their old unwanted crap.

CL is a pain. Mostly. But I just can’t stop chasing that dragon.

Above are a few samples from the past month of my saved CL posts – which total out to be seven things I’m watching and one thing I’m buying. But those are cute things dummy! Why not buy everything?! Well, some are overpriced, some are basically inconvenient, some sellers are unreachable and a special few are constantly reposted because the seller is cray-cray.

Which one made the cut?

Hint hint, it’s not that Lafer sofa and it’s bigger than Bea. Stay tuned? Hopefully it will be in the house? if everything works out?

 

Have a sweet ass weekend.

CHAIR’D

Tuesday, September 4th, 2012

Picked up this pair of chairs off Craigslist about…looks…like two months ago? So you know, breaking goddamn news. Wow. That is pitiful. Both the house and blog seem to be caught up in some sort of stagnate stalemate of clutter, disinterest and neglect.

I’ve been distracted? Busy? Hot? Preoccupied? Stuff is happening.

These photos are like really sad time travel to when we lived with order and cleanliness. Now? Chaos all up in the place. The living room has been solidly filled with boxes and random bits from overlapping projects for months. Of course once that started, the clutter rapidly spread and overtook most of the house and then it spread out over most of the property.

Things are unmanageable. Out of control. Officially hitting bottom. Ruins. To sum up, the house has spiraled into disorder as my attentions have been elsewhere.

UNSOLVABLE catastrophe, no wait, this is an easy to SOLVE thing.

All I need is extra storage space and a few men with strong load-bearing backs – possibly some sort of formal intervention – to organize and regain the use of, oh I don’t know, the dining room. If only that didn’t sound so horribly dull and currently inconvenient.

If only.

I’d totally be all up in it and organizing shiz for real.

Anyway.

This pretty rusty pair is still buried somewhere deep in the living room jumble, but before that mess I thought they added a nice bit of color and change to the space. If memory serves. Maybe someday I will see them again.

So. Yup. I got nothing. Blog quagmire.

Hmmm.

Anybody want to play that hot new game called Identify That Chair?

Name the designer and manufacturer of this chair pair if you dare, you punks. Get it correct and you just might get a sassy tickle and pinch from me – but ONLY when you least expect it OR never at all. *Probably never