Where Retail Goes to Die

A while ago I discovered a place around here that buys everything left over after a retail store goes out of business.  It even has an entire floor full of creepy mannequins.  The building is a huge warehouse jam packed with old fixtures, jewelry cases - even hangers.

There wasn't a whole lot of old advertising but I did find some hard styrofoam letters.  Thank god Amanda plays Words with friends because there was just a jumble of letters I didn't know what to do with. She came up with "Loco", which is pretty appropriate I'd say.  With a bit of work, I thought it would look pretty awesome hanging above a doorway.

So we spray painted.  Right on our unruly lawn.  The letters were originally orange, so we spray painted the front side blue.  I was originally going to paint the whole piece blue, but it looked so awesome with just one side painted and the orange poking out.

For $2 a piece, I'd say they look pretty great.

Even better when not surrounded  by unmanicured grass.

Keep Reading...

How to Make Other People's Trash Look Halfway Decent

Amanda and I go through furniture like no tomorrow, particularly chairs.  We're not exactly sure why this happens but it could be caused by our lack of desire to actually purchase furniture.  In fact I can't think of a single piece of furniture in our home that wasn't given to us or purchased at Goodwill.  It's hard being broke. 

But by God if we're going to be broke we're at least going to try and make it look like that's "what we were going for". 

So instead of spending hundreds to make new stuff look old, we just take other people's trash and hope for the best.  Our friend is moving across the country and couldn't takes these beauts with him.

Please note the scratchy, burnt orange fabric.  This is the kind of fabric that still makes you itch even if you are wearing jeans. The itch seeps through that much.

When our friend gave them to us he told us that these chairs were his father's and said that he would "be rolling in his grave if he knew we were breaking up the set". It's good to know the chairs came from someone who loved them. Even if there are holes in them.

 

After reading about a paragraph on the internet about how to reupholster a chair I told myself that I could do this.  Most of the time that doesn't turn out so well.  Thankfully, this disembodied hand showed up to help.  It did a hell of a job with the stapling.

Every wall in our house is beige.  To counteract this our landlords painted the wood floors mint green.

What the hell do you do with mint green floors?

The answer is nothing.  There is absolutely nothing you can do to make mint green wood floors attractive.  You can call them "rustic" or "quaint" but really they're just ugly.

It's impossible to find anything to match. For some reason I felt like yellow might be a good choice.  Amanda hates this fabric.  That's fine because I think it looks great.

Here is the finished product.

At least now we can eat dinner without wanting to tear our skin off right? I can only hope that in 30 years two broke twenty somethings discuss how terrible the fabric choice was and have an argument about what to reupholster them with.

Keep Reading...

Proof I am becoming an old woman

1) I knit a scarf with a collar.

 

Only old women need collars on their scarves.  This is because they require the extra warmth of both shirt collars and scarf collars. If a person under the age of 75 were to wear two collars at the same time they would sweat to death.  Fortunately for old people, this is physically impossible.

2.  I have started quilting.

My excuses for this include:

There was a sale at Joanne Fabric

I needed something to do while I was watching the Golden Girls

Sometimes I drink too much wine to knit without dropping every other stitch. Luckily for me, sewing machines pretty much do all the work for you as far as keeping things in a straight line.

3. I am growing my own vegetables.

This is the only thing that I haven't killed.  Please refer back to this post to see all the things that I actually planted.

Keep Reading...