Sexy legs

After Steve made our coffee table we had an extra piece of wood that was in perfect, usable condition. I lived in Chicago at the time and desperately needed a plant table that fit the space in front of my window. I think you can see where this is going.

The first order of business was finding legs that fit the modern style I was going for. I was thrilled to find these extremely sexy hairpin legs online, so I put in an order.

Now I sort of wished that I had gone for the raw steel color, which is black (and cheaper!), but you win some you lose some, right?

Steve finished the raw sides of the board with trim he bought at a regular ole hardware store. Then we attached the legs and used our leftover stain from the coffee table to make this tabletop feel less Scrap Wood and more Finished Surface.

After a few coats of polyurethane (type that three times fast) we had a custom-built, beautiful, new plant table.

This table also served as Olive’s cave. Her dog bed was tucked in there and that’s where she curled up every night. You have to make your furniture multifunctional when living in 400 square feet of space. (I’m sure this is also where she rocked back and forth, muttering to herself “We’re leaving this place soon. TOO MANY LOUD NOISES. We’re leaving this place soon.“)

Nowadays this table is living behind the couch – still playing its role as a plant table – in my favorite little nook:

It’s a shame the legs are no longer visible but it was too perfect of a size to not be used back there. I’m already plotting to make something similar for the entry way. I’d like to put in an order for shorter legs, in the raw steel color, and make a bench that fits the space just right.

So many plans, so little free time. I’m hoping to start working on some more major projects soon, so we’ll see how it goes. There are literally so many projects to do around here that I’m not sure where to start. Anyone have advice on tearing down wallpaper? I’ll probably just start with whichever project allows me to drink wine while I work.

My Furniture-Building Hero

Because I am incredibly proud of my husband and his furniture-making abilities, I thought I’d post his step-by-step picture tutorial of how he built our coffee table. Well, it may not be exactly step-by-step as I am not 100% sure of every step of the process. But you’ll get a pretty good idea from the pictures he took. Working in his parent’s basement and having access to his dad’s wide selection of tools, he was able to build this beauty of a table.

These are pieces he started with:

Check out that table saw. We have GOT to get one of those for our house. After trimming down all of the raw pieces, this is what he was left with:

Now that all the pieces are laid out it’s time to put them all together.

Above image: For this particular piece of furniture he wanted to experiment with only using wood and screws, and no metal brackets. Which means, you could drop this table off of a two story building and I’m fairly certain it would still be a coffee table after it landed.

Time for stain!

And voilá! Instant coffee table. Except, it wasn’t instant in real life. That’s the beauty of a blog post; everything looks quick and easy. Steve did a lot of preliminary work, like drawing it up in a 3D program, which helped with figuring out all of the measurements. In reality, this beauty took a couple of weeks to make.

And it was worth it!

Steve really built this table to suit his needs at his last apartment, and eventually we’ve talked about replacing it with an ottoman. (See that couch corner? We want to try and find an ottoman that will be the same height as the couch so we can push it in that corner like a puzzle piece and snuggle up to watch movies.) So, even if this guy finds a new home in the loft, we’re definitely going to keep it forever. It’s fun to think that our future kids might take it to college and play Quarters on it use it to hold all their heavy text books while they study.

I’ll be back in a few days to share pictures of our new faucet that we (and by “we” I mean Steve) installed last night.

I hope everyone has a very happy Thanksgiving! Gobble gobble.

Headboard It Up

Until I can get around to posting post-move house pictures (say that 3x fast), I thought I’d share a tutorial of a headboard I made for our old master bedroom.

Once we bite the bullet and buy our dream bed from Crate & Barrel I’ll probably end up moving this bad boy over to the guest bedroom. Before I show you the how-to, let’s all ooooh and aaaaah over The Bed. The Atwood, to be more specific.

We toyed with the idea of DIYing a bed, using this one as inspiration, but didn’t think we could find the quality of wood we wanted for the price of the bed. It’s not 100% decided yet but we’re thinking this will be our Christmakah present to each other. More on that later.

On to the tutorial:

First of all, I suggest asking a very handsome man to make you a wooden frame. Make it as wide as your bed, and however tall you’d like for it to be. Once you have your frame it’s time to get a-staplin’. I bought medium weight quilt batting, and cut it a few inches larger than the frame.

I recommend stapling at twelve, three, six, and nine o’clock to make sure you don’t get everything on there all wonky. (You do not, however, need to curl up into a little human ball like I do.)

Once you have those initial staples in place, and everything looks straight, go to town with that staple gun. I’m not sure why marriage isn’t legal between woman and staple gun. That’s how much I love mine.

Once your batting is secured to the frame, repeat this whole process (MORE STAPLES!) with the decorative fabric you’re using. I used an old comforter from Anthropologie that Olive rendered unusable due to claw marks. I luckily found a small section without tears that was a perfect size for this project.

And Voila! It really is that easy.

Our bedroom looks nothing like this anymore. So I suppose I’ll just have to take some pictures and finally get them up here.

Happy headboarding, and happy Thursday!