Full Metal Locker

TA-DA!

It's a locker!

 

Just hearing the metal door open and close takes me back to high school.

And see that little detail that someone has painted over?  That's the little detail that sold me on this beauty, because that's what will help make this piece genuine.

Someone asked me today "Why in the world did you buy a locker - and what do you even do with a locker?"  I think a better question is what CAN'T you do with a locker.  But before I wax poetic about all of it's useful characteristics, allow me to tell you about a recent trip I took to Homegoods.  

I love Homegoods, truly.  It's where I bought my desk chair in which I am currently sitting.  It was when I purchased my chair about a month ago that I came across a painted and distressed metal locker, made to look salvaged and reclaimed.  It was beat up, scuffed and dented.  The reason I noticed this piece was because my mother who was with me at the time was admiring it fondly.  And yes, admittedly the piece was awesome.  It was bright, it was cute, it was eclectic.  But what made it less so were the other half-a-dozen lockers exactly like it.  Seeing the mass production behind it all made it lose some of it's charm.

 
This beauty is 100% one-of-a-kind.  Or rather it will be once I'm done with it.  Terry has given me six months to sell this bad boy before he claims it as his own.  Sounds like someone has gotten on board with this whole locker idea.  It's already built out to hang clothes.  I'm thinking of adding a shelf at the top much like a traditional locker would have.  I'm toying with the idea of doing some chalkboard paint on the inside of the door, but it might translate best if I just keep it simple.  Think of it has eclectic storage, a truly unique reclaimed and re-purposed piece.  I can't wait to get started.

In keeping with the metal theme of the evening, I have one other morsel to share that I picked up this weekend.

A vintage Louis Sherry tin!

Growing up, we had one of these in our bathroom.  It sat behind the toilet and held soaps and hair ties and other random bathroom stuff.  It was such a fixture in our bathroom that until I was about 20 I believed that every bathroom came with a Louis Sherry tin.  And that's when I bought my own, which is in our hall bath, sitting behind the toilet holding soaps, etc.  

This one is in far better condition than the one that's in my bathroom now.  The colors truly pop, and the detail is so darling.  With a hinged lid and bright purples and golds, it's so sad they don't make chocolate tins half this nice anymore.  

Since I've run out of bathrooms to populate with Louis Sherry tins, this little lady is listed over in the Items for Sale section!     

A Saturday in Pictures

Aaaah, the rare and elusive Saturday update.  Pink dolphins are easier to find than a Saturday post, but we had a busy day and I'm excited to share.

We hit up a couple thrift stores today, and by we I mean Terry joined me on my thrifting adventures.  I also made him drive the truck.  Which also means that we may or may not have purchased a locker (we totally bought a locker).  Not a foot locker, but an honest to God, reclaimed, full-size metal locker.  I'd share a picture but the locker is still in the back of the truck because evidently it's bad enough we bought a locker, we're certainly not carrying it inside at nine o'clock at night.  More on the locker later once I'm able to snap a couple pictures of it.

But we did get these super cute His & Hers coffee mugs!

They're massive and awesome and we'll now be able to ingest a soup bowl's worth of coffee in one sitting. One guess as to which one is mine... 

I took some hair pics since I'm now one week out from having last used store-bought shampoo.

 

The dogs were barking, Terry was cussing and we were running late for a furniture delivery so that's my stressed face.  Just focus on the hair.  Now, I will say, the baking soda was making my hair kind of dry (the weather hasn't helped with that either), so I actually haven't used any baking soda on my hair since Wednesday.  I just hop in the shower and spray it down with my vinegar rinse.  

Here's my attempt at taking a picture of the top of my head.  Not too bad!  

The furniture we delivered today; remember these guys from a couple months ago?

Well they went to their new home!  They now look like this:

 
SO CUTE.  I love the pink and grey combo, and they've made a super cute addition to a guest bedroom.

I started working on these guys today:

These are two adorable little matching drop-leaf end tables/nightstands.  I picked them up from a lady a couple months ago.  She intended to paint them but just never got around to it and decided she didn't have the time so she was looking to offload them.  Lucky for me, I don't have a life and spend most nights and weekends in the basement!  One of them does require a little carpentry work in order to fix one of the leaves, which is why they've sat for so long.  In a perfect world the carpentry repairs will be done tomorrow.  But in a perfect world, I'd have a locker in my basement right now.

Lastly, while we were out and about today, Terry needed to refuel in order to keep up so we made a trip to Starbucks.  And guess what I spied in the back?

Do you know what is in that box marked Holiday?  GINGERBREAD GOODNESS, THAT'S WHAT.  In just a matter of days it will be Christmas in my mouth with the return of their holiday lattes.  Also, I'm not sure why the boxes with bags need to be labeled Caution.  Also, I may or may not be welcomed back to this particular Starbucks location since they didn't seem to appreciate me taking artistic license and photographing their storage space.  I suspect it has to do something with the Cautionary bags.  

That's it for tonight.  Hopefully I'll have some more fun furniture pictures to share tomorrow!   

How To Clean Leather & Your Hair (But not At the Same Time)

So remember this guy we brought home a couple weeks ago?

He wanted to be a stud so bad, but he needed some help.  So we stripped.  Then we sanded, and sanded, and sanded some more.  Seriously, I got the best night's sleep after sanding this guy for two hours straight one night.  Once the sanding was complete (otherwise known as when I lost use of my right arm), we stained.  He took the stain beautifully.  We sealed him up, and that's when I tackled the leather seat.

As you can see, it desperately needed to be tackled.  I waited to clean the seat until the chair was re-stained and re-sealed.  Attempting to clean the seat before the chair was refinished could have resulted in more dirt and grime from the chair being worked into the seat.  I didn't want to risk using anything on the chair besides stain while the wood was left raw and untreated after I'd stripped and sanded.  Once sealed, he's pretty much impenetrable, so bring on the cleaner! 

I snagged some of this stuff from our local AutoZone. 

The Lexol Leather Conditioner came highly recommended, but after assessing the seat situation, I wanted to grab the cleaner too just to be on the safe side.  

The whole process was relatively easy, it just took patience and extended use of my right arm again.  To start, you need 2 damp rags.  Spray the cleaner on one damp rag and work the seat into a lather.

 
Use your other damp cloth to wipe away the dirty excess that's worked out of the leather with the lather (say that 3 times fast).

This is where patience is key.  I probably rinsed and repeated this process close to a dozen times before I was satisfied.  I kept wiping and lathering and cleaning until my rag came up clean (or clean-ish).  

Once cleaned, I grabbed two more rags (dry this time, not damp) and went to work with the conditioner.  It's the same basic concept as the cleaner: spray the conditioner on one rag and work into the leather, let it sit for a few minutes, then use your other rag to buff and wipe off the excess.  This leather sucked up the conditioner, which yea, if you hadn't had a drink in about 100 years, you'd be pretty thirsty too.  I repeated the conditioning treatment until I finally had excess to wipe up (maybe four or five times).

Ready to see what this stud of a chair looks like now?

What a handsome chair!  I couldn't be happier with the end result.  The whole thing cleaned up beautifully; he wanted to be handsome again.  He's being delivered back to his forever home on Friday and I can't wait for the clients to see him.  For as long as they've known him, I don't think they've ever known him to look like this which is what makes this project so much fun.

Now speaking of cleaning and conditioning, this is my latest hair care regimen:

So here's the deal. My hair is stick-straight and super fine.  I enjoy having longer hair, but longer hair doesn't equate well with stick-straight and super fine.  Especially the closer we get to winter.  Every winter my hair freaks out like we haven't been through 31 winters together already; it gets all dry and staticy and clingy and limp and just ugh.  Since I have zero loyalty to any type of hair care product currently, and I was out of shampoo, I decided to go the All Natural route to try to get my hair to chill out.  

Y'all I did extensive research on this (meaning, I totally read at least three of the articles that came up on the first page of Google search results for baking soda shampoo).  I make my own laundry detergent, so why not make my own shampoo?  I even bought a special brush made of boar's hair that's supposed to stimulate my natural scalp oils and stuff.  

We'll see.  I haven't used store-bought shampoo since Saturday.  Here's what I'm currently working with:

Not terrible.  At least it doesn't look like I haven't used store-bought shampoo since Saturday.  So here's what I do:

• I dump way to much baking soda into my palm while in the shower, and then I wet it to create a paste.
• This is followed by lots of hair flinging and flipping and flailing in an attempt to work said baking soda paste into my scalp.  
• I then swirl the baking soda that has spilled onto my shower floor with my foot because that's an added bonus of cleaning my shower.
• Then I rinse the baking soda out of my hair, and apply my vinegar detangler spray that I've pre-mixed and added some Eucalyptus oil to in an attempt to avoid smelling like a salad.  
• I let that sit for a minute or two (without getting it in my eyes because that really hurts), then rinse.

The vinegar is pretty awesome, I'm not going to lie.  My hair feels soft when I rinse it out, very similar to when you rinse out traditional conditioner.  And it brushes easily (with my boar's hair brush - sorry boars!).  This morning I applied two drops of Morrocan oil to help keep the static down, and that worked well. 

We'll see how long this lasts.  I have no follow-through when it comes to stuff like this.  This new routine requires an awful lot of thought first thing in the morning when all I want to do is reach for a bottle of Pantene and squeeze.  Now I'm making pastes and flipping my hair around.  My shower on the other hand has never looked cleaner...  

This Isn't a Real Update

 PUPPY PJ'S WITH MY PUP. 

I'm pretty sure Kenny posed so nicely because I'd just finished washing my hair with vinegar, so he was fully anticipating a nice caprese salad to follow.  

Also, check out these sweet little notecards I picked up tonight:

Man, Paris is so hot right now ya'll.   

For those of you curious about my puppy pj purchase, they're from Target and are by Nick and Nora.

For those of you curious about my notecard purchase, they're a score from Micheals (for $1.50)!

For those of you curious about why I'm washing my hair in purified salad dressing, well, more on that tomorrow.  

For those of you curious about where the hell a furniture update is, more on that tomorrow too!

Something Old & Something New

Howdy!  Long time, no blog!  We've been steady working, I promise.  Between the job that pays the bills, and the job I wish would pay the bills, there's been little time for much else.  How about a fun before and after?  

Before we get to the before though, I have to share my Something New.  With the recent arrival of cooler weather our house has become perpetually chilly.  Luckily for me, I work in the basement which is oh-so toasty.  But I don't sleep in the basement which is why my Something New was deemed a necessity.  

OMG NEW FLANNEL PUPPY PJ'S.  How cute are they?  I mean, they were pretty much needed for survival purposes only to keep me warm at night - it doesn't hurt that they're adorable.

And would you look at how stinking cute that little bow is.  Complete with little paw prints!  They're coral, they're aqua, they're fluffy, and they have pooches on them.  How could I not get them?  

Just look at those two!  I love them, and I'm proud to say I'm all snuggled up in them already.  They couldn't been any softer.  They're so comfy it almost makes me want to catch a cold and live in them for the next week.

OK onto the before and after, which is also my Something Old.  We all remember my new desk chair that was in need of a desk.  

 
I may have put the cart before the horse by purchasing the chair before the desk, but all you need is one tiny element to inspire a vision.  And this chair made my heart sing.  I decided to tackle this guy for my old, new, desk.

I named it the Paris Writers Desk because as I was working it reminded me of something out of a Paris flea market.  I've never been to Paris, much less a Paris flea market, but I did study French for like six years and can say things like "Bonjour" and "Merci" and "Je suis tres fatigue" which means "I'm really tired" all with a pretty convincing French accent so I'm kind of an expert.  In a previous life this guy was a dressing table/vanity and what appealed to me was the ability to store my laptop within the table itself since the top opens up.  A cluttered desktop drives me crazy and with the addition of a freshly drilled hole in the back for computer cord, that problem would be solved.

Ready to see the After?

Ta-da!  Or as they say in France - ta-da!  Or wait, maybe it's voila.  Or is that Italian?  Anyway, check out my new desk!  And on the inside...

A soft, creamy aqua interior!  Also, everything I said about a cluttered desktop driving me crazy is evidently all lies.  Here are some close-ups of desk and the clutter:

This hardware is so French y'all.

It's sprayed in Rustoleum's Heirloom White, which is one of my faves.  Here's a little side embellishment on the desk.

I could have tried to highlight it with a glaze or a contrasting color, but I like it as a subtle detail (the French are very subtle) and painted it the same color as the desk with that in mind.

I snagged that lamp today from a thirft store - $6!  Not too shabby, except in a chic way which is totally intentional. 

And lastly chair meets desk:

I love it.  It's a little bit of old meets new, vintage meets modern.  And best of all, it's functional as demonstrated below:

It's been so long since I've had a proper work space (except at work), I forgot how nice it is!

Bonne nuit!

 

     

The Chair That Redesigned a Room

Brace yourselves y'all.  I bought a new piece of furniture.  A brand new piece of furniture that requires no work beyond cutting the price tags off.  Meet my new desk chair:

Isn't she lovely?  I can justify this new furniture purchase because the piece is upholstered.  I don't do upholstery, and most used upholstered items look, well, used.  She's oh so comfortable and just what I need for all my late-night conference calls for work.  See that white dresser in the background?  That's my old desk chair, where I'd plop myself on the floor, spread out all my notes, and talk on the phone for an hour plus. 

Is it any wonder why I've had to visit a Chiropractor this past week?

I digress.  The only problem with my lovely new desk chair is that it doesn't fit my desk.  Most chairs don't fit my desk.  That's because my desk belonged to my mother, evidently when she was like seven.  It's a sweet little desk, complete with her name written on the desk top, but the problem is like her I've outgrown it.

My new old desk is in the basement - unlike the chair it needs work.  In an effort to prepare for the new old desk I've been purging and cleaning and reorganizing, in an attempt to make my office/closet a little more user-friendly.  All this because I had to go and buy a new desk chair.  It would have been easier to just keep sitting on the floor.

It's going to be a little bit before I can get to my new old desk because we've got some fun custom pieces we're working on.  Check out these guys:

They're stadium seats from Detroit's Tiger Stadium.  The customer wants to mount them to his deck which is SUCH a cool idea.  But in order to do that we've got to replace some of the rotted wooden slats, and give these guys a fresh coat of paint.  Sherwin Williams did a great color match for us in their oil-based exterior paint, which will help keep these guys protected from the elements while living outside.  I'm more of an Oriole's fan myself, but I can totally dig the sports history behind these two.  Somewhere, my grandfather's digging it too.  He's also sucking in his breath and telling me I'd better not touch them, I might break them and really they'd be much better off left alone.  If it can't be fixed with Scotch tape it shouldn't be messed with.  It's ok Pop, I got this.

We're also working on other seating of a completely different variety, check this handsome devil out:

This is for another client and OMG how much of a stud is that chair.  When the client and her husband purchased their first home this chair was left in the house.  So they adopted it and it's moved with them and while delivering a couple mirrors to client the chair was unearthed from the basement and passed off to us to work on.  We're going to strip him and re-stain him, and try to spruce up that leather seat.

Speaking of mirrors, these were the two custom mirrors we did for this client.

This mirror was propped up in a spare bedroom and had never been hung because it didn't really go with anything the couple owns.  But they loved the beveled glass and the frame, just not gold.  They wanted to go for a two-tone look - silver with a hint of gold.  I used a silver glaze which takes AGES to dry, but it turned out beautifully.  Take a look:

The inside of the frame has one more coat of silver finish than the outside of the frame, allowing the outside edges to show a little more of the gold yet still be toned down with the silver finish.  It's stunning and finally hanging on a wall as it should be!

The other mirror was a piece that I had.  The client loved the unique shape and we worked to come up with a color that would work in their den.  Below is the before and after:

This piece was interesting not only because of the subtle contrast between the wall color and the color of the mirror, but the arch of the mirror itself coordinates nicely with the arched windows that are on either side it.  

I was also able to wrap-up our own mirror for the bedroom.  This is the mirror that inspired our night-stand re-do.  Below is the before and after:

Frito's a little salty that he can no longer admire himself in it, but that's my grey-stained mirror. I love how it turned out!  It's such a beautiful complement to the bedroom.  The only thing I might have done differently is sand it lightly before sealing with poly to distress it ever-so-slightly.  But it's perfect as is, and fits in well with the bedroom

What doesn't fit in well with the bedroom is the chest you see beneath it.  That's our Lane cedar chest that came out of my grandparents house that is in desperate need of being refinished.  Someone chewed one of the corners, and the trim needs to be reattached along the bottom.  I'd like to make it darker and a little less red, but someone in my family has yet to come to terms with this so it's going to be a while before I'm able to get my hands on it.  Although this same someone who doesn't want me to refinish it is bringing her new dog over to stay with us at the end of this month, and this new dog's crate is going to have to go somewhere, so if I have to relocate that chest it's going into the basement and I'm stripping it.  Just sayin'.  

And this guy knows nothing about the chewed corners mentioned above.