Because I don't already have enough to do...
18 May 2009
I've decided to add this to my list:
Now, before you shudder in complete horror at this mid-century classic ( re: butt ugly piece of furniture), I'm going to show you this:
I fell in love with that 'credenza' on the cover , ( as well as the rest of this house, which is completely cool and gorgeous) and set about trying to find a reasonable facsimilie somewhere. Last week at Ikea with my good friend & neighbour (who is moving this week and is doing a major cleaning of her basement) I saw that they have come out with an uncannily similar version of it, only theirs is about $300 and made of presswood, as is most of Ikea's stuff. Not the greatest quality. Take it from someone who has a lot of Ikea furniture, most of which hasn't aged too well. So my buddy says to me, "Mel, I have the exact same thing sitting in my basement, and you're welcome to it". Score!!
Even when I saw the sorry state it was in when they hauled it over here Saturday morning , I still think I can make it look pretty nice with some paint and alot of elbow grease. I want to take off those legs somehow (although they're attached to the whole thing, hmmm) and replace them with some nice brushed stainless ones. I'll have to browse the Apartment Therapy blog for a bit of inspiration.
The monstrosity is now sitting in my backyard, and I'm itching to get at it. Once I get that pesky yearbook out of my way, then I'll be moving on to redoing this, and hoping it will make a lovely storage unit for the millions of CD's and DVD's I'm running out of room for. I'm having a hard time figuring out what colour to paint it though, and leaving it 'au natural' isn't really an option since it's not real teak- bummer. Suggestions are more than welcome. :)
Some of you have asked to see what I've been working on with the yearbook, so here's a peek at the baby page I did- I figure that's safe to put on here since these pics are pretty incognito. (Sorry I can't make it go bigger when you click on it)
This page took me an entire day to do. I'm not kidding. I had to resize and crop every photo on here, which was completely tedious and labour intensive. And the quality of a lot of them was *ahem* less than stellar. I did a million and one redo's, because I'm picky like that. But I like how cute and simple it is. The rest of the book will be a bit more slapped together, because I'm running out of time until my (self- imposed) deadline of June 1st. And I have some assignment stuff I need to scrap, so I'm really hoping I'll have something scrappy to post here in the next week.
Hope you all had a wonderful holiday weekend! ( for the Canadian gals reading this).
Mine was a blur...
15 comments:
sand it back, revarnish in your choosen (or use clear) stain!you can get a really dark stain, but will still allow the the grain to come through. And just chop the legs off level, and then screw on your new stainless ones (though you probably wouldn't want to drag the thing around, from past experience!)
have fun!
i love your new found piece of furniture, Mel. i kinda like those legs but chrome is nice too.
as for your baby page .... absolutely lovely!!! it's comin' along ... it's gonna look fabulous!
Wow Mel ça vaut la peine de travailler sur ce meuble là!!!Ça va être super beau.
Et je t'admire énormément de t'être embarqué dans ce projet de
"year book".Ils n'auront jamais plus personne pour faire ce genre de travail aussi bien que tu le fait.
Mel, that is going to be the MOST AWESOME yearbook ever! Wow! Bobby and his classmates are soooooo lucky. :)
And the furniture refinishing... errrmmmm, good luck with that! lol
I can totally see potential in that piece of furniture.
Hey, have you ever heard of Photoscape (www.photoscape.com). It's free and you can make these kind of picture pages really quickly. They have templates for doing this kind of thing. Really easy and fast.
This book looks awesome!!! Good job!
Good luck with your piece of furniture!! And LOVE the baby page for the year book.
I was going to tell you to just saw those off and put the metal ones instead but now that I'm having a second look at it, it might not be such a good idea anymore since they come on front... I might show this to dh to see if he has any idea. ;)
That yearbook page looks awesome! I'm sure this whole album with be very cool!
Good luck with all your projects!
I love your credenza! Even with the wooden legs. But then again, I live in a 1958 house with the original (custom-made) woodwork, so I'm a bit of a softie for mid-century modern.
I would sand and stain if there is noticeable damage, but not paint.
It will look fabulous when it is accessorized and part of the whole room rather than in direct sunshine in your backyard.
Uh, don't hate me, but I love mid-century stuff, and I love the credenza, as is. LOL! That said, it might just need a paint job? I bet painting it in a fun color (hello yellow) or white might make it better. :)
And of course, you already know I love that baby page. Super cute!
I hope Bobby's classmates parent's realize how very lucky they are that you designed their yearbook.
If the rest of the yearbook looks like that, wow!
Ours are a piece of crappity-crap. lol
I can't wait to see what this piece of furniture looks like when you are done with it!!
Melanie, that desk is so similar to my desk that my husband and I recently restored - it's amazing the similarity - I will try and photograph it but now that my study has been turned upside down it may be a bit difficult.
We stained ours with a colour called WENGE - it looks great - lovely dark chocolate brown - very dark !
the page looks really great! Too late to do it now, but a big time saver if you ever compile a mosaic again is bighugelabs.com, mosaic-maker. maybe you had other considerations, but I've used it many times. The parents will love this, Melanie.
oh and .... I LOVE your mid-century modern piece, just as It IS. seriously love it.
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