the un-dining room table

September 17, 201215 Comments

Thrifting, my new favorite past-time, has led to some fun changes in our home.

Last week I gave a preview of our un-dining room and promised to fill you in on where the table and chairs came from.

Well, here is the story of the table.

I have wanted a round table for the dining room for a while.

I did my research online and figured we could get a decent round table for $500.

Yeah, $500.

Without chairs.

I wanted something solid, all wood, that could hold up to the kiddos.

I also wanted it to have leaves so we could extend it for use when we had more than our family over for dinner.

One Saturday early this summer I took Lorelai to Goodwill…on a whim.

We did our usual route…looking for Pyrex, globes, and other fun stuff.

Then I made a spin through the furniture when I heard over the PA that all furniture was 50% for another 4 minutes.

That’s when I found it.

My round table.

Solid wood.

Two leaves.

And, a bonus…four chairs!

It was priced at $59.99.

Less 50%.

That made it less than $30!

I jumped on it…especially when I saw another lady eyeing it.

I texted Ryan after I left and said that I would need to use his truck to pick something up at Goodwill later that afternoon.

This is what I brought home.

Ryan might have been a little shocked, but I had a vision…for the table.

I promptly started to sand the thick speckled finish off the oak.

Every chance I got I would head out the the garage and sand.

I took all the pieces apart.

More sanding.

Until it looked like this.

Then I started painting the primer on.

Multiple thin coats.

After it was primed I put the base back together and painted.

Multiple thin coats.

I had help.

I would let each coat dry completely and then add another coat…alternating between working on the base and working on the top.

This was after one or two coats.

I’m not sure how many I actually ended up applying.

Sometimes I would just hang out and watch the paint dry.

Eventually, it started looking good.

I brought it inside and put a couple coats of paste wax on it.

This is what we ended up with.

I’m pretty darn pleased.

I love how the wood grain shows through.

You’ll notice we aren’t using the chairs.

They are currently in storage.

Anybody in Portland want them?

I’ll give you a good deal.

The story of the chairs will come soon.

Stay tuned…

For the record, I saw this table in the most recent Restoration Hardware catalog…

Source: restorationhardware.com via stephany @ on Pinterest

It’s $995.

home is…a little bit of do it yourself.

{our home} the un-dining room

September 6, 20125 Comments

If you know me, you know I am always changing our house.

Always have.

Always will.

Mainly rearranging what we already have, because we don’t have the budget for major changes.

Although, the year that Lorelai was born (three years ago) we did make some major furniture purchases and changed out most of the carpet in our house.

Pretty much every room in our house got new furniture that year.

It was cool, but we also knew that the furniture had to last or “evolve” as our family needs changed.

And, for the most part, it has.

You can read my previous posts about some of the original changes we made here, here, and here.

This summer I made some changes to our living-room-turned-playroom-sometimes-guestroom…and the adjoining dining room, which I now refer to as the un-dining room (I think I borrowed that phrase from Megan and her Craft House).

I will do some more posts on the specifics of the changes, but for now here is a preview…

Our living-room-turned-playroom-sometime-guest-room is the first room you see when you enter our house…and it is completely open to and adjoining our dining room.

We do not have a breakfast nook in our kitchen, so we eat most of our meals in our dining room.

It has also been my main workspace and crafting area, so eating there when I was in the middle of some kind of crafting escapade was not always workable.

And, it was frustrating.

So, I moved furniture…and went thrifting.

I wanted a round table for the area…everything in the room was angular and the space needed some curves.

So, I added one.

I also added globes, embroidery hoops with fabric, and some new lighting.

We moved our old farmhouse style table to the area between the playroom and the dining room, which was previously open play space or filled by a train table that we donated to Goodwill. It is now used as a craft table/workspace for me and the kids.

This now leaves our dining room table open for meals…yay!

I will save the story about how the dining room table and chairs came to be for future posts.

{And, I hope to get some better photos with my DSLR…I used my iphone for these and the lighting was not that great…glaring through the windows or too dark.}

Stay tuned…

home is…happy spaces.

happy leaping hump day!

February 29, 20122 Comments

Or, is it happy humping leap day?!

I have to admit, I borrowed that from my longtime friend, Manny. I thought it was great when he posted it on his Facebook page.

So, what are you doing with your extra 24 hours?!

Same old, same old?

Me too.

Anyway, wanted to share a few random things that made me smile today…

Source: designsponge.com via stephany @ on Pinterest

Aren’t those flowers fabulous?! I mean, go big, or go home, right?! Thinking of what I could do with a couple of those…

Source: ideashomedesign.net via stephany @ on Pinterest

That slide…AWESOME! I would love to put a slide on the little guys bunk! I’ll have to think about that one a bit…

Source: megduerksen.typepad.com via stephany @ on Pinterest

Isn’t that house pillow adorable?! One of these days, when I have some mornings with no kids at home, I will sew more. Until then, I will collect ideas. This is one of them.

Source: houseandhome.com via stephany @ on Pinterest

This adult version of a reading nook. I LOVE it! Now, that’s how we could get some use out of our wall tent that has been folded up in the garage for 6 years!

Source: megduerksen.typepad.com via stephany @ on Pinterest

Meg’s non-dining room is so inspirational. Look at all those sewing machines set up for Craft Weekend! I would love to do this with our dining room…especially with the globe lights!

Source: flickr.com via stephany @ on Pinterest

I’ve been a bit obsessed with globes and maps lately. You’ll find out why in a future post. For now, you can see some of my inspiration on my maps & globes Pinterest board.