Yesterday was a very home and hearth sort of day. Remember how the first attempt at covering the bedroom closet was going to be curtains rather than a roman blind? Well, that idea got trashed...and so I had all this leftover curtain fabric, in a sort of olive green. Yesterday I made it into skirts -- there was enough for two skirts, one for Roshani and one for me! I felt very Sound of Music! (And if you don't get that reference, you really ought to go see the movie at least once. You can plug your ears during the songs if you must.)
After that, things really got exciting. Around 4-ish, I headed up north (I would've gone earlier, but the high yesterday was 91 degrees, and I just wasn't willing to go outside until it cooled down a bit) to visit thrift stores. We're still missing quite a bit of furniture -- mostly little tables to go everywhere. I hit two thrift stores (White Elephant and Thrift, Inc., and if you know any good ones I'm missing, please let me know), and at the second one found a coffee table and matching end tables, quite a score! They look really quite decent now, but I'm hoping to make them even better.
Right now, they're pretty, but the glass tops are large enough that they make the room look a bit crowded. Also, I'm pretty sure I'll bang my knees on them all the damn time, 'cause I'm a klutz. Plus we have a toddler running around, and while I think they're too heavy for her to do damage to, they could easily do damage to her. So I think what I'm going to do is just get rid of these tops (they're just attached with suction cups), and put on new ones.
I'm waffling a bit on what to do there -- one option would be to simply get heavy glass cut much smaller, to fit the metal frames exactly. Another would be to get pieces of wood and smooth and sand and stain them to fit exactly. (I don't really have any idea how I would get rounded edges on the wood, though, other than sanding forever, which doesn't seem like the right approach.) And the third, most interesting, is to use something as a base and do a mosaic tile pattern on top. Potentially really pretty, and fun, I think.
But I'm actually not sure it's the best approach -- it might just make the room look more cluttered, and it might detract a bit from the clean industrial feel of it now. (I know Karen's shaking her head right now and thinking that industrial isn't me, it's Kevin, but honestly, I really like the industrial feel to the main room. The bedroom and study will be plenty lush when I finish with them. :-)
If I do go with the wood tops, I'm tempted to buy a bunch of wood and try carving it before staining it. Way back in high school, I took a printing class, and along with linoleum blocks and silkscreens, we carved wood blocks. I bought a book on wood-carving not so long ago, and if I remember right, the feel of the knife cutting through the wood is actually really sensual and satisfying. I suspect I'd mess up a lot of wood in the process of learning how to do it again, though. Our high school patterns were *very* simple. It'd also involve buying some more tools -- much of my life appears to be buying tools these days. But oh, I do love owning a power drill! :-)
Opinions, anyone? Thoughts?
This stuff is fun!
