Even though I was supposed to be decluttering my kitchen cabinets this weekend for the Kitchn cure, I wound up spending most of my time rearranging the living room. Even worse, I added to my kitchen clutter- more on that in another post. The living room is still not done yet - these are just progress shots, but it's looking much better. The issue of paint color is still out there, but in the mean time I'm trying to get the furniture to work. I moved the mustard colored chair from the office into the living room to replace the little chrome and white leather one which required the couch to slide down a couple of feet to make room. The wacky green table went into the corner and all the artwork got moved around.
In the opposite corner, I replaced the small bookshelf with a larger bookcase with glass doors that fills the space better. I haven't finished filling it up yet. I have to go into the basement to dig up some of the stuff I have that I haven't unpacked yet due to a lack of anywhere to put it. I'll probably drive myself nuts trying to "style" it, but that's okay, I don't have to worry about that yet. The shelf itself is pretty wonky, it's actually the top half of a dining room hutch that someone attached legs to. It's not at all square, but I'll fix that at another time.
Here is my garbage picked chair all cleaned up. I bought some danish oil, but haven't had a chance to use it yet. My afghan is covering all the tears in the vinyl on the ottoman. I looked into the problem of it leaning too far back on hte internet saturday morning and discovered that it's a pretty common problem. I guess these mechanisms aren't meant to last for 60 years. There are replacement parts out there, but in the mean time I'm just going to cut a piece of wood and wedge it in there to stop it from tipping. Right now it's leaning against the wall.
Here's one of several cool yard sale finds my mom and I found recently. I'll post more once I've photographed them. This is a cool dish, made in Finland that goes remarkably well with the Portuguese lace tablecloth below it. I also found a lamp for next to the green chair and two vintage oil or acrylic paintings (can't tell which). I'll try to post them tomorrow once I can get a photo with some decent light.
And completely unrelated to anything else in this post, I went to see Handmade Nation this weekend at our local independant cinema. The director was there and there was also a craft fair. It was good to meet some local crafters, I even got some crochet tips!
I love the way it turned out. Nice and smudgy. I think I may go with a light gray for the rest of the walls which will help tie it in a bit. I had plans for where I could put some chalkboard paint when we re-do our kitchen, but I realized that it was going to be a long way off and I didn't want to wait! My fiance painted it one day while I was at work then we had to wait three days before we could condition it and write on it. That was a long three days. It seems to work pretty well. Considering that we didn't really do any prep work (we probably should have scraped and sanded the wall first) the surface isn't too bad. It's not smooth, but you can write on it fairly well and it erases well enough- not perfectly, but I like it better that way.
Here it is pre-conditioning. The matte black is also a really cool look. I never thought that I could get behind black walls, but they are really growing on me. I'd like to install a shelf up by the ceiling to display my vintage toasters, but I haven't fully decided where. One option is to put it over the two doors to the left of this picture in that little niche, the other is straight across the top of the black wall. I like the idea of putting it at the top of the black wall so they can stand out with a black background. I'd like to paint the shelf black to match the wall so that it blends in and looks more modern. My fiance would rather it be stained to match the wood paneling below. I don't know how I feel about that. I think it may draw too much attention to both the shelf and the paneling. It's going to support it with a pair of vintage cast iron brackets that I have that won't stand out too much, but they will be visible. What do you think? Black, natural wood, no shelf at all?
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