Estate sales, furniture markets, and exhaustion!

What a weekend! My Mom came into town and we went non-stop until Sunday afternoon and I was exhausted! Mom scored some tickets to the Furniture Market in High Point. It's one of the biggest furniture markets in the country and you have to be associated with a vendor to get in. My mom is friends with Jill, the designer/owner of Salmagundi and she graciously offered us tickets to come see what the furniture market was all about. It is very overwhelming!

Before we got on the road to High Point we stopped at an estate sale in Durham. Mom is always looking for vintage clothing at estate sales for her etsy shop Vintage Runway. She found out about this great estate sale in Durham so we stopped by and she found some really great shoes and clothing. I am still new at estate sale-ing so it took me a while to get warmed up but I did find a fantastic stool for my make-up vanity. I had been looking for something like this for a while but the ones I found were not in as good of shape and twice as expensive. Score!! It's on a long list of projects that are currently halfway done in our house.

After stopping for some breakfast we made it to High Point by 10 AM and had no idea what to expect so we found Jill's booth among all of the buildings and thousands of vendors! Here's Jill with all of her furniture! She designs these amazing eclectic pieces. I think her little tuffets are just adorable! If you're interested in finding out how to order anything you can click here for her website!

Mom and I did not feel nearly as official as we look here with our passes. It's a pretty big deal to get into the furniture market. Many vendors are only selling in bulk to professional buyers. When we would walk around people would ask us who we were with and how our business was. We'd refer to Salmagundi and then mumble something incoherent and run away. It was kind of akward but very cool to see all of the booths and designs for next year. We thought there might be more opportunities to shop for our own houses but we quickly realized it wasn't what most vendors were looking to do.

This is about the time I told Mom she was blowing our cover.

 Aren't these cool? It's teak tree roots and then the glass is blown over the roots to so it melds around the wood. They were amazing!

We tracked down a place for lunch called The Factory and enjoyed an overpriced salad and caffeine to keep us going for the rest of the day.

This is my favorite thing I found and I probably would have come home with it if it hadn't already sold. How amazing is this driftwood horse? The vendor was so great and I have his card to order one in the future. This is the medium size...you can see the large on the wall in the background and there was a smaller one. I think it would be such an awesome statement piece in the house and allude to my horsey background. Derrick didn't hate it either and actually seemed open to the idea which made me SO excited!! It's on our list :)

After wandering around and feeling more out of place by the minute, Mom and I decided we could happily check furniture market off our bucket list and decided to head home to catch part of the NC State football game and the finals of frisbee nationals (on ESPN3 yeah!).

Next morning we were up bright and early for another estate sale. We were certain it was going to be picked through but when we got there we couldn't believe that there was still so much great stuff. Mom really lucked out with tons of great vintage clothing and, her biggest score of the weekend, an amazing mid-century table and chair set at an insanely discounted price.

We only hit one snafu. We had finally puzzle pieced all of the chairs, piles of clothing, and two rocking horses into the car with the plans to come all the way back for the table when my car wouldn't start. I may or may not have accused Mom of parking it in such a way that the battery drained. I don't even think that's possible. Sorry Mom :) The lack of breakfast and unexpected 2.5 hours at the estate sale may have made me a bit hangry. After a relatively seamless jump start we made it home and got lunch which considerably improved my mood. My mom is so easy going she doesn't typically respond negatively when we (me, dad, and both brothers) get hangry. Thank goodness for her.

We managed to get the table on trip two and somehow, with Derrick's help, got everything in the highlander for Mom's trip home. To say that Dad was surprised when Mom pulled into the driveway is probably an understatement.

So anyways....estate sales are awesome! Anyone in the Raleigh area want to be my estate sale buddy!?!?

Mom Weekend

I'm gearing up for a fun weekend with Mom. We're going to go to the furniture market and also take a tour of some parade homes in the area. The weather looks beautiful!! Hope you all have a great weekend too!

Free Craft Table

Free! Free!! I hear the word free and I go running towards whatever it is! My company had the most glorious furniture giveaway yesterday! It was amazing! They have this warehouse full of old office furniture from old offices that have either been shut down or updated. I guess they were running out of room so they invited all their agents out to sift through it and take whatever we wanted. For. Free!!

Hardly anyone took advantage of this! Our company has hundreds and hundreds of agents in the triangle and I saw maybe 20 people there. More for me!!

I worked really hard to restrain myself and only bring home items that I knew we had a place for right now. And it was all office furniture so it wasn't like I was scoring couches and side chairs...it was more utilitarian. I ended up with two filing cabinets, three bulletin boards, two mail cubbies, and two adorable end tables. I'll show you more of my scores later but for now, look what I created with the mail cubbies!

It's a craft table for my craft room! A stand up, fabric cutting, gift wrapping, puzzle holding craft table! And it was all FREE!

So, remember when I found my office desk and we bought if off a friend? Well, they had an extra table top from the desk that they re-did and gave it to us for free. Then I went to this office giveaway yesterday and found these two mail cubbies that I was immediately drawn to. I think they will be the perfect fabric storage solution!! Right???

So we hauled them upstairs and set the top of the desk on top of them and Whabam!! Work surface!!

It's far from finished. The table top doesn't fit perfectly and right now it's just balancing on top so we need to secure it in place. Also, one of the mail cubbies is about an inch shorter then the other so we need to build the shorter one up. It also needs two stools because it's a bit taller then I realized it would be.  And you know I'm going to paint it a fun color because this is the crafty/get creative room and office brown is not going to cut it.  Plus it looks gigantic in the space so we're going to have to do some reorganization.

I'm just really excited though! It's going to be perfect and I totally have a vision for what I want it to look like. I'm juggling so many projects right now...I don't know how Derrick lives with me sometimes!

Dining Room Fabric

We found fabric for our dining room chairs! Derrick braved the fabric store with me in Wake Forest. A sweet client of mine gave me a gift card to the fabric store and I was waiting for a good project to use it on. It was still more expensive then I thought it would be....upholstery fabric is not cheap! But it's good quality and will hopefully last forever!!

Here's what we started with! The fabric was in good condition and the seats were really well done but I wanted something with a bit more personality.

I knew I wanted something in the blue family. I thought something red or yellow wouldn't look good with the wood of the chair. I also wanted something that felt a little formal. Nothing crazy...we're not super fancy people, but it is a dining room and the table and chairs are pretty traditional so I didn't want to go super casual.

 We landed on this! This is a pretty true representation of the color. Kind of a tealy-blue. It's a nice heavy-weight fabric and I like the texture in it too!

Derrick asked me on the way to the fabric store when I was going to reupholster them. Immediately....duh! I'm a busy body. Unless I'm feeling lazy, or hungry, or the weather is perfect for doing nothing......  OK, OK...I'm a doer if the conditions are just right and on Saturday the conditions were just right!

Before we headed home we had to sneak in some Ellie time because we're actively working on our favorite aunt/favorite uncle status. This is her Rosie the Riveter look.

The NCSU game started at 3:30 and recovering all six chairs took the first half of the game. It's not typically that fast because I usually try to remove the old fabric. In this case the staples were so tight and there were so many of them we decided to just remove the black backing (to re-use) and reupholster directly over the old fabric. It didn't smell and the new fabric was nice and thick so you can't tell at all.

Look at all those staples. That's about 6 blisters waiting to happen.

Here they are all finished! My electric stapler was also crucial in this project for making this go by super fast. And the pattern repeated enough that I didn't have to worry about centering anything...just making sure it was straight.

Now he can say WE upholstered the chairs. Nice move Derrick.

Here's the final product!! I think they look great! When you look at the whole room it's a pretty subtle change but I think a rug and the hutch will make a huge difference and it's nice to add a little pattern and color to the space.

Slowly but surely! 

Creeped out to the MAX

Holy smokes! Last night Derrick and I were watching "The Game". It's a movie from the '90s that Derrick had seen before but the only thing he remembered about it was he liked it. If you haven't seen it, it's really good BUT it's creepy and about other people controlling your life so you can imagine how completely creeped out I was when, right at the peak of the movie, the power went out!

After regaining our flight impulse we scampered around the house gathering the only candles we had which included our unity candle from our wedding ceremony. Our house smelled like a Yankee Candle shop.

You should watch "The Game". It's good and suspenseful but at the end you don't feel like it was scary at all so you have no trouble sleeping. The perfect combo.

Desk Reveal

The desk is done!! I hope....

A fly landed in the middle of my third coat of paint yesterday and you can see the roller mark where I had to pick the fly off and re-roll that area. A fly may have ruined it for everybody!! Or at least may mean that I have to re-paint the top. I am hoping that the light in the office will not draw attention to the flaw and that it will disappear once I load my desk up with office type things.

Anyways, enough of the fly. The desk is in the office and ready for use! You ready for this before and after?

Sorry for the terrible after. I couldn't put the legs on until it was inside and I didn't have room for a really far panned out picture.

Anyways, here's how it all went down.

Step 1: Have a garage or borrow one. Or steal one. Garages are amazing! I love having a garage so much! The apartment was not the ideal crafting space. It typically meant the living room was a minefield of scissors, staple guns, hot glue, and wet paint. Since the project was a bit smelly it was so awesome to be able to spread everything out for miles and let things dry over night. Here's what it looked like for the past week, Crosby included. She stood or lied right there whenever I was out there and made sure those neighborhood kids didn't come bother me. JK...I like the neighbor kids...they are hilarious.

Step 2: Primer

I used oil based primer and paint because I read that it dried harder than latex paint making it more durable. I thought this was a good feature for the desk.  That being said, oil based paint is a bear to work with! It doesn't wash out and cleaning your brushes is a pain. Here it is after one coat of primer.

Step 3: Paint

And here's coat one of paint. I used a foam roller as much as I could and then a small paint brush for the nooks and crannies. Everywhere I used the paint brush I went back over with a foam roller as much as possible to get an even look. I primed and painted coat one on the first day and then let each coat of paint dry for a full night before applying the next coat. It took 3 coats to completely cover and lose the streakiness.

Step 4: Decorate your driveway

More accurately, have your dog get distracted by the pesky CPI security lady, step in your pan of paint, and proceed to leave footprint on your driveway. True story. Later I found her sucking on her foot so I ended up cutting all the hair off her foot for fear she would be poisoned to death.

Step 5: Spray paint

I disassembled the drawer pulls as much as possible and spray painted them a champagne gold color. It's a difficult color to find and not in many hardware stores. Try a craft store like Michael's. I also sprayed the bottom of the feet but I had to give them a coat of white first. They have screws sticking out the bottom of them so I had to get creative with my drying methods. If you don't have an old rocking chair, you could try cutting some holes in some thick cardboard.  PS: This rocking chair is getting scraped down and re-done and then probably sold because we don't have room for it. Any takers?

Then you're done! Great job! You only lost 1 week of garage use and 1 layer of skin to scrub the paint off! Get a really strong, handsome man to help you move it into your office and make sure he gives you lots of compliments and tells you it was totally worth blowing off a week of prospecting for :)

Lets ooooo and ahhhh at it again, shall we?

And now the office looks like this!

Such an improvement, eh?!

Stinky Pantry

So my desk is coming along amazingly!! I'm hoping to have it completed tomorrow but it might be Friday. This is one of those projects that I am super happy with and really proud of. I can't wait for it to be moved into the office!

With the desk almost complete I've been thinking about my next project and I've settled on the pantry. I want to paint it a fun color inside but the bigger issue is the smell! Our sellers were clean people. When we looked at the house it was very clean and organized and when we moved in all the bathrooms were clean, the carpets were vacuumed It was really great. But....the pantry stinks! It's a weird smell and I can't figure out what it is. It's kind of sweet but it's not good. So I think I'm going to pull everything out to the pantry, killz the heck out of it, and then paint it a fun color! Hopefully the Killz will stifle the smell because right now I cringe every time I open it!