Skirted Tablecloth

Our guest room just got a budget makeover. Since our roommate moved out a couple of years ago, the room has served as my sewing and craft room, a place to store a million books (unartfully arranged in a closed Ikea cabinet), and the threshold for that most abhorred of things, the pre-fab aluminum sunroom that we call the Abomination. (It is referred to as such so often and exclusively that we can tell friends, "There are extra chairs on the Abomination," and no one blinks.) The room continues to serve all those roles - but recently with more panache. We moved out the industrial shelving and Ikea cabinet and replaced it with this bookcase from the Ballard's outlet in Atlanta, where the manager knocked off another 20% (just ask). That made this sturdy, hardwood, easy-to-assemble bookcase about the same price as a particle-board number from Ikea. I arranged our prettiest books on it by color, added a few knick-knacks with no other home, and the room was already greatly improved.



But there were other issues - none as pressing as the rusty steel industrial shelving once used (somewhere) to display Doc Martens, and then our books, and which now resides more appropriately in the garage - but issues nonetheless. We've been substituting a bedside table with a charming old pedestal table that I spray-painted glossy white - but it didn't look or feel like a bedside table.

Enter an old TV shelf of Allen's that never suited the house (but, y'know, the Doc Marten shelves totally did). This post on Erin Ever After inspired me to make a skirted, tailored tablecloth for it. Probably everybody with an attic (or an Abomination) has a sturdy, functional table or cabinet that they're just not crazy about. The TV stand was, on its own, enough to make me ponder a yard sale several times a month - I do hate having things around that we just don't use. But I'm glad I didn't pawn it off, because this tablecloth was a fairly straight-forward Saturday project that made a big difference in the room.

cafe cushions (and rearranging furniture)

Allen and I live in a small house. It's plenty of house for us and a dog and some ambitious projects (how much space is devoted to cutting mats and sewing machines?), and it used to accommodate a roommate, too. But the square-footage - just under 1,000 sf - while not apartment-small, is still fairly modest.

When we first looked at the house, it felt downright claustrophobic. The ceilings are only eight feet tall, and the owners painted the walls dark brown below the chair rail, and off-white above it - it was like a short woman wearing a tea-length dress. They had the living room packed with overstuffed leather furniture, and I often recall our old kitchen backsplash with a shudder. I'm pretty smug about how much bigger the house feels now than it did then; I felt like we've done as much as one could with the space.

But each of the rooms in our house is proportionally small, and each one sometimes feels a little overstuffed - I'd gladly forfeit our guest room for a little more space everywhere else. I wish we had a "small" house like this one - which is bigger than ours, but seems to have about the same number of rooms - just bigger-scaled. Here, for example, is the living room:



Our dining room is the worst of the perpetrators. We have a bar and a couple of pieces of storage furniture in there, and it all worked, but just barely. Backing your chair up from dinner, you'd bump into the bar or nearly break the glass china cabinet. And there was no way to refill people's plates without making everyone scoot all the way in.

diy: tufted ottoman, in more detail

Because - sorry - there really was no detail before. I promised a reader that I'd do a cost breakdown of the ottoman I made, as well as a how-to post, so here it is.

building a tufted ottoman

Update: there's a cost breakdown and a basic illustrated step-by-step process for a similar ottoman here.



You guys, Allen and I totally built this ottoman.

If we can do this, anyone can do it. I think I'm going to forgo a detailed tutorial on how to do this particular one, because the bumper around the edge (copied from this one that I love) made for a really convoluted process. But anyone could easily (really!) build one like this.

I'd recommend buying these two books, building a simple frame out of inexpensive two-by-fours (you can have Home Depot cut these for you), buying high-density foam, cotton batting, and edge roll from DIY Upholstery, legs from Adams wood products (we used oak, 8" tall), and having covered buttons made by your local upholsterer.

Remember to use edgeroll vertically at the corners, or you'll end up with sausages at the edges, which is how ours looked before. Give it a try. You get to carve foam into fun shapes!

a table, built in a studio

This is the story of the table (really a table top) I made two Christmases ago. It's a story of building things in your studio apt. I was just a few months into my apartment and life in Boston and as I mentioned here, Christmas is the time that I think of ridiculous things to pull off in a studio apt.



This did not require a lot of tools: an electric drill/screwdriver, clamps, small hand saw and a square. Things you might want to have around anyways. So, make a table! Photos and details of the process after the jump!

Atlanta: Garden*Hood and Flat Earth Designs

As I've finally become a sort of gardener, I really appreciate garden stores that not only offer infinitely better service than the big box stores, but also emphasize real design in the garden. Garden*Hood has filled the space left in Atlanta by the Urban Gardener, a casualty of the great drought a couple of years ago. Garden*Hood has a great, knowledgeable staff - but the store's strongest recommendation is their focus on contemporary design in the outdoors.

To that point, I'm also enamored of their garden furniture, made by Atlanta company Flat Earth Design, helmed by artist Richard Taylor.

Blue Velvet Settees

This is a pretty pictures post. The prettiest of pictures are of blue velvet settees. This of course, is just my opinion. It is also my opinion that the best pictures of blue velvet settees are those in dusty, bookish, colonial rooms.

DIY Reupholstering, part 5

Making the cushion was the hardest part of this process for me, though in theory it should be fairly simple.

DIY Reupholstering - part 4: recovering the piece

We've arrived at the part where you actually put fabric back on to your sofa! That’s right, we’re finally here. The good news is that, on my end, this part is really easy. And on your end, it’s a little easy. But not as easy as mine. There isn’t really any bad news, because you’re about to have a new (old) sofa!

DIY Reupholstering, part 3: buying a fabric

It’s been weeks since the last reupholstery post, so I’ll stop looking at pictures of baby animals online and discuss, instead: Reupholstery: Selecting a Fabric.

DIY Reupholstering, part 2: refinishing the frame

The settee’s wood frame was in good shape, but it needed some tightening and adjusting. Allen helped with this while I took a break and nursed my imaginary bedbug bites. He tightened screws, tightened glued joints, and generally checked over the frame for any major problems.

DIY Reupholstering, part 1: removing the old upholstery

(For more on reupholstering, see the following links, too:
DIY reupholstering, part 2: refinishing the frame
DIY reupholstering, part 3: buying a fabric
DIY reupholstering, part 4: recovering the piece
DIY reupholstering, part 5: making a cushion and cover)


I’ve been dreaming for a while about finding that piece of living room furniture that would finally take me out of college. I’ve been done with architecture school for a while, but as long as I had the wood futon that I’d stained cherry myself (poorly), and which had occupied my freshman dorm, my living room would always feel like East Campus freshman housing.