Scavenger Hunt

Like most women, I love to shop. I love all kinds of shopping; clothing shopping, shoe shopping, gift shopping, Christmas shopping, grocery shopping, furniture shopping, even window shopping. One of many reasons why I love my job. I get to shop for other people. I'm always on the lookout for great deals. It's like a scavenger hunt, looking at unexpected places. I can spend all day at garage sales, flea markets, estate sales, and liquidation sales.

I love a story behind a piece. Shopping is not just about buying something. Sometimes the journey to buying something could be the most interesting part. Like when you buy a hand crafted knick knack from a street vendor while you're on vacation or when you learn about the past life of your antique lamp. A house full of stories and memories can make a room rich and nostalgic.

As the summer or spring is approaching, there will be plenty of outdoor fairs. A popular one is the Chicago Antique Market. It's located in the west loop on Randolph Street. There's live music, great people, interesting things to see even if you're looking to buy.

Tonight, I picked up a brand new Room and Board chair used in a model home for fraction of the original price. She lives in the same neighborhood too!

DIY: Custom Drapery

One of the best features of our condominium is the span of windows around. There are 12 windows! The unit came with blue blinds. I'm not crazy about them, but they do their job and it would cost a fortune to replace them. We have frameless windows, so it looks bare and cold without any window dressing. Drapery panels cost about $50 per panel. I need 12 panels + hardware. Total cost would be $800+. Frugal me would make them myself, or better yet, have my mother do it :). The color of the walls are a very pale grey. To warm up the place and provide some contrast, I'm using a dark grey cotton twill fabric, typically used for men's suits. I love that it's wrinkle free and it hangs very straight and tailored. I bought 37 yards of it at $3.50/per yard = $130 + $100 on basic hardware. The fabric comes in 54"W finished ends. That's the width of the panel anyways, so it didn't need to be hemmed. My mother sewed a 3" pocket with interfacing to reinforce the shape on the top of the panel. I used iron-on double sided adhesive for the bottom hem, so it doesn't have thread showing. I don't like putting the curtain rod through the pocket, because that would cause rouching. I want it to look clean, so I used clip on rings. That's it! It's a simple project and it saved me over $500! Some elbow grease and leg work goes a long way.

DIY: Picture Frame

Framing art work can sometimes be more expensive than the art work itself.
Our place is slowly coming together. All the major pieces are in place. You can have all the furniture, but it can still feel unfinished. A house is not a home till it's filled with items that are familiar, treasured, and comforting. Our walls desperately need some attention.

I'm not a big fan of buying mass produced artwork. It's impersonal and generic. I don't want to see the same picture at somebody else's place. Original artwork can cost well up to the thousands. So, make your own! You don't have to be an artist to create your own artwork. An easy way to create a focal point on a wall is having multiples of one thing. Repetition is one of my favorite design principals.
"The whole is greater than the sum of its parts."

I'm not much of a painter, so I opted for photography. I walked around my neighborhood with a camera in hand and just take pictures of yellow things. I photoshopped the pictures to black and white, and allow only the yellow things to come through. They were printed at Kinko's for $1 each on regular paper.

The frames I made are 19"x18". This size frame will cost at least $40 at a store.
Four of them will cost me $160 plus tax. I bought a sheet of 4'x8' 1/2" MDF board from Home Depot for $20, seven 10'x2" moulding for $2.49 ea, and a quart of white paint for $9.89. Total is under $50. It will give me (1) 2.5'x6', (1) 2'x4', and (4) 1.5'x1.5' frames.

Custom Furniture: Just for the wealthy? Think again...

As much as I love crafting my own picture frames and other small home accessories, some projects are definitely over my head. For my home office, I needed a nice desk that's functional and beautiful. That combination usually mean $$$. The inexpensive desks I've seen are unattractive and didn't have the qualities I wanted. The desks that I do like were over my budget. I've contemplated buying an antique desk and refinishing it, but it wouldn't fit into my time frame. The supplies needed to strip the paint, sand, paint, and gloss would've add up very quickly. On top of the time and effort, it just didn't justify the investment.

I came across an ad on craigslist, my all time favorite site, by a guy who did small scale carpentry work. He's not a full time carpenter, he doesn't work for a woodshop, he just builds furniture in his condo. Remember this people: There are always going to be people willing to give you a deal just so they can get your business. Negotiate Negotiate Negotiate!

Besides the desk (which I'll post later), I've also asked him to build two night stands to my specification. This is the picture I gave him as an inspiration.
This desk is being sold at Williams Sonoma (more expensive version of Pottery Barn) for $795.00.

I customized the size, height, depth of the drawer and the hardware. I got this table for a mere fraction of the price.

Little Houses

Ever since I was young, I've been in love with different kinds of small scale homes. I wanted to live in the gingerbread house from Candyland, the treehouse from Punky Brewster, the tree caves that Winnie The Pool lived in, and it's still my dream to convert an old lighthouse into a retreat. I came across an article on this month's issue of Cottage Living about a converted bird house. Yes, a bird house. This small structure called a pigeonnier was built on the grounds of a Louisiana estate around 1750. Its original function was to house pigeons which, at that time, were considered haute cuisine. Isn't it the cutest?

DIY: Accent Pillow

When furnishing a home, all the little items add up pretty quick. I'm always trying to think of ways to save as much as possible. Certain things you have to splurge on, like a good quality couch, a nice TV, or a comfortable bed. But there are things you can save on. A good way to save money is to make it yourself. Have you checked out the accent pillows and throws aisle lately? A 18"x18" pillow costs at least $19 at Target up to $89 at Room and Board.

Making of the pillow: First I bought a yard of decorative fabric from Needle Shop for $9. One yard of fabric at 54"W can make me FOUR one sided pillows. I'm using another yard of grey cotton twill fabric that was left over from the drapes I'm making (stay tuned!). I got those at a discounted price of $3.50/yard. For the infill of the pillow, Ikea sells 16"x16" infills for only $2.99. Together with some thread, you get this for about $6/ea.

Before Pictures

This was what my condo looked like when we first saw it. It had ketchup and mustard walls. You never want to use two primary wall colors in the same room. The two colors were competing with each other. You cantone down one color and use that as a background so the hot color could take center stage. First thing we did was paint it before we moved in. The living space was one big room, so I wanted to keep it light. The design scheme for the place is urban chic, kinda Manhattan Uptown hotel feel. Color inspiration comes from water washing up to a shore lined with stones and pebbles. Main colors are whites, greys, black, and some browns and beige.

Accent color is YELLOW. Yes. Yellow. There won't be any yellow walls remaining but they will come back in the form of pillows, art work, accessories. Combining the styles of two people is never easy. One likes bright colors and graffiti and other one likes soft feminine silhouettes. It's like picking out colors for a baby room when you don't know the sex yet. Yellow is unisex and it's eye catching without being in your face.

Keeping Hunger In Check

We've decided to build something related to the theme and Chicago. We originally wanted to do chess pieces but realized it's been done before, so we're adding a twist to it. We're going to be building a chess board with some famous Chicago buildings as the chess pieces. Here's a digital image of what it would look like. Can you tell which 3 building we're doing?