Buildables: Factory Cart Inspiration

After finding Ana White's website, I had the urge to keep building furniture.  This in theory wasn't such a bad situation, but our house didn't need any more furniture.  When I told my sister of my predicament, she was happy to provide a wish list for her new condo.  She fell in love with Restoration Hardware's Furniture Factory Cart, but the price tag was a little more than she wanted to pay for a coffee table.  

So pretty you could eat off of it

This was maybe one of the easiest projects I have ever done.  While shopping at Target (noticing a trend?  This is what happens when Target is closer to your home than any other store) I found this placemat on clearance: 

How much on clearance you ask?

How'd you duvet that?

So I'm told duvet is a french term.  To me, it's a much easier to launder bedding option.  Especially considering our two furkids (don't worry, they make a guest appearance later on).  The problem was, I couldn't find any bedding that I liked that was also in my price range.  Enter Target (one of my favorite stores along with TJ Maxx/Homegoods).  Since this was technically our guest room, where Luke keeps his clothes,  I let him pick the color. Anybody surprised he picked black, white, and red and the colors?  I wasn't.    

Buildables: Ana-Inspiration - Simple, Cheap, and Easy Console Table

If you haven't heard of Ana White, I think it is a blog you should add to your repertoire. It's an AMAZING website full of easy to follow plans created by Ana herself while living in rural Alaska.  When I first discovered her website, I spent HOURS on end searching through plans and brag posts trying to decide what I wanted my first project to be. We had just moved in to our current place, money was tight, but I still wanted to turn our house into a home (and not just another rental).   

I decided to start with the Simple, Cheap, And Easy Console Table (the name even summed up my hopes for my first project - sold).  I borrowed my Dad's miter saw (the least scary of all saws in my opinion) and headed to "Big Blue" as Ana refers to it to pick out my lumber, with the printed plan in my hand.  I adjusted the dimensions to fit my space and had most of the wood pre-cut at the store (offered at nearly all Big Blues), but realized later I wanted to add on another shelf, and wanted to try my Dad's saw at home for the few remaining cuts.  Using a miter saw is actually quite easy, but louder than I expected and very messy!  Sawdust everywhere.  It's almost worse than glitter.   

DIY: Restructure Refinish Repurpose

Many of you reading this post know that I have refinished a dresser into a media center, but since this is my inaugural post, I thought I should blog about my inaugural project that really got my feet wet in DIY projects.  I found a listing on Craiglist for a FREE dresser as long as we went and picked it up,  It had been published maybe ten minutes, and by the time I heard back from the owner, he said he had already been contacts my multiple individuals interested in the dresser.  As long as I could pick it up in the next few hours - it was mine!    Enter me bribing Luke to go with me to get the dresser - it may or may not have involved ice cream!

We stored the dresser in the garage at our first place (~600 square feet total!) until we moved into our current location where we could actually put the dresser to use!  Below is the unaltered first picture I took of said dresser.  It was missing a few handles, had a few drawers that fit too wonky to actually work, and had a spot on top where the last owner had started to "refinish" it and gave up.