A new addition to the kitchen

Sorry folks, there will not be a Flickr finds post today. Instead, I thought I'd share with you a major purchase I made about a week ago. A bit of background first...

During the kitchen renovation, I wanted a dining table built because I needed something narrower than an average size table, and it needed to fit 6 people. My boyfriend and I were initially going to build it, but my contractor offered so we took him up on it. The table turned out to be pretty disastrous. The wood of the top ended up warping and splitting, and the pedestal base was completely non-functional for such a long table. In the end, I ended up picking up a couple cheap table legs at Ikea and adding those on, particularly for instances when some of my porkier cats would launch onto it from the countertop. Here is a photo of the table:

I've been looking for a table on and off for several months now and have had no luck, up until a couple Fridays ago when I took my boyfriend down to the Byward Market with me on a table hunt. We were in Stacaro, my new favourite store, when Jeff spotted a really cool desk. It was on sale at 40% off (floor model), and had a black steel base and a wood top, the same colour as my cabinets but a few shades darker. It came with a shelf attached to house a desktop computer, and we quickly discovered it could easily unscrew off. It was the perfect width (just shy of 3') and length. Here is a photo of it from their website:

SOLD! It arrived last Monday and I finally got a chance to try it out with the shelf (decided it was too distracting and hid my Pantons) and find some things for a centrepiece. I love it. I am so happy to have something straight to eat off of, and I am no longer embarassed to have people over for a meal.

There's a few more photos over at my kitchen blog.

A cat project (plus bonus)

There is always a project going on at my house. The latest project was for the cats. I finally sold my vintage retro sofa I had in the living room that for the past 3 months had been piled up in my office under the window. It had turned into the cats favourite spot to sleep in the sun and watch squirrels. When the sofa was picked up, I knew I had to create something for them to use in it's place so my boyfriend and I went to Ikea to look for something we could hack and use as a cat perch. We made it through most of the store without finding anything and I was starting to panic, until Jeff spotted a baby change table (the Sniglar).

It was only $49.99, had 2 shelves, and could easily be chopped in half (I wanted it to be pretty narrow, just deep enough to fit a cat comfortably). It turned out perfectly. I painted it white (yellow first but it was way too bright), bought some stryofoam (fabric store was out of the foam I wanted) which I wrapped in batting and then fabric (thanks Jo!), and placed the "cushions" in the shelves. And voila, a perfect under-the-window cat perch.

I have to give Jeff credit for coming up with the idea of using the leftover piece of the change table as a new display unit for my West German pottery collection. The table I had been using was too deep, and this new shelving created a much wider space to walk from the living room into the kitchen. (In a 12 ft wide house, the narrower the furniture the better!) I painted some chalkboard paint roughly along the front edge and wrote what was on display. It's a perfect use for the rest of the table that I would have otherwise thrown out.

Kim's completed bedroom redo

I've been working on redoing my bedroom for a while now, and it's finally complete. Well, as complete as any room in my home can be, as I am often rearranging. But I'm pretty happy with the bedroom as it is now. Back in April I blogged about starting the bedroom and some of my ideas (and the demo of the huge closet that was in the room). Then a couple weeks later I managed to get the room painted, and blogged about it here. Slowly but surely the rest came together and I think I can call it done. I took some photos on Saturday, and boy was this room tough to photograph. The room is small (12'x11' I think) and the pale pink walls looked white in most of the photos so I had to do some photoshopping to try and get some of them looking accurate. (And I'm not good at PS). So here it is....

P.S. I uploaded a bunch of photos on Flickr (here is my photostream and here is my bedroom set) if you want to see more details of the room.

My DIY sofa - completed at last

My DIY sofa is finally complete! I had agonized over what to do about fabric for cushion covers, which proved to be a bit tough since I had a forest backdrop to work around. Having never had to plan such a fabric venture before (since I'm not an interior designer, I see why folks hire them for stuff like this) walking into a major fabric store was a tad daunting. But I think my choices worked out OK in the end. I had asked my mom to make the covers for me (I have no clue how to sew) and she opted to send the pillows to her seamstress instead. Which turned out to be a brilliant idea, because her seamstress made covers for 13 pillows, 12 of which she did piping, and it only cost about $100. Yes, that's $100 CDN (!!!). I found a purple tie-dye-ish linen type fabric and knew I had to have it so I worked the other fabrics around it. I wanted all linens/linen blends because I love wrinkles. I'm considering dying the base cushion covers but will let them be for now (they get pretty dirty with 6 cats all over them constantly). I also switched rattan chairs and am using the white lime zebra print one in the living room now since it matches the green cushions. One project down, a zillion more to go (although I am trying to find a silver tray to replace that yellow one on my coffee table)...

Kim's latest project

I have been quite busy around my house (as usual) and because of this I don't have a Flickr find post for today. Instead I thought I'd show you all one of the projects I have been working on. My backyard. I love LOVE L O V E summer and since it's so short up here I wanted to put everything else on hold and get going on making my backyard a space I want to hang out in. A couple weeks ago I was out back on my deck and it was HOT. Really hot. The fence surrounding my yard is super tall and there are tall houses and big trees all around so it gets almost no wind and is very sunny all day long. So I decided I wanted a small deck under the 2 trees that shade the back part of the yard. That way when it gets too hot I have a place to chill. My boyfriend came over last weekend to help (thank you Jeff!!!) and we knocked out a deck. Yesterday I bought some plants and got all that in place and VOILA!, I have another place to hang out.

Here's a "during" photo. I removed all the grass from the spot and dug down a bit because I wanted the deck just hovering over the grass level. (I say I because I did ALL the digging while Jeff built me a cat house/bench for my front porch).

Before you check out the end product, let me warn you to pay no attention to the stuff going on to the left and right of the deck. Those are projects for another weekend.

Yesterday I also did some planting of pots for around the rest of the backyard. It all took about 4 hours and resulted in a bit of a sunburn, some mosquito bites and some aches and pains. It was worth all that. And now you're all invited over for a BBQ. Bring booze. (Another warning - pay no attention to the peeling mess that is this deck. I'd like to shoot the former owner who thought it was a great idea to paint the deck instead of staining it or just letting it weather. That's yet another project.)