I am not an artist, so please excuse my painting skills. During my undergrad, one of my color class assignments was to copy an impressionistic painting on a wine bottle. It was the perfect assignment for a novice painter such as me. On a wine bottle, you can’t see the entire painting at once, so [...]

Happy Earth Day everyone! I found these flower-shaped plates at a thrift store while hunting for dishes with which to make cake stands. I loved the shape of them so much that I bought them all. I have plans for the rest, but these three were destined to become mirrors. As a friend pointed out, [...]

Two drawers were left over from my modular bookcase project. I didn’t think they’d be useful for anything but firewood. But upon closer inspection, I began to appreciate the aged beauty of the wood—even the smattering of white paint. Combining the drawers into one shadowbox—and not painting it—was a great way to showcase the wood’s [...]

I resisted doing this for long enough. As you may have already noticed, I’m now on Twitter. Feel free to follow along! I can’t promise to be interesting all the time, but I will include some behind-the-scenes info, fab finds, and hints about future posts. And talk about chocolate. And maybe throw in some Stargate [...]

I bought this trolley for a steal on Craigslist. You may have seen it here. You can’t tell in the photo, but it’s banged up and rickety from years of use. My friend Peter added some reinforcement to make it sturdy, then I filled in the nicks with wood filler and oiled the squeaky wheels [...]

I found these chairs curbside with a “free” sign taped to them. They have a nice shape but suffer from two problems: a shoddy paint job and cracked seats. I knew I could fix both issues. I wasn’t settled on the how part until I saw what Melissa did to her tables at ikea hacker. [...]