Craigslist Finds: Marble Top Dresser

Craigslist and Kijiji are my source for most of the wood furniture in my house.  I have three dressers, one desk, and one small cabinet from Craigslist that have all served me incredibly well.  I've posted about my desk and my kitchen dresser, but I haven't ever shown you my gorgeous marble top dresser I found for our dining room.  Feast your eyes:

Marbletop Dresser from Craigslist: $30

As you can see, there are at least two major flaws ... namely the marble was clearly dropped and is split down the middle and had a chunk out of the side. In addition, none of the drawers work, and one of the side supports is at such an angle it's amazing to me that the dresser still stands. 

But, I LOVE this dresser.  I love it so so much that when people suggest I could get new marble I feel resentment.  It works beautifully for us as an extra surface beside our little bar cart, it's also a sort of sideboard since our dining table is beside it. However, this dresser was $30 dollars for a reason, you can't put anything in the drawers, it needs some serious structural work, and the marble is beyond hope.  The point is, you can have whatever furniture in your house that speaks to you, whether or not you overhaul DIY it.  Not every dresser has to be perfect, or carefully painted with Annie Sloan Chalk Paint, and perfectly staged. You just have to love it, and if this dresser never gets DIY'd to death, I'm going to be okay with that. This dresser has a history, it's been moved, suffered cracks, been well loved, and I love all of its imperfections. 

Antique Table Re-Do

It's been a year since I posted.  I am a terrible blogger. BUT I did finish a Masters Degree during that year, so I should be forgiven.

This is a table that I bought nearly 2 years ago for 20 dollars.  It was painted white when I bought it, with a nice touch of blue paint underneath that you cannot see until you start to strip it.  The turned legs were also white and not pictured here ... I apologize for the lack of a full photo:

Here is the before and after:

Naturally Stained Pine Shelves

If you are an apartment dweller come moi, you know that apartment bathrooms are ALWAYS minuscule and severely lacking in storage.  My current bathroom has a single cupboard under the sink.  That's it.  NOT ENOUGH PEOPLE.  Not when you share with boyfriend who has five old containers of hair product at any given moment in time.  I could have spent fifty dollars or more on one of those mdf white painted or metal contraptions that stand over the toilet and offer a few shelves.  However, I HATE THEM, so that option was out.  I had some plain knotty pine pre-cut into 2 foot long and 6 inch wide pieces from a different project that never got done.  However, did I want plain pine? No sir.  I wanted this kind of pine from nimidesign

My Kitchen Dresser

My dream came true.  Boyfriend said "why don't we just buy this tiny, boring, kitchen cart from Ikea for 70 dollars more?".  Okay that's not verbatim what he said.  I told him to stop crushing my dreams,  and then I got my gorgeous dressers. I found them on craigslist for 125 dollars each, which for Toronto craigslist was a great price. These are them in the ad:

Mason Jar Soap Dispenser (with a twist)

I love my vintage teal mason jars.  I do.  But other than making various twinkle lights out of them, they've mostly been adorning my kitchen as purely decorative.

NO MORE.  Time to put them to work.  Last night I stayed home and did graduate school homework (boo).  Once I had accomplished enough (though it's never really enough) I got bored, started watching The Apartment, and began tinkering with my mason jar.

Ikea Lantern Twinkle Light

I made a new twinkle light.  The subsequent photos of it exemplify how desperately I need a camera for my birthday HINT. Back to the twinkle. Who DOESN'T have that Ikea lantern in some colour lying around the house.  Put it to good use for once and cram some twinkles in it.  Plus, they already have a handle, so stringing them together and hanging them on your porch in the summer would be easy easy.  Henceforth I am putting out a call for twinkle light jars/bottles/crates/vessles/pails/carafes that you have made.  Share away via email, please! I would simply die to see your lovely contributions and I will dedicate a special post to all you twinklers...

Handmade Christmas: Teacup Candles

I am an impoverished grad student.  It's a disgusting fact of life.  For this frugal Christmas I have discovered the satisfaction of handmade gifts. I'm into simple crafts that aren't ... kitchy/tacky/ew. When I found teacup candles on Pinterest, I knew I had a winner. I checked out a couple of websites beforehand for their advice, obviously Martha and this one from Craftbits and ended up with bits and pieces of their advice.

Refurbished Oak Desk

Yaaaaaaaaay it's done!  It took a long time.  Yes it did. I thought the desk was a poor buy (even though it was only 25 dollars) because the top had this gross piece of vinyl on it, and parts of the desk are plywood with veneer overtop.  Fortunately, I managed to rip the vinyl off and the top doesn't look half bad, "rustic" let's call it.  Besides, once it was painted black, who could tell if it's plywood + veneer instead of solid wood... no one! Here is the

   Before:

Three Ideas for Old Dressers

The DIY world has started to look at dressers and all their infinite possibilities in use around the home. THIS is a fantastic thing.  You can purchase a second hand dresser for sub 100 dollars, or you can buy one that someone has already lovingly refurbished (ahem) if you don't have the time or the patience for paint.  They already boast lots of storage, and the best part is that they come in SO many different sizes that finding one to fit your space is certainly possible. So here we are, their uses:

1. Dresser Kitchen Island.  

This baby is all over Pinterest, but again, you don't have to limit it to the standard three drawer antique style dresser.  Many DIYers out there are experimenting with different shaped dressers for a bigger, better look for their island. If you want to use it for food prep you'll have to treat the top of it specially or use a different counter top, however if like me, you have zero counter space and just want somewhere to put your kitchenaid or dishes or microwave while not in use, the it's easy!

oh the cutest of life from youresomartha (is it fate that I nearly named my blog becomingmartha? I think so.) 

Refurbished Bankers Chair

Oookay the chair .... is .... done.  Almost. I still have to put the the sealer on it and add a couple of screws but for aesthetic (i.e. pretty white purposes) it is done.  It took a lot longer than expected because as usual, yours truly plowed ahead before doing adequate research because I was too excited.  Lesson learned? Probably never.

So we're going to pretend the part where I impulsively spray painted the chair white, which resulted in a permanently sticky texture and me having to strip it (see photo below) and start over, never happened.  

After spray painting ... and subsequent stripping

Home Hardware, Krug, and most importantly, Mason Jar TwinkleLight

There was a furniture mishap.  I am not the most patient of girls, so I jumped with both feet and a can of white acrylic enamel spray paint.  Woe is us. It did not dry well, and stayed sticky, and it required some hefty back pedaling.  But now we're back on track and on the right track this time!
In the meantime this is my new home away from home.  I've been here six times, it is aptly named.