Monday, February 12, 2007
Crafty?
First things first:
Knittymama wants to know about the fabric for the dog bed. The top is lightweight uphosltery fabric, and the bottom is denim (Chartreuse denim! Be still my heart!) PupCake is not a huge digger, but if you were worried about the durability of your fabric of choice, you could bond it to some kind of sturdy underlining fabric with fusible web...
And to Mona, with your lovely and flattering compliments. Thank you. I'm blushing. I've always thought of my taste more along the lines of ghetto-fabulous than exquisite, but I'll take it :) And I'm glad you enjoy the pics! There is just so much out there in internetland that I am inspired by, so I figure the least I can do is try to pay it forward.
And really, thanks everyone so much for your comments and readership. Today marks the first official post of year three of Splatgirl Creates and I've loved every minute with you :)
And then:
For the last few months, ever since the arrival of the BIG TV, I've been looking around and keeping an eye out for something to put it on. It sits in a cubby so as not to announce it's presence unless one is in front of it to, say, watch it, (because as you may know, big TV's are big ugly) but it needed a little bit of a height boost. Enough to raise it up off the floor some but without being so tall as to outgrow the confines of the cubby. Not suprisingly, everything I found was either ugly, too tall, or too expensive, so the big TV stayed on the floor.
And I pondered.
And then decided I was just going to have to make something myself. Because certainly I could do better than the $400+ sort of ugly and not quite right stuff I was finding.
You see, years ago I learned from watching Christopher Lowell that you can make pretty much anything with plywood. He could execute the most amazing transformations... from nothing to fabulous with just a few hundred bucks, some plywood, fabric and a few accessories.
Duly inspired, this led to some of my first adventures in building stuff (who knew there would be whole house in my future!). Armed with his tips, I built a whole room full of storage/seating benches with upholstered seats, a corner TV shelf cubby, and even a built-in buffet cabinet that housed my microwave and a trash pull-out.
It was fabulous, and went a long way toward solving my problems with the half a postage stamp-sized kitchen and eating area in my former house. If you saw this stuff, you'd never believe how inexpensively it was done but I know it was one of the things that sold that house to the first person that looked at it.
Fast forward to today, and me needing a TV bench (along with a slew of other things which probably goes without saying). I wanted something simple and chunky and most importantly, just tall enough to raise the TV up a bit and make one more thing for me to have to vacuum under.
Here it is in a still-needs-some-sanding-and-stain/varnish state. I actually borrowed this design from myself, in my head, where I've been dreaming up the custom-sized and cool looking dining table I am in need of. I used a triple thickness of 3/4" finish-grade plywood for the top and some 3" square stock for the legs. I glued the layers together and put a few screws in from the bottom to hold everything together snugly. I think I spent $40 on materials which is quite an improvement over the $300 or $400+ I was thinking I'd have to spend, and hopefully I'll get it finished up today and be able to show you the finished product at home under the TV tomorrow...
Here's a hint: If you don't have a saw or a means to haul sheets of ply on your own, you can have them cut to size by the nice guys at the home improvement store. Once your wood is cut to size, you can make almost anything under the sun using just a drill, some screws, wood glue and a few other odds and ends depending on what kind of finish you like.
Knittymama wants to know about the fabric for the dog bed. The top is lightweight uphosltery fabric, and the bottom is denim (Chartreuse denim! Be still my heart!) PupCake is not a huge digger, but if you were worried about the durability of your fabric of choice, you could bond it to some kind of sturdy underlining fabric with fusible web...
And to Mona, with your lovely and flattering compliments. Thank you. I'm blushing. I've always thought of my taste more along the lines of ghetto-fabulous than exquisite, but I'll take it :) And I'm glad you enjoy the pics! There is just so much out there in internetland that I am inspired by, so I figure the least I can do is try to pay it forward.
And really, thanks everyone so much for your comments and readership. Today marks the first official post of year three of Splatgirl Creates and I've loved every minute with you :)
And then:
For the last few months, ever since the arrival of the BIG TV, I've been looking around and keeping an eye out for something to put it on. It sits in a cubby so as not to announce it's presence unless one is in front of it to, say, watch it, (because as you may know, big TV's are big ugly) but it needed a little bit of a height boost. Enough to raise it up off the floor some but without being so tall as to outgrow the confines of the cubby. Not suprisingly, everything I found was either ugly, too tall, or too expensive, so the big TV stayed on the floor.
And I pondered.
And then decided I was just going to have to make something myself. Because certainly I could do better than the $400+ sort of ugly and not quite right stuff I was finding.
You see, years ago I learned from watching Christopher Lowell that you can make pretty much anything with plywood. He could execute the most amazing transformations... from nothing to fabulous with just a few hundred bucks, some plywood, fabric and a few accessories.
Duly inspired, this led to some of my first adventures in building stuff (who knew there would be whole house in my future!). Armed with his tips, I built a whole room full of storage/seating benches with upholstered seats, a corner TV shelf cubby, and even a built-in buffet cabinet that housed my microwave and a trash pull-out.
It was fabulous, and went a long way toward solving my problems with the half a postage stamp-sized kitchen and eating area in my former house. If you saw this stuff, you'd never believe how inexpensively it was done but I know it was one of the things that sold that house to the first person that looked at it.
Fast forward to today, and me needing a TV bench (along with a slew of other things which probably goes without saying). I wanted something simple and chunky and most importantly, just tall enough to raise the TV up a bit and make one more thing for me to have to vacuum under.
Here it is in a still-needs-some-sanding-and-stain/varnish state. I actually borrowed this design from myself, in my head, where I've been dreaming up the custom-sized and cool looking dining table I am in need of. I used a triple thickness of 3/4" finish-grade plywood for the top and some 3" square stock for the legs. I glued the layers together and put a few screws in from the bottom to hold everything together snugly. I think I spent $40 on materials which is quite an improvement over the $300 or $400+ I was thinking I'd have to spend, and hopefully I'll get it finished up today and be able to show you the finished product at home under the TV tomorrow...
Here's a hint: If you don't have a saw or a means to haul sheets of ply on your own, you can have them cut to size by the nice guys at the home improvement store. Once your wood is cut to size, you can make almost anything under the sun using just a drill, some screws, wood glue and a few other odds and ends depending on what kind of finish you like.
