Shelving Unit

I am so proud of my husband!  He finished this beautiful shelving unit for our living room.  I am just thrilled with how it looks. 

And, here's how he did it:

The piece was designed to specifically fit into a little nook by our (never-used) front door.  He used pine to build it.  The bottom portion is a drawer and one of the spaces was left larger than the others so we could fit a small lamp there.  Here's Matt making some last minute adjustments to the shelves before we started prepping the shelf for paint:

After it was built, Matt filled in all of the screw holes and edges in with wood filler.  When the wood filler was dry, we sanded it down for a nice, smooth surface. 

After sanding and wiping the entire unit with a tack cloth to make sure there was no lingering sawdust to muck up our paint.  We primed the shelf (propped up on old paint cans):

After a coat of primer, we lightly sanded and tack cloth'ed the entire piece again before applying two coats of Sherwin Williams' Pure White in a semi-gloss finish.  It haven't really decorated it yet.  But I stole some picture frames from other spots around the living room just to see how it'll look. 

I love how it looks.  And I love it even more because it was built by my husband's own two hands.  This weekend, I'm planning to style it a little more with a lamp and some books.  Once it's all done, I'll take another picture to share.

Throw Pillow Thursday

A Story of Pillow Love

Years ago, while I was in college, I bought a long, gold-striped table runner on clearance at Gordmans for a few bucks.  It was the table runner of my dreams.  And I got it for a steal.  Life was good.

Unfortunately, after about a year of living with my dream table runner, a couple of inches of it got ruined during a tragic pumpkin carving incident. 

Not wanting to be wasteful, I used the remaining tablerunner to make three placemats.  This worked out great because we had our kitchen table in our little college rental pushed up against a wall and only used three chairs at it.

Unfortunately, three month after I made those placemats, my college roommate set a hot pan on one of the placemats and melted a hole in it.  Left with two placemats, we continued to use them for two of the spots at our table.  The third spot just remained naked for the final year+ that we lived in the apartment

Three years after buying my table runner, I graduated college with two placemats still intact. 

After graduation, Matt and I moved into an apartment in the city and set to decorating it.  The two placemats weren't doing me much good as I now had a large 6 seat table in our apartment.  They lived in a box in our office for almost a year.  While cleaning out the office closet, I found them tucked in a box with my graduation gown and some other college memorabilia.  I still couldn't use them on our table, but, again, I didn't want to be wasteful.  I opted to turn my placemats into throw pillows for our bed. 

And that is where they remain today.

(My bed is centered on the window, I don't know if I was at a weird angle or what happened.  Also, the center pillow was a gift from a family friend for our wedding shower a few years ago.  I would guess it's either from Crate and Barrel or Target, circa 2008.)

 I love them.  I hope that they last forever and live out their days on my bed. 

These are the only pillows in my house that do not have a zipper.  I spot clean them if and when they get dirty.  I've thought a lot about slipping a zipper in though.  Maybe I'll do that eventually.  The lack of a zipper in no way slows my love for them. 

Here's the back.  It was the back to the original table runner.  I love it too.



The End.