Welcome Guest Blogger Gillian from the Blog “Dried Figs and Wooden Spools”
I have a thing about space. I have to like it, to use it. I have a hard time working in an ugly building, singing in a church that doesn’t look just right, or writing at a cluttered and disorganized desk. In fact, when I started writing my book last spring, I set myself up at my pretty little desk in our bedroom. It’s simple, dark wood, straight lines, no drawers just a small platform that slides out for a keyboard (or for papers if you are like me and haven’t owned a separate keyboards since…. well since ever, I’m from the age of laptops baby) I picked up a few funky teal cut glass vases at a thrift store for dried hydrangea’s (my perennial favorite) and my pens and set to work. Then my laptop’s screen died and I had to drag my husband’s giant old Sony monitor up from the basement (while he pointed out over and over how many times I had tried to get rid of it over the years, of course, if we didn’t have it I could make the excuse to go out and buy a nicer looking screen, but that’s another issue) So then my desk was less pretty, due to the giant ugly monitor, but still tidy enough to write. But I still had chair issues. As in, I didn’t have one.
For a long time I was dragging one of our dining room chairs in to work because a) they are comfortable and b) they match my desk as well as my table, and yes, that was a factor. My husband tried to get me to sit in one of the ugly oak chairs that he accidentally inherited from our elderly neighbors (read, he has a hard time telling them no, which has resulted in two funky, but when recovered, useful, armchairs, four very ugly, very uncomfortable oak dining chairs and boxes of books and toys found at the recycling center; fun times) but it was, as I said, very ugly and very uncomfortable.
Before picture of the Chair
I was searching for THE chair. I had been inspired by a photograph in an old Domino of an all white studio apartment where the modern-ish desk was paired up with an elegant and compact Louis the something-th style chair painted white and upholstered in fun fabric. The magazine, as they always do, claimed the chair had been purchased for some trivial amount of money, $3 at a yard sale or something. Well, Charlottesville yard sales do not have $3 Louis the something-th chairs. Antique stores have them, but not in my budget. So I kept dragging a chair from the dining room in and out of the bedroom every day.
I’m still looking for THE chair, but in the meantime, I found this one. Our local Salvation Army has either nothing, or lots of cool things that the husband would kill me if I brought home. Last week they had a beautiful piano and a thirteen-foot tall mahogany kitchen queen. Sigh. The chair was a whole $5, and while it might not be perfect-the back isn’t padded and is a little high and the wicker is a little too 1990’s instead of 1790’s- but a little paint and half a yard of the fabric I bought just for this purchase a good six months ago and TA DA! A whole new chair. In fact, maybe it’s THE chair after all!
and AFTER!
So what has been your best “transformation” project? What crazy, ugly, or plain thing did you make fabulous? And where did you get that extra spark of inspiration to take it from BLAH to HAZAAH!
For more of Gillian blog posts, read them here.
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