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Fixing rusted furniture with gold Sharpie pen

How to Fix Rusted Metal with Gold Sharpie Pens

After spending the past couple of years fixing up old furniture I’ve come across a lot of rusted metal, it’s fairly straight forward to fix larger areas of metal with spray paint or just replace it with new hardware, but sometimes there’s smaller areas like the feet on furniture legs or accent inlays of metal that are rusted and you can’t replace them because you can’t source the parts.

Fixing rusted furniture with gold Sharpie pen
I’m about to show you the easiest trick to make rusted metal look new again, anyone can do it!
Get yourself a metallic Sharpie pen, in this case I used gold.

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5 Tips For Styling Your Coffee Table

5 Tips For Styling Your Coffee Table

Do you need help figuring out how to style your coffee table? Guess what, so do I, kind of, but only because I’m having trouble finding a coffee table I love and that fits in the space. I don’t have room for a large coffee table, something longer and narrow might be nice. I’ve been looking on Charish for some ideas, it’s a great place for vintage and unique finds.

We currently use a vintage filing cabinet that Andrew has owned for many years, while I love the look of it, it’s really not functional as it’s fairly small. It has enough room for a few pieces of decor, but when guests come over there’s really no room for drinks and food. My plan is to replace it someday or find a piece of marble I can cut to fit for the top of it, add small legs and perhaps add a second coffee table that’s glass to sit overtop of it for a layered effect. But right now replacing it just sounds easier.

Coffee Table Styling

Below I’m showing a beautiful vintage coffee table from Charish and what I’d use to style it. I’m also sharing some tips on why I’ve selected these items to help you style your own coffee table.Read More »5 Tips For Styling Your Coffee Table

Reupholstered Mid-Century Chairs

Last month I shared with you that our reupholstered mid-century chairs are happening! After a few weeks they were reupholstered and today we brought them home. You have no idea how excited and nervous I was. I have been wanting to get these chairs done for years, I had even blogged about how I wanted them to look after endlessly looking for inspiration on Pinterest, you can read about that over here. I was so scared they wouldn’t look the way I had imagined in my mind, plus I have serious commitment issues, so picking a fabric took forever. Finally going a head with this was frightening, but Luxcious Upholstery on Main Street in Vancouver ended up doing an amazing job, they’re even better than I could have imagined!

Here’s how they looked before, just to refresh your memory. You can see more photos in my previous blog post over here, where you’ll see holes in the seat and other gross details.
Pink vintage chair before

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vintage chair before

We’re Getting Our Vintage Chairs Upholstered

It only took just over a year, but we’ve finally started the process to get our vintage mid century chairs upholstered. I had written about it many months ago and now it’s finally becoming a reality!

So far Andrew has refinished the wood and cleaned up the brass on the arms and legs. Here’s a before and after of that process. The arms and legs were sanded down to reveal the wood grain and a clear finished was applied.

refinished vintage chair

Here’s some before photos of the 2 chairs, one chair is obviously in better condition than the other, but both have holes in the fabric.Read More »We’re Getting Our Vintage Chairs Upholstered

Earl Grey shortbread recipe

Recipe Adventure: Earl Grey Shortbread Cookies

I assume you’re reading this post because you’re an Earl Grey tea lover like myself and you love shortbread. This shortbread cookie recipe infuses the flavours and smells of classic Earl Grey tea with the creamy textures of shortbread. This recipe is perfect for the holidays for it’s simplicity and it’s not overly sweet.

Indulge in these decadent shortbread cookies, they sound fancy, but they’re actually very easy to make.

Earl Grey shortbread recipe

Earl Grey Shortbread RecipeRead More »Recipe Adventure: Earl Grey Shortbread Cookies

painted vintage mid century modern sideboard before and after

Before and After: Painted Vintage Sideboard

This past Summer Andrew and I found this awesome solid plywood vintage sideboard, credenza, mid century modern cabinet (whatever you want to call it). I finally took some photos of it to share here and can’t wait to finally sell it….or keep it…

It weights a ton and if you could have seen how we got it home you would of had a good laugh, lets just say thank goodness we didn’t live too far from where we found it!

Here’s the before photos of this vintage sideboard:

vintage sideboard before and after

Here’s some close ups of all the ugly laminate that was broken and peeling off. Those legs though…
You have no idea how good it felt to remove all the loose bits of laminate!

vintage credenza before and after

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modern satin brass hardware pulls

Modern Brass Hardware

If you’re following me on instagram you’ll know that I’m currently working on a new furniture makeover. It’s a vintage sideboard/cabinet with sliding glass doors and 3 drawers. Check out the before photo below.

vintage mid century modern sideboard
The dilemma with this piece was that I really wanted to change out the old brass hardware with something more clean-lined and modern. The round brass knobs set into the glass doors had to stay, so the new pulls on the drawers had to be brass.

I can’t stand the look of shiny vintage brass, so I hunted online for satin brass hardware that’s been spotted on pieces at West Elm and other large retailers furniture. The dream hardware I had been lusting over for a while was just so far out of my budget, but they’re really stunning. They’re the Bar Collection from Lew’s Hardware, check them out in the top section of the photo below.
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loft kitchen renovation

Loft Kitchen Update

I’ve posted a few photos of our loft kitchen before, but it’s been a while and thought I’d share an update, because I’m the type of person that likes to constantly move things around.

We recently bought a larger stainless steel island and luckily we were able to sell the old one the same day! We upgraded to a large one, because we had the space and we really needed the extra storage underneath for our pots and pans and the extra counter space is pretty awesome.

Before I get into the photos, here’s a link to a previous post, showing the process of gutting the old loft kitchen and using recycled cabinets to configure a new kitchen layout.

Here’s how things currently look:
loft kitchen renovation

Incase you’re curious, yes we did paint our fridge, you can read about that over here.

Here’s a few more photosRead More »Loft Kitchen Update