Home Improvement: The Magic Coat Rack and Kittification of the Living Room
Home improvement never ends. The very moment you decide "now that's it, I'm done! Enough! Finis!" you'll run into another piece of furniture that you absolutely need, and to fit it in your flat, you have to re-arrange everything anew. Plus there are the cats with their shameless demands for entertainment and kittification of your home.
I thought I was done with home improvement, but then I came across this gorgeous early 1960s coat rack whose colours match exactly my 1940s rattan furniture, and of course I was not done once again.
So, under the watchful eyes of Buttons, I reached for bath brick and hammer. Little did I know that "it will only take 30 minutes to put this up" would turn into three days of work...
My first guess was that the coat rack was made in the late 1950ies/early 1960ies, and my second guess that it hadn't been cleaned once since those olden days. Cleaning vintage furniture is always tricky, but I know that I can always trust my dear old bath brick. Old fashioned, yes, but it does the job. Just so you get an idea what I had to deal with - half side cleaned, the other "original":
Many hours of cleaning and polishing later...
I admit, I'm in love with that coat rack. It's gorgeous, perfectly matches the rest of my furniture, and hey, wait a moment, I need a place to put it up, hm, I guess I have to move two of the bookshelves to the living room to make space for the coat rack.
*shuffling a ton of books*
*moving the shelves*
*finding large green painted rectangle behind the shelf, oops, forgot about that*
*covering spot in white paint*
*removing white pawprints from parquet*
Many hours later... here's what I did (with lots of help from Mrs. C. and her homeimprovingskills): we added two more of the "cat boards" ( wooden boards covered in heavy-duty carpet) to the wall of the living room; enough for the cats to reach the "new" booshelf. This means they can run across the full length of the living room, can sit on the shelf and watch me work. The cats absolutely loved it, the moment the last screw was placed, Lorchen and Buttons already chased each other from board to board.
So I have a fully kittificated living room without feeling like living in an animal shelter. ;-)
But back to the coat rack. Finally a place to put my caps and hats! How handy! How convenient! How...
... very much to be expected.
The less we say about it, the better. At least it's decorative! :-D
Molly originally posted this entry at http://joyful-molly.dreamwidth.org/381608.html. You can comment on LJ or DW, using OpenID.
I thought I was done with home improvement, but then I came across this gorgeous early 1960s coat rack whose colours match exactly my 1940s rattan furniture, and of course I was not done once again.
So, under the watchful eyes of Buttons, I reached for bath brick and hammer. Little did I know that "it will only take 30 minutes to put this up" would turn into three days of work...
My first guess was that the coat rack was made in the late 1950ies/early 1960ies, and my second guess that it hadn't been cleaned once since those olden days. Cleaning vintage furniture is always tricky, but I know that I can always trust my dear old bath brick. Old fashioned, yes, but it does the job. Just so you get an idea what I had to deal with - half side cleaned, the other "original":
Many hours of cleaning and polishing later...
I admit, I'm in love with that coat rack. It's gorgeous, perfectly matches the rest of my furniture, and hey, wait a moment, I need a place to put it up, hm, I guess I have to move two of the bookshelves to the living room to make space for the coat rack.
*shuffling a ton of books*
*moving the shelves*
*finding large green painted rectangle behind the shelf, oops, forgot about that*
*covering spot in white paint*
*removing white pawprints from parquet*
Many hours later... here's what I did (with lots of help from Mrs. C. and her homeimprovingskills): we added two more of the "cat boards" ( wooden boards covered in heavy-duty carpet) to the wall of the living room; enough for the cats to reach the "new" booshelf. This means they can run across the full length of the living room, can sit on the shelf and watch me work. The cats absolutely loved it, the moment the last screw was placed, Lorchen and Buttons already chased each other from board to board.
So I have a fully kittificated living room without feeling like living in an animal shelter. ;-)
But back to the coat rack. Finally a place to put my caps and hats! How handy! How convenient! How...
... very much to be expected.
The less we say about it, the better. At least it's decorative! :-D
Molly originally posted this entry at http://joyful-molly.dreamwidth.org/381608.html. You can comment on LJ or DW, using OpenID.