Moses, Eddie Ross, and a quart of chalkboard paint walk into a bar...

Confession:  I have broken a Commandment.

 Big time.

 I covet.

I covet this in a really, really, really big way.

I saw it in the Eddie Ross Big Window room at Bloomies, and I wanted it.

I pondered. 

Hmmm.... if I sell enough of our old junk on Craigslist, perhaps I will earn enough money to buy it.

I did excellently well selling junk on Craigslist.  Since it's now on huge sale, I'm only $1,129.15 (plus shipping and handling) short. 

And since I'm all out of junk, I began looking for something to substitute.

 

I quite like this one (from Ballard.)

So I gathered my Craigslist sheckles and began gearing myself up to order it. 

On a side note, I've only purchased three new pieces of furniture, ever, for our home.  Our bed, our sofa, and a chair and ottoman from Thomasville.  All of which were on enormous sale.  So this was kind of a big deal.  I'm not even exactly sure how I feel about new furniture (except for upholstery, which is really sometimes a lot cheaper and easier to come by new rather than refurbished.)

And then one day I was out thrifting (Again?  Really?  Me?)  and I spied this.

Forgive this room right now.  It's become a walk-through storage cabinet while I work on some big decorating projects.

So, yeah, it's not really (anything) like the other two.  Except in the feeling of openness that I liked.  It's not at all industrial, and I really do love a touch of industrial in a room. 

And it's not nearly as tall as Options A and B.

The price, however, was right.

My wallet was a mere $48.36 cents lighter upon leaving the store, and that includes paying for a mirror that Grady broke.

I'd read about painting things with chalkboard paint on Haskell Harris's blog.  And goodness knows I love to paint things with chalkboard paint.  (Note to self: take some pictures of all the crazy uses of chalkboard paint around the house for future blog posts.) 

So paint I did.

I certainly don't hate it, that's for sure.  I ended up having to put a coat of wipe on poly on top of the chalkboard paint since it was peeling a little bit (I didn't prime.  Oh, man, why didn't I prime?  I wanted to see what the chalkboard paint would look like on it, and got carried away, and once I'd painted all those spindles by hand I realized I should have primed and it just seemed like too much work to go back and re-do it.)  This sort-of defeats the purpose of the chalkboard paint, so I might end up having to repaint the whole thing in the future. 

I'm going to see if I can find a commercially made turned leg like the supports for the shelves, and add one more level on top.  If I can't, we have a friend who is a master carpenter, and maybe it would be affordable to have some hand-turned. 

 We already know it comes apart easily.  I showed up to pick it up at my fave thrift store,smiled sweetly, and opened the back of my van to accommodate all 71" x 62" of it.  It's situations like this that cause my husband's blood pressure to become dangerously high.  Not one of those four burley loading men blinked, and  within seconds they were helping me take it apart. (I travel with screwdrivers in my glove box for just such occassions.)

  I need to take those guys some cookies.  (Especially after the last thing I had them load in there, which most definitely didn't fit, but also most definitely did not come apart.  Chocolate-chocolate chip, I think.)

I've got a few more things to clear out, but then I'm ready to start filling this bad boy up with all our displaced books (studio has the greatest built-in shelving ever.  Books/fabric?  Books/fabric?  I had this conversation with myself for ten whole minutes.  Guess who won?)  I've got a bolt of fabric waiting for curtains, a re-do of my lamp, and an upholstery project that involves a moss-green glove leather hide and some serious Anthropology envy coming up in the next coupla weeks.