House Week: # Seven

Alas, the end of House Week. Thanks for putting up with me. Back to our regular Ellen-centric programming soon.

This isn't really a before and after, unless you consider it before and after Ellen!

I mentioned that I've tried to be creative with her toy storage. Our house isn't huge, and while the bedrooms and bathrooms and kitchen are totally adequate for us, the living space (and storage space) is more limited.

I bought this buffet at the Mission Road Antique Mall for a steal when we needed something to put the TV on. I swapped the knobs out for new ones at Anthropologie.

(Yes, hello Wonder Pets!)

There is a lot of good storage in here - hides the TV/DVD components, holds my recipes, all the DVDs and some games, and lots of Ellen's stuff!

This is the latest storage solution. I bought this little table at Now and Then Furniture Consignment in downtown Overland Park. It was a great price (maybe $60?) and I originally intended to paint it, which I may still do. It isn't a great piece of furniture, but is a good size for a lot of spaces in our house.

I wanted to find some tall square boxes to set on those lower wooden rungs to hold toys and stuff (and to hide the outlet behind all that junk). The boxes had to be a very precise size and I just didn't have the energy for the search. I came across this idea on the internets and thought it was the perfect solution!

Erik indulged my craziness and picked up this empty wine crate at our neighborhood liquor store for $3. It is the perfect size and pretty kid-proof.

Some may find this sacrilegious, but I find it frugal!

Oh, and I forgot to mention our new chair! This was an old chair from my parents (yet again) that needed a little updating. I forgot to take a before picture, but you can pretty much see it here:

After a lot of hemming and hawing, I found some fabric I liked at Calico Corners. Then, I searched online and found it for quite a bit cheaper, so just ordered several yards and still saved money after shipping. I initially ordered a few samples of indoor-outdoor fabric from JoAnn, but the colors and patterns just didn't work for me. (You can get great deals on fabric at JoAnn with the 50% off coupon each week in the paper).

I had it reupholstered here locally and it was super reasonable, if not very fast. I would be happy to share their name if anyone wants ... they recovered our sofa in the green fabric, too, years ago. They put in a new foam seat cushion and tied up the springs and it is good as new!