Thrifty purchase: new desk chair

My "home office" has long been the most neglected space in my house, largely in part because we never have company in that room and also because it inevitably doubles as storage. Now that we have moved and our office is no longer behind closed doors on the second floor, but the first room people see when they visit, I have become a bit more motivated to do what I can to make it look more aesthetically pleasing. It will be a a very long, and very slow work-in-progress, that's for sure!

Here is one "thrifty" update that I made tonight: the purchase of this chair, seen below.






In college, my office chair was the hard chair provided in the dorms. While at home, it was a spare chair from my parents' kitchen set. Once I moved out, it was a $10 office chair purchased off of Craigslist. It did the job just fine, but I later realized it didn't fit my height or my back right. Since I have poor posture and back pains from regularly lifting children to begin with, I decided it was time to find a replacement chair! The chair I bought is originally $150 from Staples, and a very close match to the Eames style and Crate & Barrel chairs that are so popular. If this chair were white, it would have been perfect, but Staples doesn't offer this particular chair in white, and the closest match was an additional $150+. There was one other chair I had my eye on, a white one, but this one slightly beat it in comfort, and definitely beat it in price as the other one was $200, not on sale, and no longer available online. In fact, when all was said and done, I paid $37 for this chair! I had $50 in Staples rewards accumulated ($10 from recycling ink + $40 from a rebate on a ream of paper that I strategically purchased, since we needed more printing paper and it was by far a better deal to buy the case... especially with my husband being a first-year teacher, that paper WILL get used!!). I waited until the chair went on sale for $99, and then I discovered that online they were offering an additional $15 off a $100 purchase + free shipping. Now, I'm so used to stores manipulating these promotions not in the customer's favor (Kohl's, anyone?!), but Staples actually let me count the true purchase price of $100 (I added a $2 set of notepads to bring it up to $101 since it wouldn't recognize the $99.99 as qualifying) and not the $50 tag that was left after my rewards coupons. I've already tested the chair out in stores so I'm pretty sure I'll be happy with it, and you can't beat a purchase price of $35 and free 1-day shipping!

I'm still a long way from finalizing my "vision" for my office, but there are definitely things about this space that appeal to me, and I appreciate that my chair is already worked into it! Most pictures I see on blogs or pinterest have white office chairs, so I'm excited to see that a space can look "open and airy" with a black chair.

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My desk currently is large, natural wood, and has a hutch. It was originally a floor sample purchase from Ethan Allen. It has a pretty big footprint, but it offers so much storage space and is so well built that I can't see myself ever parting with it. It's gotten a lot of wear and is starting to show it with some dings on the surface, so I've been toying with the idea of painting it white or gray. The inspiration photo above now has me thinking about doing a two-tone effect and painting it white and the drawer fronts a soft gray. We'll see where I end up...

Before & After: TV console

When Joey and I got married, we definitely had to discuss what stayed and what went (furniture, junk, etc.) We kept this cabinet out of necessity, but I always knew it was going to go out the door once we found something better (especially since Joey got it for free -dumpster diving, in essence- during his college days). I did eventually find a replacement TV console at Goodwill (which we made a few tweaks to; that'll be another post), but instead of tossing this cabinet we decided to give it a paint job and use it for storage. We also switched out the knobs, which made a huge difference, and I have to say this simple piece of furniture is currently one of my favorites in our space.

I don't have a true "before" picture, but you can see it in this photo from back when Joey & I first got married, and tried to mesh our furniture together in our townhouse (and yes, that is *a lot* of brown... a design choice that I have been trying to compensate for over the last few years!):

Here it is, after a coat of paint and new knobs (purchased off of ebay) in our apartment that we just moved into:

It feels like a brand new piece of furniture, and is great for storing our collection of $1 Goodwill VHS tapes (yes, we still own and use VHS!) and for providing some extra storage/display space on top. I still want to do something to it, though, to really finish it off and give it some *oomph*. I haven't figured it yet, but I'm thinking one of two things:

(1) finishing it off with nailhead trim, either working alongside the grooves of the console, or doing some sort of design on the cabinet faces, similar to this:

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or (2) using paint to create a two-tone effect, similar to this dresser:

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Thoughts?

West Elm pillow knock-off

Pulling from my completed project files, this is a project that I did just shy of a year ago. A couple years ago, I sewed some basic pillow covers using blue microfiber fabric purchased on the cheap from Joann's Fabrics. Eventually I decided I wanted to dress them up, but it took a while to land on the right idea. This West Elm felted origami pillow was the perfect solution.

 It took a bit of time, but was very easy to make. From looking at the pillow I realized that each little piece of the pattern was created by using squares and then folding in the corners. I liked the scale of the pattern on the West Elm pillow, so I measured the length of my pillow and divided by 6 to figure out how long to make each side of the squares. I then cut 36 squares, ironed them in half on the diagonal, and used a glue gun to put a dab of glue in the middle of each square and fold in the two opposite corners on the diagonal.

I then arranged all of the pieces on the pillow cover, pinned them in place and meticulously hot glued each one on. I'm very pleased with how it came out, and especially so because it was free. :) The felted grey wool definitely speaks to me, but I was trying to work with what I had. If I were to ever do another one, I would definitely go for the felted wool. I wouldn't recommend the microfiber as a first choice because I do get a bit of fraying (nothing that a quick snip with the scissors can't fix, though).

Pretty darn close to the real thing, right? :)

Origins

After years of following blogs and thinking, "I want to do that..." (blog, that is) I've finally jumped on the bandwagon. I'm hoping that this will be a fun way for me to catalog my exciting finds and DIY projects that I've attempted, but I also plan on it not becoming anything serious. Mainly because I already have a hard time pulling myself away from blogs, but also because I recognize that there are countless blogs out there and mine will most likely not be original enough to keep up with them. But, I can still have fun with it, and it will be nice to now have an online identity for people to connect with when I post on their blogs. :)

It took me a while to settle on a name for my blog, but I think I found the right fit in "thrift seeking". It's slightly clever (in that it's a play on words for "thrill seeking"), slightly original (as I can't find any use of it elsewhere), and it really is what (I imagine) my blog will mostly be about: I love to find amazing deals and secondhand finds, and I want to encourage more people to embrace secondhand shopping as a stigma-free way of shopping responsibly: you CAN find/buy nice things without your money supporting unfair labor practices, and/or contributing to a culture of consumerism.

So with that said, there's the rationale behind my blog, and before long I will begin posting some actual content. :)