DIY Life

In my humble opinion, upholstered furniture looks better without the anchoring wall of fabric known as the skirt. More often than not, skirts are cut and hemmed too short anyway. Unless the legs are downright hideous, their presence adds an element which becomes a part of the overall design, rather than something attached to it.

Complete removal of a skirt can get tricky, but ReadyMade happened across a chair update project on The Brick House blog that opens up all sorts of vintage chair possibilities.

The blogger transformed this unimpressive gold 1970s chair into a retro gem by altering the skirt in order to show off those modern legs. Find out more after the break.

Today's New York Times features an article about exhausted travelers catching sleep while stuck at airports. One enterprising gentleman, Frank Giotto, is even selling an airport camping kit. The "Mini Motel" includes a tiny one-person tent, air mattress, pillow, sheet, alarm clock and eye shades, plus some other extras.

So... how do you fall asleep in an airport? (Assuming the Mini Motel is nowhere to be found.) An awesome list of tips can be found at The Budget Traveller's [sic] Guide to Sleeping in Airports. Top tip: bring an inflatable pool raft so you can spread out on the floor in comfort... if security will allow it. It's cheaper and lighter than a regular air mattress.

My husband and I have a habit of picking up furniture and other stuff that ends up at the end of someone's driveway. What one person thinks of as trash, we happen to think it is an ugly treasure that can easily be converted into something useful and beautiful.

Salvaging is just as nice as shopping at the thrift store, except it is free, since someone put it out for the trash. Over on Craftster, Sharon S. made a bench built for two from two beat up chairs and a headboard she managed to salvage. She cut the rickety chairs apart and used them for each end of the bench. The back of the bench is the headboard.

Although she doesn't really have any instructions on how to make the chair bench, or what hardware she used, Sharon's project is genius and a perfect way to salvage old chairs and a headboard that otherwise might be adding to an already clogged landfill.

While I was working on another post, this double-desk project, a workspace for two, caught my eye. A bookshelf with file baskets hung on its side separates two desk surfaces. The overall effect is like those library study carrel tables that you may have used in high school or college. You can download the instructions for the Two's Company desks at DIY Ideas.

Not much is ever really new. If you like this project, check out Christopher Lowell's wonderful book Seven Layers of Organization, which has several similar desks built with bookshelves and doors. (Why a door? Because they're commonly available, usually pretty inexpensive, and the hole for the doorknob is perfect for wrangling the cords and wires that proliferate at the back of most desks.)

The May/June 2007 issue of Blueprint also had a pair of desks which were placed back-to-back, as these were, but with a sheet of colored Plexiglas between them. This set-up is perfect for a shared home office, or for siblings who have to share a bedroom. If you'd prefer to use the Plexiglas, it shouldn't cost too much more than a sturdy bookshelf. It should be the same width as both desks, 28" or so taller than the desks' writing surface, and should be 1/4" thick with polished edges.

Clicking through the other ideas in the DIY Ideas: Get To Work gallery, you will see an artist's studio that uses shelving with standards/anchors and brackets, as well as hanging shoe bags. There's also a basic desk whose top has been livened up with rectangles of peel-and-stick vinyl floor tile, and some ideas to make your home office more relaxing.

[via Apartment Therapy]

Four or five years ago, one of my art-major college friends decided to make over her desk chair. While she'd bought it new, it was an inexpensive standard task chair, the kind you see at any number of student desks, and she'd had it for years. She put tropical fabric on the seat and gave it a grass skirt. Instant luau!

Similar in spirit is Goodwill Hunting, a thrift-store chair makeover from Curbly's ModHomeEcTeacher. The chair itself cost less than $10, and was covered with about a yard of fabric. All you have to do is disassemble any seat pads, trace a pattern for the new coverings, attach the new fabric (and a scrap fabric for areas that aren't visible), and reassemble the chair. Grass skirts are optional.

Although there are a wealth of cool prints out there, this will probably be more durable if you do it with upholstery fabric or canvas or something equally heavy (a lot of online fabric shops currently have really cute Japanese canvas prints that sell for about $16-20 per yard). The procedure requires some tool savvy and common sense, so I'm happy to see that the author of the tutorial did not skimp on safety warnings.

[Thanks, Ryan!]