House tour: living room, part 3

Today I'm focusing on one of the living room walls.


If you're wondering why we put chairs in front of the door, it's because in the year and a half we've lived in this house, I have not once actually opened it. The door we come in and out of is in the kitchen. That and we had nowhere else to put them.


We bought these movie theater seats from the Rialto Theatre in Ridgefield Park, NJ, when they were (sadly) going out of business. It was an interesting old theater that I frequented when I was staying with my mother, who lives within walking distance of the place. The seats were stained and overall not in the best condition so we figured "no problem, we'll just reupholster them"--which turned out to be much more difficult of an endeavor than I had thought. The seat backs were no problem--just a simple stapling job. But when we tore open the actual seat cushions, we discovered that real reupholstery involves hay (I had no idea that was what was inside chairs!), burlap, and some actual sewing. In the end they came out all right, but not a professional job by any means.



My favorite part of the chairs are the numbers on the sides.


The narrow wall section between the window and the door was looking a little boring to me so I bought some clear plastic light switch plates (much like this one) and printed out some Charley Harper illustrations to put inside them.



I bought this record cabinet at Room Service in Austin (embarrassingly, it was in better condition when I purchased it--the dings and scratches all occurred in the move). While it's too small to store all of my LPs, it's perfect for a few boxes of 45s.



While I don't speak French, I loved the cover of the book on the left so much that I bought it anyway. The one on the right is a journal made from an old book cover, and was purchased at the Renegade Craft Fair last year from Ex Libris Anonymous.


I've been buying a lot of old 60s paperbacks lately, many of them for the covers alone. As for the jack paperweight, I had been avidly seeking one of these out for awhile, but all of the ones I'd seen on eBay were going for more than I wanted to spend. Naturally, I was pretty happy to find one in a store in Maine for $6.



Dave bought me this guy for Christmas a few years ago. He is definitely the cutest flesh-eating virus you'll ever meet.


I made the zebra out of a pair of socks. You can find out how to make him in this book.


This puzzle was pretty difficult, since most of the pieces are just shades of gray or black. After discovering that it was more or less the exact size of the top of my record cabinet, we decided just to leave it on there and buy a piece of glass to put on top. I usually put a book over the words "Blow Job" when my mother comes by (and hope she never decides to pick it up).