I’ve been looking for a round side table and I think I’ve narrowed it down. I’ve had my eye on the Pebble Side Table from West Elm for a while:

It’s indoor/outdoor and I think it could be cool in the garden too. I think it’s the same one I spotted in Lonny:

The other one that I like a lot is the Bolero Accent Table from Crate and Barrel:

What I like about both of these is how sculptural they are. But I can’t seem to make up my mind. (Oh, really? How unlike me.) What do you think?

I’ve gathered some other round tables that I’ve been considering in my monthly Ideabook for Houzz:

If you’ve seen any other round side tables that you think I might like, do tell!

 

I picked up this Napoleon III settee last week at Provenance. What can I say? It had me at “19th century.” As you can see, it needs reupholstering very badly and it’s a little rickety (you would be too if you were 150 years old!) but nothing that the upholsterer can’t fix.

So the fun (and agony) begins. Do I want to paint it? If so, what color? Or maybe I should just strip the wood? What fabric do I want to use? Do I want a pattern? Or do I want it solid? And on and on and on ……

One thought is to use that blue velvet fabric I still have. It would look not exactly but something like this one from Anthropologie I posted a while back:

Or this one from one of my old moodboards:

And remember this one I posted last year:

Again, not exactly the same but pretty close. Isn’t this lavender gorgeous – especially with all the orange? Anyway, these are just a couple of ideas. There are many more. As usual!

I want to thank everyone who came out to ADAC yesterday. It was great meeting so many of you and seeing old friends too. (Hi, Terry!)

Have a good weekend, guys and I’ll see you Monday. And don’t miss out on the Katie Ridder Rooms book giveaway. It ends tomorrow at 6:00 PM EST.

Do you remember this wingback chair I bought last year for the family room? Well, after being moved around the house a few times, it’s back in the family room.

It’s a perfectly nice chair but it’s feeling a little too bland to me these days. I’m feeling something more like this:

or these which I’m sure you’ve all seen at Anthropolgie:

I’m also still really drawn to pink. How hot is this pink wingback:

But as much as I want a really funky chair, none of this is likely to happen because 1) I’m a huge chicken so I’ll never be able to commit to a pattern or a color; and 2) I already upholstered two chairs in hot pink once and promptly traded them so that’s probably not a good choice.

So I think I’m just going to go with a good old white slipcovered armchair to go with the white slipcovered sofa in there – maybe like the ones I posted recently:

In other words, the complete opposite of what I started out thinking. Yup, just another day chez FTRB!

Have a great weekend guys and I’ll see you back here on Monday. If you’re in the hood, don’t forget to RSVP for Digital Atlanta’s Design Day coming up next Thursday. Come and talk to me about blogging! Fun! You can also RSVP through ADAC if you’re registered there.

(Photos:1.FROM THE RIGHT BANK 2.Abigail Ahern 3-4.Atlanta Homes & Lifestyles 5.Skona Hem 6.Vogue)

I’ve been wanting a dresser for the guest room and when I was out and about last week, I came upon this pretty little dresser at a local junk/antique shop.

Solid wood, dovetailed drawers, drawer dividers – all in all, a good quality piece. The slightly distressed black finish is nice too but I’m thinking about painting it. It’s going to share space with my crazy elephant chair. Remember her?

I’m really loving the color coral right now and the dresser could be really cute in a shade that picks up the corals in the chair. Here are some examples of coral dressers I found:

They’re not the same style but you get the idea. There are so many colors in the pattern that I could go a number of different ways. Even the black would work as is. But since it’s the guest room and I don’t have to see it everyday I feel like being more adventurous. Add it to the list of projects …..

By the way, I’ve been forgetting to mention that if you read FTRB through a reader, I gave the blog a small makeover a few weeks ago so I’d love for you to click over to the site and check it out. Any feedback would be appreciated too. Thanks!

(Photos:grainy iphone pics 1-2.FROM THE RIGHT BANK 3.1st Dibs 4.Unknown 5.Domino)

Just before I left for Europe, I went out to lunch with some friends and the next thing I know, I was coming home with a chair. How does that even happen? I don’t know. Bad influences, I think. (You know who you are!) It’s kind of a kooky chair, I know, but I just couldn’t resist the pattern (elephants!) and the colors. It’s also super comfortable. One of the Frenchies seems to think it’s his new bed. Anyway, I’ve never seen this pattern before and I’m really curious. Do any of you savvy people recognize it?

Hmmmmm. I guess giving oneself a two-month deadline then going away for most of said two months wasn’t a very well thought out plan. Yup, it’s August 1 and there’s been basically no progress on that pesky To Do List. Well, I’m home for a few weeks so I’l just keep on keepin’ on and hope for a more productive month this month.

First up, two more reupholstering projects. (I swear I’m almost done with reupholstering!) Remember when I was all set to take this settee in for a makeover in blue?

Well before I got around to it, I stumbled on this fabric and fell in love (I seem to do that a lot, don’t I?)

I wasn’t sure what I would use it for but I brought it home anyway because that’s what hoarders resourceful people do. Then this weekend, I thought, “Why not try it out on the settee?”

That was it! The only thing I can’t decide on is whether to paint the wood. If I were to paint it, I would paint it white.

So what am I going to do with the blue fabric I was going to use on it? As luck would have it, it actually looks really good on the antique Louis settee that I’ve also been wanting to reupholster:

This type of furniture always look good with velvets. But then there’s that linen burlap I also got recently:

I love how it looks on it too.

So lots of decisions need to be made. Would you like to weigh in?

Like with the chairs I posted yesterday, I’ve gone through a myriad fabric choices for my dining room chairs. One of my top picks as of this minute is Alan Campbell’s Zigzag.

Some call it chevron. Some call it zigzag. I call it a classic – even if it has been somewhat overused in recent years.

And notice how similar it is to the zebra from yesterday’s post?

I tend to go back to certain things over and over and that’s when I know it’s true love and not just a crush.

Even if I decide to pull the trigger, there’s the whole question of which colorway to use so I’m not even close to making any decisions.

But it’s fun to look at all the options in the meantime!

(Photos: Quadrille)

After about a million ideas for paint colors and fabrics, here they are:

In case you somehow missed all the prior posts about these chairs, I I started here:

and in the end decided to not use any paint at all, leaving the wood as is and to go with this fabric:

I just love how they turned out! They’re neutral enough that I have options for using them in other rooms and different pillows to change them up now and then. (All of you who change your decor as much as I do know how important that is!)

I didn’t end up taking the settee in yet but that’s next so stay tuned.

I’ll say it again: reupholstering is so much fun!

(Photos: FTRB)

So I went shopping for burlap fabric to finally reupholster those green chairs of mine.

For those of you who asked about different types of burlap, for any furniture that you’re actually going to be sitting on, you don’t want to use pure burlap like grain sacks because they tend to shed and are scratchy and not very comfortable.  Instead, look for a blend with a good weight. I ended up getting this European linen burlap (at Lewis & Sheron) and it has that great texture I was going for but is also very smooth and soft.

It’ll look beautiful on those chairs, right? Right. But the story wouldn’t be interesting if I actually stuck with a plan, would it? Of course not. So I also got this:

I always love me some animal prints and this neutral one just jumped out at me. I brought it home and draped it on the chairs to see how it would look:

and I absolutely love it, especially against the dark wood! So as of this minute, I’m 99% sure I’m going with this. (I can use the burlap on something else.)

It’s to the upholsterer tomorrow! I’m also going to try to take the settee if it’ll fit in the car. Reupholstering. So much fun!

Have a great weekend, everyone!

(Photos: FTRB)

I’ve finally decided on a fabric to reupholster these two chairs:

….. and you may be surprised to hear that it’s burlap.

Burlap is one of those things that has been done to death the past couple of years and in general, there’s no faster way to turn me off of something. But, having said that, some things are just classics and they’re classics for good reason. I’ve always loved burlap for its texture and neutral hue and if I still love it now despite all the efforts of Restoration Hardware, the explosion of grain sacks covering everything and bloggers hating on it, I think it’s safe to say I always will.

I found a good photo of how the chairs will look:

The only thing I haven’t decided on is whether to paint the wood or not. At first, I wanted to paint them gold like the settee in the first photo but there is already a lot of gold in the living room where they will go so I decided against that.  But then again, I could use a mix of gold and white like this:

Or, my other thought was to paint them gray (naturally!), which would also look great with the burlap. (I’m leaning toward the gray as of this minute.)

(Photos: 1stdibs)

I forgot to add one item to the To Do List that I posted the other day.

Remember this settee?

Well, it needs reupholstering. I’ve been itching to do something in blue for the longest time so I got this blue Alcantara fabric for it:

I found the fabric on eBay! (Yup, still loving eBay!)

The blue is a little more navy in person and I think it’s going to look really great on this piece. So another item is ready for the upholsterer….. It’s always so exciting to send things off to the upholster. It’s like Christmas morning when they come back.

Have a great weekend everyone and I’ll see you Monday!

I bet you forgot all about this chair. I mean it’s been months since I found it then found fabric for it. It finally went to the upholsterer (along with the other pink chairs) and look at her now!  Quite an improvement over how it started out, don’t you think?

I decided it’s going in my office; it’s the perfect desk chair.

And I will now now stop recovering everything in pink …..

P.S. What’s up with Blogger? I tried to leave comments on all of your blogs yesterday and it wasn’t having it. I think you all need to switch to WordPress. Just sayin.

Sherry has been looking for a lucite coffee table. I, however, have not been looking for such table because I need another coffee table like ….. well, you know. So why do I now have one in my house?

A couple of weeks ago I saw a vintage 1960′s lucite table and thought it was perfect for her. Well, it turned out to be too long for her space but it was such a great piece – really solid, in nearly perfect condition and just gorgeous. So, of course, I just had to get it. Again, having no need for it, I had to remove the wooden coffee table in the family room to make room for it.

I’ve been liking it there but the more I look at it, the more I think it would be better used as a bench like these:

 

(Mine looks exactly like the one above – long, narrow and that thick.)

I don’t need another bench either but I don’t need a bench a little less than I don’t need a coffee table!  Make sense?!

(Photos: 1, 2)

Remember these chairs? Yup, they’re still waiting to be reupholstered. I finally decided to put them in the dining room and I wanted to lighten things up in there so I had been thinking white faux ostrich leather.

But sometimes a funny thing happens when you take forever to start on these projects.

They actually start to look good in their current state. For example, I just love these brass chairs with black suede/velvet upholstery.

Also, the black actually looks really good with the chairs in the dining room because of the black stripe in them:

(I’m mixing the chairs around a dark wooden table.)

The other color I’m considering is a rust like this:

The color scheme of the dining room would then be something like this:

The walls are a similar color. These are also the colors I’m using in the living room. (In case you didn’t know, this house is Billy Joel’s ex-wife Katie Lee Joel’s West Village Townhouse that recently sold for $11.65 million. You can read all about that here. Say what you will about her but the house is gorgeous!)

So what do you all think? Black or rust? (Even if I leave them black, I will reupholster them since the fabric is partially faded.)

(Photos: 1&4.FTRB 2.1st Dibs 3.Showplace 5.Decorpad 6.Curbed)

I talked about wanting a worn leather club chair here and here. I had a brown leather one in mind but I went into Bungalow a couple of weeks ago and kind of flipped when I saw this gray leather chair:

The leather was sooooooo pretty!  They also have this gray leather club chair which is more the shape I had in mind:

Gray leather. Let’s all just contemplate that for a while …..

 

One of the things on my scary to do list is to get the chair for the guest room reupholstered. I’ve been trying to decide on a fabric but for some reason I can’t stop thinking that pink would look really great. The problem, of course, is that pink will just not work with what I’ve got planned for that room.

These are not the same chair but very similar in style in style and finish. I could use the chair in a different room but I really don’t have any space for a pink chair.

See why nothing gets done around here? So many decisions, so little ability to make them …..

(Photos: via Apartment Therapy)

Don’t forget to enter the $100 CSN gift certificate giveaway!

A few weeks ago, I found this Milo Baughman chrome frame chair at an antique shop (I think its name is Antique Factory – in Chamblee). They were 100 smackers and that was a deal I just couldn’t pass up.

Then I saw this Manuel Canovas fabric which I had never seen before and it was love at first sight. It’s called Atlantis. Here’s a closer look so you can see the beautiful texture:

I think it would look amazing on the chrome frame, don’t you? It also comes in this lovely shade of lavender and you know how I’m feeling about lavender these days:

And remember these chairs?

They’re still waiting to be reupholstered and I think that fabric would look great on these too.

And if you follow me on Facebook (which I hope you do!), you saw that yesterday I bought these:

It’s hard to tell from the photo but they’re black velvet with brass frames. They were from an antique store called Decatur Estate and I have to thank Sherry because she was the one who found them and showed them to me then even drove me over there to get them!

I have no need for them and have no idea where I’m going to put them but I couldn’t resist, especially with everyone’s encouragement! (There were like 20 comments on Facebook, I couldn’t believe it!) I do have about a hundred ideas of how to re-do them though. And before you even ask, no I will not be doing any of this myself!

Finally, remember I was on the hunt for a fiddle leaf fig tree? A lot of people suggested Home Depot. They didn’t have any when I went last month but I popped in there to get some other stuff yesterday and they had these smaller ones for only $10 each. I’m told they grow very fast so I hope to have tall trees in no time. If I don’t kill them first, that is.

So I’d say it’s been a productive couple of weeks in the shopping department!

Have a great weekend, everyone and thanks for the really great discussions this week!

(Photos: From the Right Bank)

I’ve been thinking about getting a stool for the vanity in the bathroom for the longest time. I know I want it in white and I think I’ve finally decided on the style:

Mermaid Hut ($389)

Ballard Design ($233)

Williams-Sonoma ($795)

The first one is my favorite but I’m not sure it’s the one. (I may want a metal base.) Which one do you like? Have you seen any others that you think I might like?

I’ve been asking myself this question since we moved into our new house.

It’s not that we need a new sofa.

We actually have one sofa that’s not even being used.

But I would really like to replace the gray sofa which is in our family room with one of these.

I’ve blogged about my love for rolled arm sofas here and here.

The thing is the sofa I want to replace is only 4 years old and there is absolutely nothing wrong with it. For new readers, this is the couch I’m talking about as it used to sit in our old living room:

It’s well-made and would easily last many more years. So I feel kind of guilty about the whole thing. So what do you think? At one point is it okay to replace a perfectly good couch?

(Photos: 1.via Dress, Design, Decor 2.Notebook Mag 3.Domino 4.via Ill Seen, Ill Said 5.via My Favorite & My Best 6.Depadova 7.From the Right Bank)