Sometimes in life, things just magically come together and work out perfectly. Sometimes that happens with my beloved Craigslist. This is my story:
I have a daily CL search ritual every morning - checking first for items that we currently need in our house, but always searching "Pottery" and "Crate"...because let's face it, who doesn't want to own a cheap Pottery Barn or Crate and Barrel piece of furniture? Well, this particular morning I came across a fifty five dollar C&B television/media console.
I've never really done an entire post on our living room (just bits and pieces here and here), but we had the world's ugliest, most college-y TV stand known to man. It was black, particle-board, square with CD storage in the front. Yes, I said compact.disc.storage. You can baaaarely see it in this 'before' photo below:
It was the one item in our living room that was keeping it from being 'done'. We had tried to find a replacement a while back, but our wish-list was too detailed and the perfect piece never appeared on Craigslist. Since canceling cable over a year ago, we've had an old laptop permanently living in the console and we needed to make sure that whatever we purchased was going to work with that. So...this CL piece was affordable, in good condition and 4 miles from my office. Even better? My friend let me use her Subaru Outback to transport this random purchase. The people selling it said they would be home around my lunch hour, so Sarah, Devon and I set off on our adventure to pick it up. The unit fit perfectly in the back of her car and, for the price, was in excellent condition (there were a few teeny, tiny scratches on the front that a stain pen could fix in seconds). Ready to see it in our living room?
How perfect does that fit? It matches our furniture/decor, it holds the laptop, DVD player and all our movies. I am practically obsessed with it. Brian and I have been coming home from work the past few days and just marveling at how (5 years later) our living room has finally come full circle.
We are also in the process of turning our downstairs guest room into a music room (more on that later), so the record player and crates of records have found a new home. I was finally able to use this old wine barrel (that was found in my grandparent's Queens basement almost 40 years ago) as a side table and we hung up a painting I scored for twenty dollars at an estate sale last month.
Ignore my feeble table-styling attempt - I need to find some smaller books and a candle-holder. The print is of the Old North Church in Boston and I loved the colors and style. I actually bought it without showing Brian first and turns out he loves it! The black frame is not my favorite, but it works for now and hopefully in the future I can either spray paint it brown or just get it re-framed.
We are also in the process of turning our downstairs guest room into a music room (more on that later), so the record player and crates of records have found a new home. I was finally able to use this old wine barrel (that was found in my grandparent's Queens basement almost 40 years ago) as a side table and we hung up a painting I scored for twenty dollars at an estate sale last month.
Ignore my feeble table-styling attempt - I need to find some smaller books and a candle-holder. The print is of the Old North Church in Boston and I loved the colors and style. I actually bought it without showing Brian first and turns out he loves it! The black frame is not my favorite, but it works for now and hopefully in the future I can either spray paint it brown or just get it re-framed.
