Its the Simple Things

If you are ever in the north Texas area, you must visit 

Simple Things Furniture Company.

They are re-opening their store this week

in a brand new location and it is amazing!

I asked them if I could share the news and

some of the pictures here on my blog because 

you just have to see this place.

This isn't just a regular furniture and home decor store 

where you walk in to see the merchandise.

It's an experience. 

   How many stores do you go into and actually marvel at the walls of the building or notice the ceiling and the floors.  

The place is a beautiful structure.  

You'll want to move right in. 

Can someone put these floors in my house please?

Once you get past the stunning architecture of the building

 (which they created from a generic warehouse space),

get ready for your jaw to drop.

Here are some pictures of inside Simple Things.

Those seltzer bottles are not just any bottles.

See the tag?  It says Joe T. Garcia's which 

is a restaurant icon around here. How cool.

This is so me.  Love the pop of red!

Not only will you want to buy everything,

but you will be inspired with decorating ideas.

I know.  Your jaw dropped.

Close your mouth before you drool.

Are you wanting more?

Get ready to blow up your Pinterest account.

Click here to visit their blog and see more pictures

of how they built this store and more of what is inside.

Better yet, visit them at 

7401 W Vickery

in Fort Worth, Texas.

What do you think?  Are you in love with this place?

What did you pin?

What a fun day!

After reading about "Antique Alley" over at The Virginia House blog, my pal Jennie and I decided to head on over today.  I was looking specifically for a couple of things to finish off my new sunroom/craftroom (yep, I said "finish" as in it will be finished after I find one last item). I was looking specifically for some sort of chair or stool or something to sit on at my new craft table.  The barstools I had were too tall and I really didn't want to cut them down and any spare chairs I had were too short. So, we spent part of day today driving the farm road, stopping at Whipp Farm where there were a lot of vendors and looking at some great things.   Jennie found a huge old Pre-World War 2 globe to add to her collection in her home office.  We ate some great Philly cheesesteak sandwiches and homemade lemonade.  We saw lots of goodies but really couldn't find what I was looking for...until Jennie spotted this!!!!

It's the perfect stool for the room.

It's got my number on it!

How perfect is that?  But wait, there's more!

Guess who I bought it from?

Jillian at The Virginia House.  Yep, she had a great vendor booth.  She was my first fellow blogger to meet in person and we chatted for a few minutes.  She was so nice and pointed out another vendor who had more great stuff.  As we left and I was carrying my new stool back to our car, we passed that other vendor who stopped me by yelling "there goes my stool with the 3 on it!"  She said she was going to back at the end of the day and buy it for herself if it hadn't sold.  It did sell...to me...and now....it's in my sunroom which is now FINISHED!  As they say here in Texas, "Yeehaw!"  (I actually never say that myself but I am glad I found that stool and glad that pain of a room is done)

Oh yeah, I also picked up this cutie at Antique Alley:

It's a huge galvanized tool box/carrier thingy and it's awesome.  It is huge and it was only 20 bucks. It already has a place too in the sunroom and I'll post the finished room tomorrow!

It was great meeting you "Virginia House" and thanks for the tip to Antique Alley.  We'll be back in April.

old...and sunroom storage projects

Funky Junk Donna's themed link party this week is "old" and I really want to participate.  I haven't been able to the last couple of weeks and this theme is right up my alley.  I have so much "old" around my house and in my garage and in my garden...everything we have is "old" and I can't possible link it all up.  So, I'm combining two things into one (I think they call that 'killing two birds with one stone' but since I love birds and can't kill anything, we won't call that).  

If you've followed this blog, you know I've been redoing my sunroom into a project room.  I've complete a few projects and now I need storage for the room to hold so much junk I use for all my projects; everything from craft supplies to my new electric nail/staple gun.  So, here are two OLD things that I'm going to freshen up and use for my storage.

Here they are:

First up are these drawers I gave you a peek at in a previous post.  There are two and they are slightly different.  This one below has smaller drawers (and wait until you see them close up!).

This one has square drawers and larger drawers on the bottom.

See the little holes in the corners?  They aren't actually holes but indentions so one set can sit nice and tight on top of the other.

On the corner of this one you can see a raised spot that would fit snugly in one of those indentions.

Here are the drawers close up.  They are all galvanized metal drawers.  If you like galvanized like I do, isn't that awesome?

Here's a close up of the label slots and handles.

We are definitely keeping these.  So, here's the plan for these drawers.  I'm going to wipe them down and seal. That's it.  I'm keeping them as is.  I like the dark wood in the otherwise neutral room.  I may keep some of the labels already on some of the drawers because my dad made them.  Others will be replaced with some simple labels.

These drawers came from my dad's manufacturing jewelry shop.  My uncle originally owned the company and my dad worked there. When my uncle retired, he gave the company to my dad.  These drawers were there from the beginning.  They held many of the jewelry supplies (they called them "findings").  When my dad retired, he brought these home.  My mom loved them but never really used them in her house.  They stayed in the garage and housed some of my dad's tools along with some of the old jewelry stuff.  Some of those drawers still have all of that old stuff in them.  I can't wait for these to be finished and ready to use.  They should be done this weekend.

Here's the other old thing we're going to use for storage. This was in my parents' garage for as long as I can remember.  I think it might have been my grandmother's before that.  We called it a cedar closet. Originally, it was just cedar with no finish.  Now, I like the function of cedar, but not the look.

The red crackle finish is fake.  When my parents gave us this to use in our son's nursery, we painted it mustard, applied crackle medium and then painted barn red.  Looks pretty good huh?  Not really.  There are a lot of oops places.

These are cute though.  We don't have the key unfortunately.

It has shelves in it and a rod for hanging things.  The shelves have been covered in ticking. I think I'll leave them that way.  You can see the cedar in it's original state inside.

Here is the first oops picture.  This was our first and last attempt at crackle.

See the glops of paint?  Yucky.  I'm not sure why the color is off in this picture; sorry.

Last oops pic.  See, it's not that cute.  So here's the plan for this little piece.  I'm going to sand down the oops places.  Then, I'm going to paint it the same blue-gray color as the project table.  Donna at Funky Junk mentioned in her post that skipping some of the big time prep like sanding down pieces before painting or staining can take way the effect we are usually trying to achieve which is having pieces look old.  I've mentioned before that I often don't prep things.  I just paint or stain over it so the piece retains it's character and age.  This cedar closet will look like an old cedar closet with a fresh coat of paint that has been painted over layers of old paint.  It should chip and wear nicely so some of that red may eventually peek through.  Perfect.

I'm off to get started on these things.  I should post some "afters" later in the week.