Raise the Living

I’ve been trying to add more plants to our house…I’ve probably mentioned that before.  Luckily, they melt right in as easy decor so you really can’t go wrong with placement or type or anything like that.  I don’t know if it’s just in the past few years or if it’s always been this way and I’ve just never noticed, but I don’t think there’s a picture in any popular home decor mag or blog these days that doesn’t have a plant in it.  Aka, it’s super popular to have plants growing in your casa in the twenty teens.  But, that’s not the main reason why I’m sneaking them in to our house.  Anthony, who has always been against plants in the house (because he thinks they attract bugs…is he right?  idk) all of a sudden changed his mind when he read an article about how they filter and clean the air in your home.  I love the natural look plants bring to a space so you can bet your booty I grabbed a few to bring home as quick as I could after his change of heart.  Certain plants clean your air more than others so I’ve been trying to be very intentional about the plants I buy – I really only want those that clean the air the most.  The big Peace Lily we have is one of those plants.  In the past few months, it’s been playing musical room, going from the kitchen to the laundry room and now to our bedroom – all rooms that get a good amount of natural light.  I think it’s parked in our room for good though and I’m popping in today to show you exactly what it’s parked in.

Several months ago, I came across a couple of big planters at Goodwill.  You could tell they were pretty old and had been well loved by the plants that had once inhabited them but, well, they were stuck together.  Like, one was nestled tightly and seemingly-permanently into the other.  But, they were both marked at $1.99.  I didn’t feel like paying for two planters (even if they were cheap) if I coudn’t get them apart though.  So, I pulled and wiggled and wiggled and pulled and even had a strong male employee try for me but the planters looked like they were stuck for good.  Thankfully, Goodwill let me pay for one even though I got two, since we both figured I’d have to break one to end up with one.  And then, I got home and my amazing, incredible, fantastic, what-a-guy husband separated the two planters without breakage!  Huzzah! 

You can kind of see one of the planters in this Instagram shot and here is the other:   

This is after I cleaned it – it had some sort of grainy film on it that I had to painstakingly scrub off – but before I used up some old spray paint to liven it up a little.  I thought I took pictures of the process but they are nowhere to be found.  Basically, I painted everything but that little indented part on the bottom navy blue (Krylon), taped off the bottom of that big top part, and then painted that indented part on the bottom gold (Rust Oleum).  You’ll see what I mean in a minute.

Post painting, I loved how the planter looked and I was just going to leave it thus and set it out on the screened-in patio somewhere but then I got this wild idea that would add to it even more…

LEGS!

The morning I painted this planter, I had the “morning off” and went pracing around a couple of Goodwills in town.  I came home empty-handed but, I did recollect seeing a table just like the one below and at the time not thinking a thing of it.


I really wasn’t concerned with the table itself but only with the legs!  The table legs plus my planter?  Yes, yes, yes.  You might be able to see where I’m going with this.  I think the table was something like $3 at Goodwill so, we’re talking $1 per leg.  Legs like these will run you back about $12 per leg at home stores.  And then on top of that, you have to buy the plates to screw each leg into so add another $2-3 per plate.  That’s all fine and dandy but I just needed a quick, cheap upgrade that I could pay for in one dollar bills.  So (sorry, I feel like I’m rambling a lot to get to the point of this post here), I sought a table like this out on a local resale sight and had one in my hands for $5 in less than 24 hours.  (PS, If you want to try this project for yourself which, trust me, you do, but you’re having a hard time finding a table like this, Bed, Bath, & Beyond sells one for $9.99 or they’re on  Amazon for just under $13.)

Okay, here’s how everything went down…err, up.  First, I grabbed the table, my planter, and our drill – the only tool needed.  (Don’t have a drill?  Grab a screwdriver.  It’ll be a tad more work for your hands and wrists but just as successful.)

Then I unscrewed the table legs from the plates on the underside of the table top and then took the screws out of the plates themselves to remove them from the top.

The plates needed to be screwed into the bottom of my planter so I turned the planter over and figured out where the plates needed to go.  I didn’t measure but just placed them in as much of an equilateral (equal-sided, remember middle school math?) triangle as I could manage. 

Then I grabbed my drill and the screws and screwed those plates right into the bottom of the planter. At first, I thought I’d need to glue a round piece of wood to the inside-bottom of the planter so the screws would have something to grip but I didn’t have that on hand so I just tried screwing them right into the plastic and it worked!  They didn’t budge!  The planter is made of fairly thick plastic that bends slightly so I’m not sure how that would work with anything thinner and/or more rigid but you could always drill holes first and go the wood-round-in-the-inside-bottom route if you wanted to be sure.

Here’s what the planter looked like from the inside once I had all the plates attached:

And this is what the planter looks like underneath:


And *drumroll please*, here’s high-and-mighty here in all her glory:
Eep!  Awesome, right?  The navy paint didn’t cover up the worn texture of the planter and I love that it’s not perfect in that way.  Also, the plant is just set inside the planter right now, still inside the planter it came in from Home Depot, but eventually I’ll get it planted in there properly.  I’ll just have to add some sort of protective barrier between the planter and soil since there’s no place for draining water to be collected. 

Budget-wise I paid $1 for the planter, used spray paint I already had, and the legs + plates from a $5 table (to which I still have the top which I’m thinking might be the perfect backing for a mirror?).  Six bucks.  Six.  And I whipped up this entire thing in about five minutes while the big kids napped and Gianna played at my feet.  So easy.  I toyed with painting the legs or dipping them in white or gold but in the end, just left them natural for simplicity’s sake.

The planter is slightly out of the picture here but this is what our master is looking like these days:
It’s a far cry from whence it came and I am/we are loving it.  It feels good to finally see progress in a room, not just the kind of progress that leaves you wanting more, but progress that you could call finished if you wanted to even though Lord knows you have more up your sleeve.  I swoon everytime I walk past our room.  The biggest recent addition is that incredible rug.  It’s this rug but (and don’t hate me) BUT I got it a few weeks ago at Dirt Cheap for TWENTY DOLLARS.  I spent almost a week scrubbing it clean because the edges were super dirty – it was way too big for the table they had it on in the store (it’s a 9 x 12) and so the edges were getting walked on by customers.  White rug + a thousand dirty shoes = you get the point.  With the exception of a few spots here and there, I got it clean and laid it down all by my determined-lonesome last week.  Someone asked me after I debuted it in an Instastory how I cleaned it and you’d laugh if you’d seen me.  Anthony helped me roll it up partially, place the rolled part on the arms of four of our outdoor chairs, lay the unrolled edge over the backs of the chairs, and scrub that part like mad with laundry detergent, Clorox 2, and Resolve.  After scrubbing, I sprayed the soap off the edge with the hose, took the shop-vac to it to get out most of the water, and let it hang outside to dry before unrolling and rerolling to clean another edge.  When I die, my tombstone will read “Here’s lies the woman who was determined to make something out of not much, no matter what it took.”  But really, the rug is amazing.  It’s the most plush, soft rug we’ve ever owned and the kids just go into our room now to lay on it.  No joke.  If I had more than a hundred bucks to spend on a rug, I might spend it on this one.  It’s worth every penny.  Oh and can we talk about how much a rug can elevate a room, even when that room is carpeted?  I am and will always be a huge proponet of layers and this is no different.  Just because a room has carpet doesn’t mean it doesn’t need a nice rug to take the decor level up a notch.  This is especially true when your carpeting is old and worn, like ours.  Rugs are staples as far as home decor goes, in my opinion.  Elsewhere…the artwork on the wall to the left of the bed is the start of some homemade art that is very unfinished (you probably noticed) and the medallions above the bed are these that I also found at Dirt Cheap.  I still kinda want to paint the nightstands but that’s on the backburner.  There are more furniture pieces in our room that need a coat of paint but I’ll get to them eventually too.  And of course, you’ll read about it.  :)

Let’s backtrack to that three-legged table though, shall we?  I’ve never found them appealing until I needed one.  Now I see them in a whole new light.  I love the simplicty of them and I think if you just added some paint or texture to them, you could make them showstoppers.  I mean, look at these by Antti Pulli!  The colors!  How cute would they be in a kids room as nightstands?!  My friend Chelsea also covered the top of one with marble contact paper and it looks incredible!  These things are littered in thrift stores around here and hopefully there too so go grab yourself one or a couple and make some cute side tables for uber cheap!

That’s all I’ve got folks!  It’s amazing how much slower things get done with a fourth kid around.  But, we’re working on a few things ‘round here like the kids’ bathroom and some light fixtures that I hope to write about soon-ish! 

Have a great weekend! 

.           .           .

*affiliate links to items we purchased or items similar to those we purchased are included in this post