Deal of the Year & Patio Table Update

We were at Lowe's over the weekend picking up a few things for the house, when I saw this chandelier setting on one of the clearance tables. It was marked down from $159 to 50% off, then marked to $25.00 and lastly to $5.00! At first glance it looked terrible, it had these little lampshades on each bulb adorned with a bright green ribbon and fake roses. They looked entirely out of place. It also had a nice layer of dust on it from hanging in the store as a display model. Upon closer inspection, it was easy to see that the shades were just clipped onto the light bulbs and could be taken off in 2 seconds. After removing them, it turns out its actually a nice looking chandelier that we couldn't pass up for $5.00! The funny part is now the shades we hated so much are hanging on a chandelier in my mom's house! They actually look completely different when they MATCH the light fixture!


The holiday weekend turned out to be incredibly hot and sunny. Nice weather, but standing in full sun working on the patio table turned out to be not as much fun as I had hoped. I wasn't quite able to get it finished, but I'm not too far off now. In this pic, the outside border is complete and I'm working on my layout for the slate pieces to fill in the rest of the field.


Getting some of the cuts made and piecing it all together. The little white "X"'s are plastic spacers to help me keep all my joints at 1/4" wide.


While I was working on the table, the kids were working on their "sculptures", they would barter over who got which scrap piece. On the top is Miles, Zander's is below.

I hope everyone had a good Memorial Weekend!

Patio Table

Here is yet another project I started. Fixing the patio table, actually more like rebuilding. What happened was last fall we bought a new glass top table. A couple weeks later after a really windy night, we awoke to see the deck covered in shattered glass. I had a pic of it, but can't find it now. So anyway, instead of buying a new table, I decided to just build a new top for it. I started with a sheet of 3/4" thick OSB cut to size, then added some 1"x2" edge boards.

Here's where I left off tonight, the table is covered in backer board, and I started cutting the tile and laying it out. The tan is a travertine marble, and the green is just a porcelain tile that matches the chairs. Tomorrow (maybe) I will start cutting the tile that goes around the star to cover the rest of the table, it is a darker brown slate.