Potential

I have two upcoming projects that I want to consult with you, my reading public, about. The first and simpler one, concerns chairs.

We were lucky enough to find two used chairs for sale that looked like they were made for our bedroom. In fact, they match so well it's a little spooky. The first doesn't need any work whatsoever. D has been using it for a night table since we have yet to find ones we like:

The second one, which one kitty seems to have adopted as his new favorite chair, is beautiful, but has traditional dark wood legs that don't go with our furniture at all:

Project one is to fix that. (I know I know, we are possibly going to ruin a beautiful heirloom wing-back chair. But I promise it will look nice...) I understand the principles of painting wood though I haven't really tried it. We are going to sand the legs, prime them, and paint them with the blue paint we used in the closet. Then lightly sand again to get a more distressed look. At least that's the plan so far. We won't be getting to it until probably early June, which gives you plenty of time to provide your input. Leave us comments, please!

Project two is to build a craft area for me. Now that we're about to clear some space in the office, I have a free wall and plan to use it to store all of my random artsy things--mostly yarn and knitting needles but also residual products from past hobbies like beads, colored pencils, paints, charcoal, and stamp pads. (The wall in question is still a mess so no pictures yet.) This page has a lot of good suggestions but I want more! Since all of the furniture in the office is "antique stain" finished Ikea pine, I'd prefer to keep it that way (well, except for my steamer trunk of yarn--gotta keep the moths out). I'm leaning towards buying this piece, since it has so many cubbies:

I thought I might put the steamer trunk on top of a bench or media center that is flat on top but has drawers on the bottom, for additional storage. Again, ideas are welcome!