Plaster & Disaster

We always like bringing you guys in on our favorite “DIY games,” whether that is trying to figure out whether stuff we see on craigslist is great or terrible, predicting how much weird stuff should cost at a flea market like Brimfield, or just griping about everything that’s wrong with our houses. However, we were out looking at stuff at a consignment store the other day and realized that we haven’t yet involved you in one of our most common and most simple games: discussing whether the stuff we see at a consignment store is a good deal or not.

Consignment stores are tricky, stuffed as they are with painted serving platters and blocky wood tables made in the 1990s. If you’re used to flea markets and thrift stores, its easy to be seduced by the plethora of reasonably clean, reasonably sturdy, and reasonably priced items. But we’re not after reasonable: we’re after awesome pieces and great deals.

We thought it would be fun if you helped us spot them! We’ve collected a variety of pieces at different price points – give us your opinion on which are the best deals at the price:

If you had $25 to spend at a consignment store…

If you had $25 to spend at this particular consignment store, you could buy a lot. Consignment stores are built on the $25 price point! One of the first deals we noticed was this cool wooden piece, billed as a planter but probably good for holding blankets or magazines in a living room.

You could also get a really nice chair – sturdy, clean, and with a modern style that would fit in with a lot of different tastes. This would be good at a desk or as an extra chair in the living room.

You could also get these adorable elephant book ends. Brass animals never go out of style!

Finally, and we feel bad even including it since it is obviously a STEAL and will throw off the voting, you could get this demonic Nixon statue. Just in time for Halloween!

So what would you buy?

If you had $80 to spend at a consignment store…

$80 doesn’t sound like the most obvious price point for us to pick, but there were some amazing deals! For example, you could get this little side-table/chest, with beautiful wood, nice metal details, and tons of storage.

There was also this simple but good quality side table, with that MCM style that is so popular.

Finally, you could get this intricate wall lamp, which could probably be sold by anthropologie for like $1500.

So what would you buy with $80?

If you had $150 to spend at a consignment store…

Getting into more serious prices, you can start getting some serious stuff, like this media cabinet/bookshelf. It has simple lines and a vaguely MCM vibe, and the dark glass would be great for keeping unsightly things like a small TV out of sight when not in use.

You could also get these high quality office cabinets, with room for supplies and files. They’d be great for kids/teens, but also look great in a modern grown-up office.

Speaking of stuff that would be great for both adults or kids, this vanity has real mother-of-pearl inlay in a sweet pattern. How adorable for a little kid’s room, and $150 isn’t that much for such a substantial piece!

Finally, you could have a lamp made out of cardboard. OK, that doesn’t sound awesome, but it clearly is.

So what would you buy?

If you had $250 to spend at a consignment store…

$250 will go a really, really long way at a store like this, even getting you this attractive and clean looking sofa. It would look great in a living room, but is also causal enough to work for a porch or a sunroom. And does its style remind you of anything that the tiny bloggers may have made lately?

(We checked, and the cushions weren’t made out of wood… I guess we’re still waiting for that trend to catch on #looksovercomfort.)

You could also get this intricately carved and freshly reupholstered chair. We’re not sure we would have picked that exact fabric, but its awesome in a more-is-more kind of way.

This glass bookshelf was also available, with beautiful old wood and great storage. The cloth would easily come off, and the glass could either be kept clear or frosted. It has a similar feel to those barrister bookcases, but at a price a reasonable person can actually afford!

So what would you buy?

If you had $300 to spend at a consignment store…

Finally, with $300 to spend, you’re the elite 1% of consignment store shoppers and the best stuff is available to you. You could get a sleek, mod, teal chair, which would have looked awesome in Sage’s living room if she had that kind of money to spend that day.

You could also get a display table with beautiful wood grain that folds out into a desk with hidden storage. How cool is that?

Which would you buy?

So what did we think was the best deal? Did we actually buy anything?

There were a lot of tempting pieces (like that woven lamp and glass covered bookself), but if you know us at all, you’d easily be able to predict that the elephant bookends came right home with us.

What do you think? Did you agree with the consensus, or feel way off? Were you picking on personal style or what you thought was the best objective deal?

As long-time readers well know, for the last five years my grate situation has not been great.

I’ve had great expectations for solving this situation over the years, but ~~I hadn’t used up all the grate-related jokes I could think of~~ nothing seemed to work, so I am forced to write another post.

Fortunately, I think I have finally solved this problem.

To quickly recap for the new kids: When we first bought our house and did a partial renovation, we removed all the old, ugly wall grates which had been painted onto the walls.

Wall Grate Disaster Confessional - The Grates Before - Plaster & Disaster

Believe it or not, the above photo (minus the arrows) was actually featured on Apartment Therapy. Not what I expected when I took it, for sure!

Replacing wall grates shouldn’t be a big deal. However, we also added new, much more substantive baseboards throughout much of the house, which ran up to or in some cases over the bottom of the duct. That meant that standard grates, which are sized to the duct and then have a lip out over the wall, wouldn’t fit on, and I certainly didn’t want to cut into the baseboard to make them fit.

This has been driving me crazy, and not just because stuff can get dropped down them and lost forever (which fortunately only happened once). The open holes make even mostly-finished rooms look like construction zones, and I’ve tried and given up on fixing this several times.

The most recent attempt involved buying a return air grille and slapping it over the hole, which seemed like a reasonable idea. However, the various standard sizes and the fact that it needs to sit over the baseboard and not centered over the hole left patches of wall showing like this:

No more!

The solution I’ve found certainly isn’t what I’d call riveting blog content. However, this was a big enough issue for me that I have to imagine there is someone out there who will benefit from this solution. You all have also heard me complain about this for long enough that it may be a relief to know it is fixed!

How to Put a Wall Register Over a Non-Standard Vent

The breakthrough happened when I decided I was willing to spend a little more money on full-on wall grates (as opposed to grilles – I’ve found they come in a wider variety of sizes) AND when I decided I would just jump in and stick the darn things on the walls via whatever means necessary.

I shopped around for a style that I liked that had dimensions that would correctly cover the holes in my wall. Unlike conventional register shopping where you buy based on the inside dimensions of your duct, I looked at the overall dimensions and just made sure I had enough overhang to attach it to the wall but not so much that the wall would show through the open area. Some places had these dimensions clearly spelled out, but in some places I had to look for the overhang measurement and add it on, or just guess.

I finally picked out a bunch that I was hopeful would work from Signature Hardware. They were a little more expensive than the ones at places like Home Depot, but I liked the style and they match another that I already have.

While they were the right size to cover the hole, they wouldn’t fit on with the louvers on the back. It felt a little silly to immediately disassemble and discard half of the product I’d just bought, but I did what I had to do.

This left me with a “correctly” sized grate, but one that had inconvenient metal bits sticking out of the back (that used to hold the louvres on) which interfered with it laying flat against the wall.

They were too tough to flatten with a hammer, so I used my dremel with a metal cutting attachment to cut them off:

Unfortunately, that wasn’t the only challenge to overcome with this project. The grates are made to be held up by pressing against the inside of the duct, which I could no longer do since I had removed the entire back part of the product.

I first thought I could get the wall grate to stay up using sticky tack – yes, that stuff that held posters to the wall of your college dorm. I could not. It held it up for a little while, and then would fall off the wall randomly, creating a loud clang that makes you think someone just broke a window to rob you in the middle of the night.

I was left with no choice but to make holes in my new expensive grates.

Using a small bit suitable for cutting metal, I drilled small holes in the top two corners of each grate, and then attached them to the wall using small nails.

I then used ORB spray paint (sprayed onto a disposable lid, and then dabbed on with a craft brush) to cover over the silver of the nail so it would blend in with the grate.

From a distance, you really can’t tell!

I can’t even describe what a big difference this makes in my house. Not only are we no longer scared of losing cherished items into our walls, but each room looks a lot more finished and polished.

Almost like a place that adults live!

It’s hard to believe this small issue threw me for so long, but I’m thrilled to have it done. And I’m even more proud to have made it all the way through this post without once bringing up cheese graters!