Favorite Things: Furniture Repair

It's spring break for me and I'm working on a rather lengthy spring-cleaning list. One of the items on the list was furniture repair. My coffee and end tables have been the victims of a few scratches over the past couple of years. However! I've found a lovely cheap fix that actually works! All you need is the marker and a clean soft cloth. If you try this for yourself - make sure you immediately wipe the area you color to get rid of the excess ink - otherwise you may end up with an ink blotch on your furniture.

Furniture markers. They sound like one of those late-night infomercial products - but they do work (mostly).

If you're scrutinizing the table for scratches you will still see them - but scratches that are obvious from the sofa will be no more!

Here are some before/after pics to show you how it works:

(Those first scratches are thanks to cats sliding across the furniture and the latter ones are thanks to a laptop being pulled on and off the table.)

Here is the kit I have - available on Amazon.com: Guardsman Touch-Up Pens They come in three shades - though I've noticed other kits that contain more shades.

Entertainment Center

This is my idea for an entertainment center for my living room that I sketched out:




What do you think? (yes, my TV is that small) The funny looking ones with the box in the center is an open cube. The back panel will be painted brown and the insides blue.

I"m painting it to match my curtains/other accents in the room -

It'll probably be the table runner that will be taken to the paint store for a color match.



I found some pre-assembled unfinished cubes that are open/with a door/with drawers that I could buy. It'll be a bit pricey to get all of them - but I'm thinking that may be the easiest route. If I try to nail cubes together they won't be pretty. I'd like for it to be my summer project but I don't think I'm going to have the money/time to get it finished that quickly.

What do you think?