Junk Furniture Makeovers Part II

One of my major idols, Eleanor Josaphine Medill "Cissy" Patterson--the country's first major female newspaper publisher and a sybarite of the first order--used to entertain at her Dupont Circle home in elaborate silk pajamas. I thought of her recently after moving from a 400 square foot apartment--where we regularly entertained in what was essentially our bedroom (whether I wore real clothes or not) to a house with many rooms--one of which I intend to use as an office.

To be honest, a home office is a novel concept for me. I've always thought of bed as the ultimate workspace: good for reading, aesthetically pleasing, the perfect place to drink coffee and look out the window. In college I even had the desk removed from my dorm room to make way for a nice, feather-cushioned loveseat. But someone has given me a hand-me-down computer (my first) and I finally reached my breaking point at the public library when a) I started to recognize everyone there (like the man who can't remove the paint from his eyebrows and is--from what I can tell--in the midst of refinancing his $800,000 home) and b) the woman coughing and typing next to me was obviously going to give me TB.

Not wanting to get too attached to the home office concept--I may, after all, end up back in a 400 sq ft place or miss the DSM-IV charms of the library--I didn't want to invest too heavily in the set-up. So I repurposed this $9 child's table and the $6 Braniff-era Steelcase office chair as my desk. This time, I tried not to use spray paint--at least on the fabric--but it was so slow-going (especially after the Law & Order marathon ran its course) that I ignored the advice of the man at the hardware store (he thought I needed "flexible" paint) and went at it with water-based latex spray paint. (P.S. For those of you who are curious about the metallic and glitter varieties, Michaels is running a $1.99 sale right now on Krylon paints.)