Upcoming feature in First Magazine

New Blue Glass Mosaic Coffee Table

Old Beat-Up Coffee Table (okay, before we totally beat it up, but this was it...)

I'm very excited! I have an upcoming feature in First Magazine! It should hit newsstands on 10/5/09! The writer had a follow-up question today which, as I was answering it, I thought it was quite funny about what inspires me to make my furniture! Here's her question and how I answered it. It's funny how you don't think about why you do things until someone actually asks you to elaborate.

Question: What exactly did you dislike about your old coffee table (the one you replaced with the tile mosaic table)--that it was always cluttered with stuff, that you didn't like the way it looked, that you couldn't afford a style you truly wanted....?

Answer:

My old coffee table was cool, after all – I built it! But it was also the dancing stage for my boys and I. We’d turn up our music really loud some nights and take turns dancing on the table, lip-synching and jumping off with our air guitars. So needless to say, it took a lot of beatings – and it showed. (Photo of it before being trashed above). When I’d sit and watch TV, I’d noticed the nicks, the loose molding on the edges and the dents around the base, which was made from aluminum roof vents – crazy, I know. It looked it’s age and after living with it for many years, I wanted something that was a bit lower to put my feet on, a bit wider to cover more space and be accessible from more seating areas, and something with drawers to get the multitudes of remote controls off the surface – I swear, you need one for everything these days. Plus, I wanted to infuse a pop of blue into the room. I had used blue glass stones in the entertainment center and wanted to call that color and texture out elsewhere in the room so this was the perfect time. That, and the fact that I had about 20 sheets of blue glass mosaic tiles left over from a kitchen renovation that I did and I had to use them somewhere in my house, they were just too pretty to sit in a box in the garage. So with a little brainstorming, I found a photo of a leather coffee table with the wood slats and decided that I’d do something similar but would use the tiles instead of leather – and of course, make all my own custom modifications. Voila! Born is my new and lovely coffee table that makes the living room sparkle and is one of the first things people see when they enter my house!