I’m not particularly amenable to having another woman in the house, but I have to admit to being on board with this DIY project that involved morphing a dress form into a floor lamp.

This project mostly involved scouring Craigslist for the perfect dress form for our space. Dress forms are partial life-sized figures used by clothing designers. Me and my boyfriend Kiko ideally wanted something that was an antique, but even a clever impostor would do as long as we could find it second-hand. We finally did find “the one” from a nice lady who once used it in a clothing store. While I’ve seen photos of more intricately-crafted dress forms, ours is perfect for our space, and only rang up at $75.

After spending quite a good deal of time looking for the right form, we decided to take the path of least resistance when it came to dressing her …

We are continuing our adventures in DIY furniture with a do-it-yourself chair. As you may remember from my earlier post, Kiko and I love “green” recycled things, and that means sometimes we’re just going to have to make some of these things ourselves to get what we want. I thought I’d share a recent addition to our home: the burlap coffee sack chair.

I won’t bore you with the details of why we needed a chair; suffice to say that we felt bad when our friends had to eat dinner sitting on the floor. And so we decided that forgoing furniture almost completely, as we once did, was lacking in continuous appeal.

We found the sturdy wooden chair at an estate sale for $5, and we immediately ripped off the upholstery because it was quite unattractive. I ended up getting the idea to reupholster the chair in a burlap coffee sack …

Working from home is becoming more common these days with the unemployment rate hovering around 9.6% and freelance work on the rise – and that’s bringing a whole new meaning to the term “corner office.”

While we may dream of having our own large corner office with a sweeping view of the city, a corner office space at home is more likely to be crammed into a nook with a view of the bathroom, bedroom, or a boring white wall. But with a little ingenuity, you can make a respectable and comfortable office space out of tight quarters.  Recently, I created my own “home office” in the corners of my tightly-packed 950- square-foot apartment (see photo at left). I needed a separate work space because my part-time freelance jobs were picking up, and the uncomfortable position I usually assume on the couch just wasn’t cutting it any more. Here …