Now this one is my prized possession and I love it dearly!
We had shifted into a rental apartment and as many of you would agree... it is not very easy to set up a rental home. My apartment was brand new, huge, airy and even Vastu approved! And oh the highlight - it was on the tenth floor overlooking the beautiful landscaped city of Pune.
BUT it was rented and that means a lot of compromises!
People who move often will know better that a rented apartment, no matter how new and spacious will have shortcomings like not being able to break down a wall or not having anything permanent made for decorating purposes.
So I knew I had to make peace with reality and give up some great ideas for home decor (at least I thought they were great :p)
And as if thinking about workable and movable ideas were not enough, hubby darling adds 'budget' and 'low maintenance' to the list! I agreed to the 'low maintenance' part but ahem ahem, budget definitely was a touchy topic. I know all the wives reading this are nodding in agreement suppressing their smiles :)
With all the constraints, I was taking a whole lot longer to set up the house and it was driving my husband crazy. He even gave me an ultimatum that he will go out and buy stuff on his own. WHAT??!! Let a guy decorate the place!!! NOOOO!!
But I wouldn't blame him for the urgency. Poor guy didn't have a coffee table to put down his coffee mug and it was very inconvenient when the guests came over as we had nothing in the living room to place the snack bowls. ''Think fast darling'', I said to myself at that point trying to avoid eye contact with my angry husband.
The next day I happened to drive past a couple of garages or tyre shops on my way home from office. I always wanted to do something with a tyre, something creative, something workable but had never given it a serious thought. I really like the form, the rugged feel and thought it had huge potential for up-cycling.
I am a total re-cycler/ up-cycler whatever you want to call it! Hope you have seen my previous posts on this topic.
Anyways, so the next day I went to one of the tyre shops and asked if I could get one of the shabby, useless tyres that were thrown in the corner, all piled up. I actually don't know why these shops keep the useless ones but it worked to my benefit :)
So I bargained and finally got one! How I convinced those boys to help me carry it all the way to my house is a funny story but I'll share that some other time.
Oh by the way, I missed telling you one thing... it wasn't just any tyre... it was a TRUCK tyre! :) Weighing more than a 100 pounds!
I knew that was it! It was going to be my centre table!
My husband gasped as he entered the house and stared at the dirty, black, round heavy thing sitting in the living room and then looked at me. His expressions read - You better have a plan to make it work!
Of course I had a plan :) I had it all conceptualised. Now it was time for action!
I cleaned up the tyre thoroughly before applying paint on it. I wanted a smooth finish. After almost 4 layers of base paint that took about 15 days to dry, I finally had it ready for the design.
I used a bold, colourful palette to compliment my living space. Bright pink, green and blue were primary. My living room had a lot of ethnic dominance so I went the semi-traditional yet contemporary way rather than the geometric and modern.
Had my glass cut to place as the table top and now I had to finish the piece with the placement.
The challenging part was to make it movable. A huge tyre weighing almost 100 pounds was not easy to push around when mopping the floors or pulling closer when sitting on the couch.
So I designed a frame that was made of wrought iron. I placed strong wheels for ease of mobility and got it all put together with the tyre.
Its my very own, one-of-a kind coffee table that I designed from scrap (also scratch :))
It has worked beautifully as a prop to display my products -
It has beautified many lively parties, strolling happily from person to person, gracefully serving sumptuous food. And today even though I am miles away from it, it sits proudly in my sister's house who uses it in her own unique way!
You can call me crazy for thinking of putting a rugged piece of scrap from a garage in the middle of my living room but hey... it worked! :)
