Then wouldn’t it be easier to get rid of that damn glass coffee table in the first place and replace it with white laminated shelves between the couch and the wall? That’s what I did, because I like cleaning even less then you do.
The shelves are about 3 inches wide, and screwed to the wall about an half inch below the ridge of the sofa. The sofa then is pushed up to the shelves. To make sure the sofa doesn’t exert too much pressure on the shelf, a ridge is screwed on the ground behind the sofa’s legs, so the sofa can’t be pushed to close to the wall.
So you don’t see the shelves themselves, or how they are fastened, or any rings, but you do have a convenient place for drinks, the remote and any books you’re reading.
I know these people!
No cats! They shed! The decorative towels are ironically called the ‘guest towels’.
And no, they aren’t very comfortable or welcoming houses (hard to call them homes) to visit.
in the white elephant exchange, a very nice doper sent me a boat load of beer mats. i’m good for quite a few years, and have even taken some into work for use there.
I actually knew several old women who had those plastic sofa covers, my grandmother among them. I never understood why, because we weren’t allowed in the living room or even the kitchen at her house, just the basement and bathroom and a 12-inch-wide strip of land between the two. (“You kids keep your filthy hands off the wallpaper!”) I always imagined her up there perched on the edge of her sticky, crackly, immaculate sofa reading her manual of evil.
Back on topic, I don’t use coasters to save the furniture but to save my shirt-front from drips caused by condensation that forms on my ever-present glass of ice water, even when I use my “anti-drip” tumbler. I’m going to have to look into those sandstone coasters.
And yes, even in the Northland we get condensation on water glasses in the summer. Our relative humidity in southern MN in deep summer can run around 85%.
Yeah, that sounds like a lot less work than wiping rings off a glass coffee table ;), and in my house it would immediately become another handy roost for my [del]vulture[/del] cat.
I ordered some Corian samples in various colors for a project I was working on. I ended up using the samples for coasters. I checked and you can still order the sample from Dupont.
At our town street festival we bought a set with photographs of Bay Area and surrounding attractions. They are awesome - great pictures and they are still in top shape after years of use. I wanted to give some as a conference gift, but they guy is no longer findable, and the ones I did find were not nearly as nice.
People who sell photographs should really make these - an affordable introduction to their work.
We mostly use coasters from pubs around the world that we’ve snatched, but I also have a stack of coasters from the 2000 elections in Kosovo that have voter information on when/how to register from when I worked on the elections there. I’m running out of those, so the few that remain are now museum pieces (ie thrown in a drawer). When I visited Archipelago Beer in Singapore, I asked them if I could have some coasters and they gave me a huge stack wo we use those a lot.
We also bought cool coasters this weekend at the Chicago Architecture Foundation that featue the skyscrapers of Chicago.
For those of you who seem confused about what a coaster is, have you never been to a pub? It’s the thing under your glass.
I have several sets of coasters: set of clear glass ones that I don’t know where they came from; a set of granite ones in various colors that were a gift; some cork ones that have Mary Engelbreit pictures on them and a set of doily like ones I actually made.
Some enterprising individual had a great idea. Fly a plane over various interesing places, take pictures, and turn the images into coasters. (Probably other souveniers too.) The coasters are spongy, and don’t do a great job at coasting, especially with cold drinks on a hot day. They’ve actually ruined my table a little.
I believe that the images are the Gloucester fisherman statue (not arial!), Rockport Harbor, Good Harbor, and Wingaersheek Beach.
After my daughter and I handpainted the coffee table and lamp table (hers is cooler, she painted koi on a deep green ground), I bought some carved wooden coasters from Cost Plus World Market. They look like they come from India, and there’s a matching box for them. We use them all the time. Similar to this.
For everyone there is a balance between ease and beauty.
