Category: my house.

american farmhouse style.

Published on by Quandie32 Comments

A while back the editor of American Farmhouse Style magazine, Kelly McMaster, reached out to me via Instagram to ask if I’d be willing to let them use a photo of my ‘barn’ in an upcoming issue of their magazine.

She specifically asked for a snowy photo, so I sent in this one.

The carriage house always looks its best when it’s blanketed with snow.

I guess I just sort of assumed they were doing a feature on pretty barns in the snow for a winter issue and our carriage house would get a brief mention.  I have to confess, it never even occurred to me to ask exactly what she was going to do with the photo.

I sent it in, and gave her some background on it.  Namely that it’s actually a carriage house and not a barn, that our house was originally a dairy farm built in 1904, etc., etc.

Then I went off to Canada and mostly forgot about it.

But the other day I got a package in the mail, opened it up and pulled out this …

Wait, what?!

Our carriage house is on the cover!

It was really rather surreal.  As I stood there looking at the magazine in my hand it took a couple of seconds for me to go ‘hey, wait a minute, that’s my photo on the cover!’

Not only that, there is also a very nice article inside written by Kelly telling all about the carriage house, what I use it for, and with a mention of q is for quandie too!

In addition to the American Farmhouse cover, I was also included in a story in Flea Market Decor magazine’s 2025 Christmas issue.

This one is actually a reprint of an article about my non-collection of vintage glass Christmas ornaments that was originally published in Vintage Holiday back in 2017 …

If you’d like to order your own copy of American Farmhouse Style to read the article about our carriage house, you can order it online here.  You can also order the Flea Market Decor magazine online here.  Or you can check your local Barnes & Noble.  They should be on the shelves there starting around November 4.

In other news, my sister, niece and I are headed off to Orlando today.  But not to worry, I have plenty of blog posts scheduled to keep you entertained while I’m gone.  I may be slow to respond to comments though, so you’ll have to cut me some slack on that.

Oh, and one last thing, Happy Halloween!

a little spring cleaning.

Published on by Quandie17 Comments

It felt like it was time for a little spring cleaning last week, so I decided to tackle cleaning the pantry.

I’d like to say that I manage to get to this job every spring, but that’s just not true.

The thing is, this pantry is a bit of an illusion.  As you can sort of see in the photo above, there is no floor.  This is actually the stairway to our basement.  You can read all about how we turned it into a ‘pantry’ here.

I can reach the shelves that are closest to the door, but I can’t reach any of the upper shelves that are further out.  The only way to get to those is to borrow nnK’s scaffolding thingie and place that across the opening, giving me a platform to stand on and get to those other shelves.

For someone who is afraid of heights, it does feel a bit death defying to stand on that to clean those shelves.

I’m using that as my slightly lame excuse for not cleaning the pantry more often.

Here’s the view of the pantry from the bottom of those basement stairs, LOL.

Since I was removing everything from the shelves and cleaning each item, it seemed like a good opportunity to re-arrange some things starting with that row of watering cans at the very top.

I originally had a mix of watering cans and french flower buckets up there, but I have enough painted watering cans now to fill the entire row.

I have shared all of those watering can painting projects here on the blog except for the green one.  That one came in that color.

I also added a couple of French enamelware pitchers on the top shelf under the window.

The taller one is a recent acquisition that I found while out thrifting.  I added the I.O.D. Traditional Pots blue transfers to them myself.

My vintage kitchen scales went back on the shelves.  I’ve narrowed the scope of this non-collection to only include green ones.

I have to confess that I’ve cheated a little bit because just one of them wasn’t originally green.  I painted it.  Can you guess which one?

Spoiler alert, it’s this one.

I painted it in Dixie Belle’s Mint Julep.

Speaking of non-collections (because I’m in denial about being any sort of a collector of things), I still have my stack of vintage tablecloths.

I feel like these have gone a bit out of vogue these days, but I still love the colors.

In reality our pantry is only about 50% functional since we can’t actually reach about half of the shelves.

But it’s still nice to have a spot for the bread and wine.  Plus a space to display some of my vintage non-collections.

We actually have a few things stored out here in disguise as well.  There are boxes of kleenex in some of the metal tins …

and our extra Keurig coffee pods are in another.  The enamelware bucket with the red handle holds all of my cleaning rags, and we have extra soap in the green wooden tote.

I still think creating this pantry out of what was originally a very dismal basement staircase was one of my better remodeling ideas.

It might be a little bit difficult to clean, but I think it’s worth it.

the year in review.

Published on by Quandie15 Comments

Happy New Year!

At the close of each year I typically like to put together a blog post sort of summarizing the year.

Unfortunately, I suspect that it comes across as one of those annoying holiday letters that some people send out.  You know, the ones where they talk about all of the trips they went on, and how great their kids are doing, and how much they love their new winter place in Aspen.

You know what I mean, right?

But in all honesty, this particular blog post is more for me than for you.

I like to have a summary of the year to look back on later.  I often go back and read  previous year’s posts to remind myself of things that I have done from year to year.  There is a common theme to all of these year end review posts; that I feel like I haven’t really accomplished much this year, but discover upon review that I actually have.

So if you’re annoyed by those holiday letters you may want to stop reading here and just come back later in the week for a less boring post.

But if you’re sticking with me, let’s review 2024 starting with the elephant in the room … a.k.a. furniture painting.  Yep, in the beginning this blog was mainly about furniture painting.  But I have been moving away from that for a while now.  I did do a few furniture pieces in 2024 though.

Well, OK, literally just a few … or well … like maybe 4.

I’ll admit, I mainly did this one because I wanted to use that gorgeous transfer from I.O.D.

I did a couple of other very simple makeovers of pieces that I found really cheap (and/or free) at garage sales, like this bookcase.

But overall 2024 was not the year for furniture makeovers for me, unless you count the miniature ones.

I have been having way too much fun with those.

There is much less heavy lifting involved in painting dollhouse furniture.

I also retrieved my dollhouse from the in-laws, and gave it a makeover on the outside (plan to see more of the inside in 2025).

Once again, 2024 saw lots of toolbox refurbs with the northern grown toolbox being one of my favorites.

I also really loved how the duchesse’s toolbox turned out.

And just to prove I don’t always paint everything in Dixie Belle’s Drop Cloth, I went green with the st. patty’s toolbox.

I have to admit, 2024 wasn’t a spectacular year for garage sale finds.

I did bring home a few goodies here and there though, including this haul from the Tangletown sales.

That little mirrored cupboard was one of my favorite makeovers in 2024.

And remember this guy from the Bryn Mawr sales?

He was an awesome find.

But speaking of sales, 2024 saw the return of the Carriage House Sale!

That was a biggie.  It had been 8 years since my last sale.

It went rather well, so I’m tentatively planning to have another sale in 2025.  This time I want to schedule it a little earlier in the season, late May possibly.  Don’t hold me to that though, we’ll have to see whether or not I can find enough inventory by then.

I did manage a few home improvement projects in 2024 starting with redecorating the q branch.

In May, I painted the shed …

and the fence.

I’m still quite happy with my decision to go with a black stain on the fence.  It does exactly what I want it to do, which is recede into the background and become nearly unnoticeable.

It was lucky that I got both of those projects done early in the season, because the summer ended up being so rainy that I was barely able to find three sunny days in a row to recoat the sealer on our deck.

On a rainy morning in July I finally got around to painting the sections of wall in the dining room that I’d stripped the wallpaper from more than a year ago.

Speaking of all that rain, 2024 ended up being a tough year in the garden.  It started out great.  Things were looking really good.

I initially thought the rain was a good thing for my plants.

I never had to water anything.

But then there was a hail storm.

It did a fair amount of damage, especially to the hostas.

Then the wet weather started to cause other problems like the leaf spot fungus on my lilacs, and a massive earwig infestation on the hostas.

The super wet summer also led to a jumping worm population explosion that I’m going to have to figure out how to control going forward.

And then there was the loss of my neighbor/handyman Ken’s tree.

I’m not gonna lie, I’m struggling with this one.  I can totally blame this loss on the rain as well.  We had numerous storms that led to trees coming down all over in our area, and Ken was worried that his tree would be next.  So he had it cut down instead.

I’m still not over it, and I don’t want to talk about it so let’s move on.

It did lead to me planting a hedge of Quick Fire Fab hydrangeas though, so it will be fun to see how that turns out (hopefully better than my lilac hedge).

Although I did manage to go on a few trips in 2024, they were mostly repeats.  My sister and I went to Disneyworld for the Festival of the Arts back in February.

I visited my mom in Las Vegas in March, but didn’t find anything fabulous at her local Goodwill.

Then I went back again in April with my sister …

and again in October with both my sister and my niece when the three of us also took a side trip to Disneyland.

And we visited the Clark Co. Museum for the first time.

Finally, I also went to Mexico with my neighbor nnK’s family in early December.

Mr. Q and I plan to visit a couple of places that are new to us in 2025, so be sure to stay tuned for that later in the year.

Once again writing this annual post has reminded me that I did get a few things done in 2024.

I totally recommend this exercise for all of you too.  Rather than making a list of New Year’s Resolutions for 2025, take some time to acknowledge the things you’ve already accomplished.  Just get out a pad of paper and make a list of everything you got done in 2024.  You might also be surprised to see just how long that list is.

the tree spot.

Published on by Quandie16 Comments

I was recently watching a Christmas decorating vlog on YouTube.  The vlogger had recently moved into a new house and was deciding where to put the Christmas tree.  She mentioned that in her former home, once she found the perfect spot for her tree, she just kept putting it in the same spot year after year.

That got me thinking.  I realized that I’ve put my current tree in five different spots in my house since I purchased it in 2016.

So, nine Christmases, five spots.  Clearly I don’t like to repeat myself.

And actually, if we go back even further, I had an even smaller silver tree that was in yet another spot.

That was back before I added the giant English cupboard to the q branch.

It helps that my current tree is a ‘slim’ model, so it’s easier to tuck into various corners.  The rooms in my 1904 farmhouse are fairly small, I don’t think I could fit a ‘normal’ sized tree anywhere except possibly in the dining room.

Also, I realize that my silver tree isn’t quite traditional.  But it works beautifully with my non-collection of vintage glass ornaments.

In 2016, I put the new, taller silver tree in the piano room near the bay window.

That’s back when I thought Christmas trees were supposed to be near a window so they could be seen by people passing by outside.

I think many of us imagine the perfectly lit tree centered in a big picture window as being the epitome of Christmas.

But by 2017 I decided that I should put the tree where I wanted to see it.  I had acquired that English cupboard in the q branch by then, and I had just enough room in the corner beside it to tuck in the tree.

Fast forward to 2019.  I decided to change things up a bit again and I moved the tree to the living room.

I also changed the color scheme a bit.  Instead of using all of my vintage glass ornaments, I just used those in silver and/or gold.

And I added some brass horns that I’d found at a garage sale.

It was a very pretty tree, but I felt it looked a bit too small for that corner of the living room.

In 2022 I decided to try something totally different.  I moved the tree out to my three season porch.

Or as I call it in winter, my walk-in fridge.

I did really love it in that spot, although it was a bit of a chilly job to set it up.  And it was even colder when I took it down.  Plus, there isn’t any electrical out there so I had to run a cord through a cracked window which probably wasn’t terribly energy efficient.

After giving the q branch a little bit of a makeover last January, I realized that I had a bit of space in another corner of the room for the tree this year.

I will admit that when my sister saw it in this location, she pointed out that it wasn’t very visible from the rest of the house.

But you know what, that’s OK.  This tree is mainly for my own enjoyment anyway.  And every morning as I sit here at my desk working on my blog I can admire the tree.

Will I put it back here next year?  Maybe.  Or maybe not.  But so far I think this has been my favorite location for the Christmas tree.

Now how about you?  Do you pick a new spot for your tree from year to year, or does it always go in the same spot?  Leave a comment and let me know.

a tale of two rugs.

Published on by Quandie31 Comments

Remember way back to last winter when I repainted the walls in the q branch (a.k.a. my study)?

I absolutely love the color I ended up choosing, Globe Artichoke from Pittsburgh Paints.

Once I had the walls painted, I then hung my gallery of garage sale art on the wall.

The room still looked rather unfinished.

It needed a rug, and I also needed to wait until summer to paint those radiator pipes in the corner.

I’ll be the first to admit that I am not very patient when it comes to shopping for things like rugs.  I went to a few different brick and mortar shops with my friend opK, but nothing jumped out at me.  I also did a bunch of online browsing, but every time I picked a rug that I thought might work I either couldn’t get it in the size I wanted, or it was too expensive, or I just wasn’t absolutely sure I liked it.

And then there’s this little consideration …

That’s Lucy, a.k.a. the barfer.

Yep, she has a tendency to upchuck.  She’s also somewhere around 19 – 20 years old at this point (she was a rescue, so we’re not entirely sure, but we’ve had her for 18 years and she wasn’t a kitten when we found her), so we don’t hold it against her.

Usually we get a little warning when she’s about to blow, she makes a very unique and rather loud noise.  So we have time to move her to a washable surface.  But if we’re not home, then all bets are off.

So for that reason, we don’t want to invest in a high quality rug right now.

Which brings me to the rug I finally ordered from Wayfair.

This is the DeSoto Oriental in cream/grey.  It also comes in 4 other colors, including an option that has some green in it.  Unfortunately that one was not available in a square, and I really wanted a square rug.  As you can see above, a square fits really nicely in almost perfectly square room.

It also was less than $100, which was a good price for a rug that I don’t plan to keep forever.

So I thought I’d take a chance with this one, and that perhaps the grey would pull in the color of my dark grey walls in the neighboring piano room.

Now that the rug is in place in the room, I think it’s OK, but not spectacular.  It definitely helps give the room a more finished look.  It was also cheap enough that I plan to just keep it and use it until the perfect rug comes along, if it ever does.

As you can also see, I did manage to get those pipes in the corner painted over the summer.

I may have to bite the bullet and paint the radiator too, but that’s another job that has to wait for summer.  I’d kind of like to paint it gold, like this inspiration photo from pinterest.

I think the gold radiator would tie in with all of the gold frames in the room, and it would look gorgeous with the green walls.  What do you think?

In the meantime, next on the list is going to be window treatments of some kind, and hey, maybe I’ll even sew them myself on my new sewing machine!

One quick side note, as you may have noticed, I placed my skinny silver Christmas tree in the q branch this year.  It fits perfectly in this wonky little corner, and I can admire it while I sit at my computer working on this blog.

This tree holds my non-collection of vintage glass ornaments.

I also hung my ornament wreath over the mirror that hangs in the q branch.

Last year I displayed my Christmas village on top of the giant English pine cupboard that is in this room …

but this year I decided to forgo putting up the village.  Maybe I’ll get it back out again next year, if I have a little more time for decorating.

But wait, the title of this post is a tale of two rugs.  Are you wondering about the 2nd?

Well, here it is.

Ironically, I was shopping for both full size rugs and miniature rugs at the same time.  I looked at so many options online for both that at one point I was getting them mixed up.

I had similar requirements for both rugs; pale neutral colors, a muted pattern and a specific size.  A square no more than 7′ x 7′ for the q branch, and a rectangle at least 8″ x 10″ for the dollhouse.

I ended up finding the dollhouse rug at Life in a Dollhouse.

And I think it works perfectly with my French Country Cottage style dining set.

What do you think?

the winter dining room.

Published on by Quandie21 Comments

I started my holiday decorating a bit early this year for two reasons.  First, I did all of my outdoor stuff a week or two ago when we had a couple of really nice sunny days in the 50’s.  It was so fun filling the window box and putting up lights without having to wear a parka and fight with frozen soil.

Speaking of the window box, one of you requested a ‘dusk photo’ with the twig lights on.  I didn’t manage to get a dusk photo, but how about a ‘dawn photo’?

As you can see, I got this stuff in just in time before winter weather officially (in my book) arrived with a dusting of snow, blustery winds and a ‘feels like’ temp of 8°.

I got a jump on my indoor decorating too. That’s due to my 2nd reason for starting early.  Once again this year I’m going to Mexico with my neighbor nnK and her parents.  And this time my sister is joining us as well.  We leave tomorrow, and then there are only two and a half weeks until Christmas once we get back.

Putting up holiday decorations is a fair amount of work, I wanted to enjoy them for more than a couple of weeks!

Today I thought I would share the decorations in our dining room.  This is where we enter our house from the back deck, and my Belgian bed bench is next to the door.

The bench is painted in Miss Mustard Seed Milk Paint in a mix of equal parts Ironstone, Linen and Grain Sack.  You can find all of the details for that project here.

As for the sled hanging over the bench, that is one I found this past summer at an estate sale.  The price was a little higher than I like to spend (as is usually the case at estate sales), but I had to snap it up because of the solid surface of the seat.  I knew that would be perfect for stenciling.

I painted the seat in Dixie Belle’s Dried Sage, then created a shadow of the words ‘Bed and Breakfast’ using Coffee Bean, and finally added the full stencil in Drop Cloth.

I finished it off with a coat of Dixie Belle’s clear wax, including the unfinished wood and the metal slats.  The clear wax just freshens it all up a bit and would protect it from moisture if I hung it outside, although for this year I’m keeping it inside.

I added some faux evergreen garland and a string of battery operated lights to the back of the bench.

Then I added more garland and lights to the top of my Welsh cupboard.

Next I pulled out the vintage “Merry Christmas” sign that I purchased last year.

Although I appreciated the original red and green paint, I didn’t love the glitter that had been added to it.  So I repainted the letters in Dixie Belle’s Drop Cloth, and the bar across the back in Midnight Sky.

By the way, nearly every piece of ironstone in that cupboard is from a garage sale.  I think there might be one or two that were from antique shops, but that’s about it.

The last bit of holiday decorating in this room is my clock cloche (that’s what I’m calling it anyway) centerpiece on the table.  Some of you might remember when I popped a large glass cloche over a clock that fell off my wall and was damaged.

If not, the details can be found here.

I tend to change up the contents of the clock cloche for the seasons, and here is its Christmas look.

Well, maybe it would be more accurate to call it a ‘winter’ look.

It feels a bit plain for a holiday look.  I may have to dress it up a bit more.  Maybe it needs some faux snow, or lighting of some kind.  What do you think?

I let the paint colors that I used on the sled dictate a neutral color scheme in the dining room this year.  Sometimes it’s fun to change things up and see how you like them.  Plus, if I just remove the “Merry Christmas” signage from above the hutch, the rest of this stuff can be left in place as simply ‘winter’ decor.  Maybe next year I’ll go back to more traditional red and green.

How about you?  Are you all out red and green, with Santa’s everywhere?  Or do you sometimes stick to a more neutral ‘winter’ look?  Leave a comment and let me know.

And one last note, I did schedule a couple of posts for while I’m gone.  However, I probably won’t answer comments since I’ll be floating in a pool in Mexico.  So I hope you enjoy them, and I’ll be sure to respond when I get back!

just taking up space.

Published on by Quandie19 Comments

You may have noticed that I’ve been slowing down a bit lately when it comes to sharing projects here on the blog.  That’s because I’ve been focused on something else.  Swedish death cleaning.

Let me explain.  First off, if you haven’t heard of Swedish death cleaning, the most basic description is that it’s the process of getting rid of stuff that you no longer need/use, and that no one in your family is going to want after you die.  The idea is to save your family from having to clear out a lifetime of stuff once you’re gone.

I haven’t actually read the book, or seen the TV series, so I really don’t know much about how it’s supposed to work.  But for me, I just realized that our house was full of stuff that we no longer use and that no one (family or otherwise) is going to want when Mr. Q and I are gone.  It will be so much easier to just gradually start to go through it without having any sort of deadline.

Now, don’t worry.  This wasn’t precipitated by any kind of ill-health, nobody is going to die any time soon, but I did turn 60 on my last birthday so I can’t pretend like I’m ‘middle-aged’ anymore either.

So far I’ve gotten rid of two van loads of stuff that went to the Goodwill, a few electronics that will go to the hazardous waste facility, and one entire metal filing cabinet full of stuff.

The first thing to go was old paperwork.

That was a bit of a process since it involved looking everything over to determine what should be shredded and what could just be thrown away.  I had tax returns going back 20 years.  Those got shredded.  I also had a huge stack of various instruction manuals for appliances, and in many cases I no longer even had the appliance.  Those all got thrown.  If I need to know how to use something, I can look it up online.  I had old copies of resumes, and other work related paperwork although I’ve been retired for going on three years now.  Those got tossed as well.

Once all the paperwork was gone, I realized that the cabinet could go too.  We put it out at the curb with a ‘free’ sign on it one evening, and the next morning we woke up to find that someone had taken two of the drawers.  Argh!  What the heck?  What were we going to do with a filing cabinet that was missing two drawers?

Fortunately, the person came back later and left a note saying that they wanted the cabinet, but had to find a truck.  We offered to deliver it and were happy to see it go.

Another huge category of discarded stuff was serving dishes.  I had serving dishes of all kinds; large glass bowls, glass platters, silver-plate items.

I can’t even remember the last time we used most of them.  I kept the serving dishes that we use at Thanksgiving, and a couple of platters for bringing brownies to a pot-luck, but the rest went.

I also got rid of some barware.

We just don’t entertain like we used to.  Plus that wine opener was a duplicate, do I really need two of them?

I did hesitate for a second over those really adorable stir sticks.

Aren’t they fun?  But we’ve never actually used them.  They’ve just been gathering dust in a cupboard.  They got the ax too.

There were some items that we never use that didn’t get sent to Goodwill though.  Instead, I decided it was time to use them.

That included my ‘good’ silverware.

OK, I know, it’s a bit dated.  But maybe it’s just old enough to be called vintage?  Well, probably not.  I think it’s pretty though, and it’s a much better quality than the cheap silverware we were using every day.  So I sent the cheap silverware to the Goodwill and filled the silverware drawer with this stuff.

Not only did we donate several van-loads of goods, we also filled up our trash can for weeks.  I had a huge box of old photos that I went through and pared down.  Remember when we used to get film developed?  And you could get doubles?  I always got doubles!  And probably 85% of those photos weren’t even good ones.

I even threw away my high school year books.  I never look at them, why keep them?

I did draw the line at my scrapbooks.

Although I don’t look at them all that often, I just can’t quite bring myself to part with them.  Perhaps when I’m in my 80’s I’m going to want to go back and look through them and remember how absolutely frigid it was sailing through the Wachau Valley in November 2014.

Speaking of scrapbooks, it was time to get rid of scrapbooking supplies that I was never going to use.  I think 2014 might have been the last time that I seriously worked on a scrapbook.  I have done a handful of smaller projects since then, like the index card project from 2019 or the altered recipe box scrapbook from last year.

So I am still hanging onto some of my favorite supplies.

A goodly amount of expired jars of spices also made their way to the trash can, along with other expired items from the pantry.

My Watkins spices were still good though.

I’m definitely not done yet.  I still have quite a few cupboards and drawers to go through.  And although I cleaned out the carriage house for my sale back in June, I need to go back and do a much more thorough job out there.

That job might require a trip to the dump.  Does anyone need any antique bed side rails?  Because I have half a dozen of them in there.  When you turn beds into benches, you no longer need the side rails.

I always feel like a weight has been lifted when I get rid of stuff that is just taking up space.

That being said, I still have all of my non-collections.  I have a rule about them, I only collect things that I’m going to display and/or use on a regular basis.  So I still have my ironstone …

And I still have my vintage alarm clocks and cameras, as well as my tiny furniture.

I’m pretty sure that no one in my family is going to want any of my non-collections after I’m gone.  And technically, I don’t ‘need’ or ‘use’ these things.  So I want to add one extra caveat to the Swedish death cleaning concept.  If the items will make for an amazing estate sale, then they are also worth hanging on to 😉

Now, how about you?  Is your house full of items that will make for a spectacular estate sale?  Or are there lots of things that are just taking up space?  Leave a comment and let me know.

the queen of procrastination.

Published on by Quandie14 Comments

I’ve noticed that wallpaper is making a big comeback.  I get it, wallpaper can be gorgeous.  It can add so much interest to a room, and it also can hide a multitude of sins on 100 year old plaster walls.

I was a new homeowner the last time wallpaper was ‘in’, and I pretty much wallpapered every. single. room. in our house.  I even wallpapered the ceiling in our bathroom (never again).

But in the decades since then, I’ve also stripped all of that wallpaper back off.  And that was no fun.  Well … except the time my bff, her daughter and her daughter’s bff helped me strip the three layers of wallpaper in our master bedroom.  We did actually have fun, and that job would have taken forever on my own.

The last bit of wallpaper we had in our house was in our dining room.  There are two squares of wall in that room on either side of the windows, the rest of the walls (and ceiling for that matter) are clad in reclaimed barn wood.

The wallpaper was pretty subtle.  It was a beige-ish color with slightly darker colored writing on it.

A while back (and by a while back, I mean in 2017) I decided that I wanted to remove it and paint those squares white to bring a little more light into the room.  At the time I was really hoping this would be an easy removal job.  After all, those square aren’t that big, it’s not like I had an entire room to do.

Sometimes wallpaper comes off really easily, just start tugging at a corner and you can pull it away in practically full sized sheets.  And sometimes it doesn’t.  This wallpaper was in the latter camp.  It seemed to have a vinyl layer with the design on it, and a paper layer underneath.  When I tugged, the vinyl layer came off leaving the paper layer still glued to the wall.

I still had my full time job at that time, plus the blog, and honestly, I just didn’t want to deal with stripping that wallpaper.  But now I had a big chunk of that upper layer of the wallpaper torn off.  So I decided to cover it up with vintage paper player piano music rolls instead.

  That was back in September 2017 (you can read all about it here).

That was supposed to be a temporary measure, just until I could get around to a full fledged strip job.  Uh, yeah, six years went by with those rolls on the wall.  How did that happen?  Clearly I am just really good at procrastinating!

The winter before last I decided that I would focus on getting some projects done inside the house.  Surely that would be a great way to get through the winter while we’re stuck inside anyway.  I could finally get this wallpaper down.  And maybe our front stairwell painted.  Or maybe the baseboards upstairs.  I definitely need to repaint inside all of our closets, and our kitchen cupboards.

Yet that entire winter went by  and I hadn’t done a single one of the projects on that list.  Somehow I always managed to find something else I’d rather do.

But one rainy day in March 2023 I decided enough was enough with the procrastinating.  That player piano music, and the wallpaper under it, was coming down!

After removing the player piano music, and all of the many staples that held it in place, I then peeled off all of the outer vinyl layer of the wallpaper.  Then I had to go back and wet down the paper backing layer and scrape it off.

  None of it came off in big chunks, but bit by bit I got it all off.

You might be inclined to think that I then jumped right into giving those walls a fresh coat of paint, but no.  I managed to procrastinate on that for another entire year!

What was I waiting for?  Well, to be honest, I was trying to come up with a fabulous wall treatment for those two squares.  Something exciting that would be ‘blog worthy’.  Maybe a hand-painted mural a la Miss Mustard Seed.

Or possibly an all-over stencil of some kind.

But in the end those sort of treatments just didn’t feel quite right for this room with its rustic barnwood cladding.

So I spent another rainy (seriously, it just won’t quit) morning a few weeks back just painting those bits of wall white.

I say ‘morning’, but it literally only took about an hour or so, not even a full morning.

So yeah, they’re just plain white, nothing terribly exciting, but at least they are presentable now.  Maybe the white will be the perfect blank canvas for something more exciting down the road.  Then again, maybe these walls will just stay white.

How about you?  Do you have projects that you’ve procrastinated on for years?  Surely I’m not the only queen of procrastination around here, am I?

a late spring garden tour.

Published on by Quandie11 Comments

Good morning from the garden!

I’ve had a few requests for a full garden tour, so this morning I thought I would attempt it.

My gardens are broken down into … hmmm … let’s see … 8 areas.  There is the front garden, the fern garden, the shade garden, the carriage house garden, the potting shed garden, the cutting garden, the fairy garden and the sunny perennial border.  Phew!  You may want to grab your favorite beverage because this may be a long one.

The front garden.

Let’s start out in the front garden.  This is just the bit of garden that runs along the front of our house, and it’s where the long window box is.

The box doesn’t look too impressive at this time of the year, but it should fill in quickly.

This area faces north and is very much shaded by the house for most of the day.  This is always where the very last bit of snow melts in the spring, and where plants take the longest to emerge from their winter slumber.

But things are starting to fill in nicely now.  This space is filled with a variegated sedum, a purple astilbe that loves this location, some dark purple heuchera and plenty of hostas.

The heuchera looks the best it ever has for this early in spring, I suspect due to our very mild winter.  Last spring I had decided to give up on heuchera because it did so poorly over winter, but it’s back in my good graces now.

This garden also contains our fountain, and my rusty chair.  My neighbor/handyman Ken gave me a set of this grape cluster iron furniture back in 2022.  It was painted a crisp white when I got it, but I like something a little more subtle.  So I gave the pieces a makeover with Dixie Belle’s patina paint.  This chair and the bench both have broken legs, so no one can actually sit on them.  I also did not seal the rusty finish, so rust would rub off onto your clothing if you did sit on them.  So I tuck them into the garden where no one will make the mistake of trying to actually use them.

There were a few tulips and daffodils in this space that looked good earlier this spring, but right now I’m mostly still waiting for things to fully emerge.  The big star of the show in this garden is the astilbe.  I divided it last year and found that there weren’t as many blooms, but I’m hoping it rebounds this year.  When it blooms in mid-summer, it should look like this …

The fern garden.

Our driveway runs alongside the house all the way back to the carriage house.  The fern garden is on the east side of the driveway.

The ferns look gorgeous right now, especially with my newly blackened fence behind them, but if we have a dry summer they will start to fade by mid-August and then they don’t look so good.

But I’ll enjoy them while they last along with some vinca vine and lily of the valley, both of which are currently flowering.

The shade garden.

On the opposite side of the driveway is my shade garden.

I have to admit that this is my favorite, and thus it gets the most attention from me.  It’s filled with all kinds of shade loving perennials including bleeding heart, brunnera, maiden’s hair fern, japanese painted fern, lungwort, and more.

It’s also home to quite a few hostas including a few of my favorites like Lakeside Dragonfly …

Sun Power (on left) and June (on right).

Autumn Frost is one of my newest hostas, and it’s looking really good so far.

My garage sale find statue, Cossetta, also lives in this garden.

Right now the foam flower, or Sugar & Spice Tiarella, is in bloom.

I have these sprinkled throughout the front of the shade garden and I like the way they repeat here and there.

There are some foundation gardens alongside the house that I consider part of the shade garden as well.

You may remember that I used the Bronze patina paint with the green spray on the buddha and the Japanese lantern in the background.

The carriage house garden.

I call the garden that runs along the side of the carriage house the carriage house garden (creative, right?).  I struggle a bit with this one because it is shady all morning, then gets hit with the blazing sun in the hottest part of the day.  Most plants prefer the exact opposite of that, morning sun and afternoon shade.

It also is backed by that red wall of the carriage house, shades of pink looks positively awful next to it and it has taken me about 35 years to accept that.

But this is the first year that it’s starting to come together.  It looked awesome a couple of weeks ago with grape hyacinths, bright yellow daffodils, and that new white azalea.

Right now the only things blooming are a handful of alliums, but the yellow iris are going to open up any day now.

Wait, I take that back.  There is also a fabulous cranesbill, or perennial geranium, blooming at the far end.

This plant was a garage sale purchase back in May 2022, this is its third year so it’s time to leap (first year sleeps, second year creeps, third year leaps).

Here’s how big it was when I brought it home.

So while I still want to caution you to be careful about those jumping worms, you gotta love a garage sale plant.  You can always count on them to be hardy in your area, and prolific (which is why the seller has extra to part with).

The potting shed garden.

Again, another creative name, the potting shed garden comprises the beds around the potting shed.

This garden is mostly shaded on the east side, but gets afternoon and evening sun on the west side.  I popped a few allium in on both sides last fall to see if they would grow, and they seem to have done quite well.  I think I may move these elsewhere and replace them with white allium for next year.  Wouldn’t white allium just pop against my dark green paint color?

The bugleweed, or ajuga, is in full bloom on the east side right now.

And over on the west side the geranium macrorrhizum, or Bigroot geranium is full of flowers now too.

If you need a plant that will grow in sun or shade, will fill in any available space, requires absolutely no maintenance, then this is the plant for you.  It does wilt a bit in hot afternoon sun, but it recovers quite quickly.  It’s very easy to pull out if it spreads more than you want it to.  I have a lot of it, as you’ll see when we get to the perennial border.

As for growing just about anywhere, along the west side of our house we have only about 8′ or so of fully shaded space between our house and the property line.  The previous owners of our house put down plastic and then rock, and planted a row of arborvitae that has gotten massive.  After all of this time enough dirt has accumulated amongst the rocks that I have to weed that area.  So a couple of years ago I decided to see if this geranium would grow in the rocks.

The answer is a resounding yes!  it will.  Quite happily in fact.  And it looks so much better than weeds.

So if you have a problem area in your garden, keep this plant in mind.  Also, if you’re local, keep me in mind.  I have plenty to share if you want to try it.

The fairy garden.

My fairy garden is planted in an old rusted out wheelbarrow that is nestled in a bed of variegated vinca.  Last year it was ended up totally overgrown, so I decided to be a little more minimal with the plants this year.

Usually I plant a wire vine on that arch, but it totally takes over and requires a lot of maintenance to keep it from completely covering it and the path beneath it.

So this year I’m going to leave that out.  Instead I added a couple more miniature hostas compliments of my neighbor nnK (sorry, don’t know the names of them), and I also added a tiny Japanese maple tree to the left of the fairy house.

nnK’s mom, Judy, planted one of these in her fairy garden last year and it did not survive the winter, so I’m taking a bit of a gamble with that one.  Especially since I paid $25 for it a Abrahamson Nursery.  I may pull it out of there in the fall, put it in a pot, and try to overwinter it somewhere more protected.  Japanese maples do require a period of cold dormancy, so I can’t bring it in as a houseplant.

The sunny perennial border.

This garden is directly behind the house and it used to be my sunniest space.  Over time the trees in handyman Ken’s yard next door (yes, that is his house in the background) have grown so big that they shade this bed most of the time except around high noon.  As a result, I’ve been struggling with this one over the past several years.

Can I just point out that the grass in our area is looking particularly fabulous at the moment.  We’ve had plenty of rain mixed in with lots of sunshine and the grass is flourishing for now.  I’d love to keep it looking this good all summer, but if we get dry weather again this year all bets are off.

I have a border of small green hostas along the front edge of this garden that do really well here.  I also have a big mass of that Bigroot geranium in the middle section.

Right now the alliums are definitely the stars of the show, I just wish they would last longer.

There are three clematis in this bed, two on the trellis …

and one on the obelisk.

They are all loaded with buds, but only one of them has started to open so far.

I do have a couple of pink peonies in this garden.

Fortunately they will be done flowering before the self-seeding red bee balm takes over in mid-summer …

The cutting garden.

The cutting garden is hidden away behind the carriage house.  There used to be nothing but weeds back there, but then one day I realized that it was the sunniest spot that I had left for a garden.  Why not use it to grow peonies?

So now I have about 6 peonies back there, plus some siberian iris and a big Annabelle hydrangea.

None of them are blooming quite yet, but the peonies should be opening soon.  Here’s a picture from June 11 of last year that shows them all in bloom.

Since the cutting garden isn’t visible from the house, or really anywhere in our yard, I don’t feel bad at all about cutting all of the blooms and putting them in vases where I can appreciate them.

That about wraps it up for this morning’s garden tour.  I hope you enjoyed it!  And now I’m off to do some work out there.  It seems as though there are always tasks waiting to be done in a garden!

spring painting projects.

Published on by Quandie6 Comments

It would probably be fair if you were starting to wonder whether or not I still do much painting, and the answer is yes!

But much of what I’ve been painting recently hasn’t been terribly blog-worthy.

However, it has kept me rather busy for the last couple of weeks.

First I painted the potting shed.  It was starting to look a bit rough around the edges, especially the south facing side.  Fortunately it didn’t require too much scraping and I was able to get it done in a day.

I also took some time to spring clean the interior.  Stuff tends to accumulate in there over the winter.  So I pulled everything out, washed down the walls and the floor, and then only put stuff back in that belongs there.

The potting shed wasn’t my only big paint job this spring, I also stained our fence with the help of my neighbor nnK.

You may remember that we added a new section to our fence last year.

You’re supposed to let that new wood dry out for 4 to 6 weeks before staining.  Well, in our case, we waited until spring.  But we finally got ‘er done!

Here’s an action shot.

We used a sprayer, and I used my trusty painting chair to do the bottom half.  When my trigger finger wore out, nnK took over and did the top.

At this point you might be thinking ‘whoa, black?!’

Yep, we went with black stain … or to be more precise, it’s Behr solid color stain in Slate.  I’d recently seen one of the gardening YouTubers that I follow (Dig, Plant, Water, Repeat) give a similarly decrepit fence a facelift using this color.

As we all know, dark colors make things recede.  In addition, most of this fence is in deep shade most of the day, so it sort of just disappears into the shadows now.

And that was my goal.

It also creates a good backdrop for garden photos.

The garden really pops now.

Once the fence was stained, I planted three Arctic Fire Yellow dogwoods in front of it, behind the ferns.

As you can probably tell, this time of year you can’t really even see them through the ferns.  But I’m growing the dogwoods for winter interest.  They have a lovely yellow stem that will be visible in winter when the ferns have died back, and the dogwoods have dropped their leaves.  It should look amazing against that black fence, although I’m not sure they will get enough sun in this location to keep them happy.

I do also have a pagoda dogwood tree in this area and it seems to be thriving …

although growing very slowly.  At this rate I will be 80 years old before it starts to look like an actual tree.  But it gives me hope for the Arctic Fire dogwoods.

It sure feels good to have these two projects checked off on the to-do list.  I’m planning to get to some other more fun painting projects this week, so be sure to stay tuned!