Category: my house.

My magic wand decorating project is almost done, I just have to finish up the piano room walls which has turned into a bigger project than originally intended.  So that one might be a while.

But in the meantime, I’m tweaking some details in the living room.  For example, I finally added something to the chalkboard that hangs over the sofa.  Here it is blank …

and if you’re interested, you can find the original post on how I made that chalkboard here.

As much as I love chalkboards, I have to admit that I’m not very good about changing up what’s drawn on them regularly.  I want to be, but somehow I always find myself looking at a chalkboard that still says “Let it Snow” at the end of August and thinking “well, I might as well leave it now, it’s going to be winter again soon.”  Is anyone else like that?

I also don’t have the patience to draw a design on a chalkboard free-hand.  So instead I fake it either by tracing something, or by using stencils to help get the outline and then filling things in by hand.

So I dug through all of my stencils and came upon a combination for this chalkboard that I thought would work.

And on the plus side, it’s not seasonal, so I can leave it this way for a while.

Once I had the stencils laid out, I used sharpened chalk to fill them in.

I use an old lip pencil sharpener to sharpen regular old white chalk.  Keeping a nice sharp point on the chalk allows me to get a good outline using the stencil.

After I pull away the stencil I go back and connect lines, fill things in, or add a few more embellishments.

I added a couple of my favorite old black & white family photos to one of the shelves too.

So now the chalkboard looks a bit more finished.

Another tweak was to add this cute little chair to the corner of the room.

I mainly use this chair as a prop in furniture photos, but I put it in this spot to get it out of my way one day and ended up rather liking it there.

Finally, I did decide that the brass reading lamp I chose didn’t work in the room.

As much as I like the way it looks, it’s really a reading lamp and we need a lamp in this spot that lights up the entire room.

For now I’ve put my old chrome lamp back in that spot, but I swapped out the shade for this fabulous Light Reading shade.  If you’re from around here, and you want your own amazing lamp shade, it looks like Light Reading will be at Junk Bonanza again this spring, so be sure to look for them there.

This lamp shade looks positively amazing with my dark grey walls, but the chrome is out of place.  I plan to try spray painting the chrome gold as soon as it’s warm enough outside to spray paint.

In the meantime, we’ll just use it ‘as is’.

In other news, I found a little time this past weekend to paint a piece of furniture and I’ll be sharing it here on Wednesday so be sure to stay tuned!

Good news!  The q is for quandie IT department (ie. Mr. Q) came through with flying colors.  When I got home from the day job on Friday he had a new computer all set up and ready to go for me.

I’m up and running with no need for a stiff drink.  I took a quick hour or two on Saturday morning to give all of my functions a test drive.  Since we basically woke up to a winter wonderland here in the Twin Cities with another 5″ or so of fresh snow, it was a great opportunity to take some photos and then run through my entire blogging process from start to finish (when it doesn’t involve actually painting a piece of furniture) to make sure everything was running smoothly.

As I said to Mr. Q , it was nice that it was only 4 degrees on Saturday morning because that meant the snow was really light and fluffy (which makes it easy to shovel).

And the sun just coming up lent the perfect light for taking a few photos.

Poor Cossetta, she is thigh-deep in snow these days.

I hope her feet aren’t too cold.

Looks like we won’t be grilling steaks any time soon.

I really wish I had a piece of furniture finished because it would be so fun to do an outside photo shoot in these conditions.

Remember this one?

Of course, that was a ‘before’ instead of an ‘after’.

But alas, my furniture painting has been on hold lately while I work on revamping my living room and piano room.  I’m itching to get something painted though, so I may take a break from the revamp and paint a dresser this coming weekend.  I still haven’t worked up the nerve to tackle my piano.

In the meantime, I’m just going to go get a fresh cup of coffee and enjoy this gorgeous snow.

Check back on Wednesday to hear about the final port of call on our Adriatic Cruise, Venice (ie. one of my favorite cities, but then I say that about most of the cities I’ve been to).

Are you a fan of the french farmhouse look?  I know I am.  But today I’m talking about an entirely different kind of french farmhouse fan!  It’s a french farmhouse ceiling fan.

I know, I know.  Ceiling fans are no longer ‘in’.

If you are lucky enough to live in a house with central air conditioning, you really don’t have much need for a ceiling fan.  However, we live in a 1904 farmhouse with hot water heat.  In other words, we have radiators and we do not have duct work.  And we have a boiler rather than a furnace.  Putting in central a/c is a bit more complicated if you don’t have existing ducts to deliver the cool air throughout your house.

So, we don’t have central a/c and ceiling fans can make all the difference on hot summer days at our house.  Especially in the room that I call the piano room.  This room is right in the center of our lower level.  It’s also the room where we install a window a/c unit in the summer, so we need to move that cool air around and a ceiling fan is the best way to do it.

Our old ceiling fan still worked quite well, but it was dated.

I can’t really remember how long ago we put this particular one in here, but I suspect it was at least 15 years ago or more.  I thought it was fabulous at the time.  I thought my tomato red walls were pretty amazing too, but they didn’t last nearly as long as the fan.

Anyway, not only was the fan dated looking but those wicker fan blades were difficult to clean.

I began my search for a new fan online and found some gorgeous options that were priced in the $400 and up range, like this one …

But I didn’t want to spend that much.

When my sister and I were out shopping for furniture a couple of weekends ago, we stopped off at our local Menards store on the way home and I found this fan.

It was on sale for $149.99, so I nabbed it.

I liked the fact that the globes sort of look like canning jars giving it a bit of a farmhouse feel.

It wasn’t until we had the fixture installed and I was washing up the globes before putting them on that it occurred to me that it would be pretty easy to add a little more personality to them with some rub on transfers.  Plus, I just happened to have a couple of remnants from my IOD Le Petit Rosier transfer that would perfectly fit the three globes.

This was definitely a bit of an experiment.  I wasn’t sure if the transfers would look good on the glass.  So I started with just one.  I figured if I hated it, it would be easier to scrape a transfer off just one globe rather than three.

But I loved it.  Of course I did.

The transfers added just a little bit of extra personality to an ‘out of the box’ plain ceiling fan.

Now, I have no idea how well the transfers will hold up over time or whether or not the heat given off by the bulb will cause them to deteriorate in some way.  But worst case scenario we have to swap out the globes down the road.  That’s fairly easy and cheap.

I will also admit that this little detail isn’t earth shattering and I suspect a fair number of the people who visit our home won’t even notice it.

But I get a kick out of it every time I walk through the room.

And it was a super simple and inexpensive way to add a little french-ness to this farmhouse fan.

By the way, if you look really closely at that picture above you can see how high the snow bank is on the side of our driveway.  It’s almost all the way to the top of our privacy fence.  Can you see it (look just above the plants on the ledge)?  Ha!  This stuff is going to take forever to melt if it ever does warm up.

Anyway, if you’re keeping track, that’s the 4th item on my magic wand decorating list checked off.  I still have to paint that piano and the walls in this room.

I’m not gonna lie, I really keep procrastinating when it comes to painting the piano.  That’s going to be a big job, and will probably be last on the list.  But like the little engine that could, ‘I think I can, I think I can’.

In other news, eeeeekkkkkk!!  My computer died.  Since techie stuff like replacing a computer drives me to drink, I’m not sure how quickly we’ll get a new one up and running.  I’m sure I will be spending a good chunk of the weekend on that (the computer, not the drinking … well, maybe both).  So don’t panic if I don’t have a post on Monday.  Or Tuesday.  Or all of next week.  Hopefully I’ll be back up and running soon though.  Wish me luck!

Did I mention that Mr. Q and I were adding an exercise room to our house?

Just kidding, because of course we aren’t.  Obviously if I really had that much extra square footage it would be devoted to a furniture painting studio not exercise.  But we had the living room mostly empty in anticipation of our furniture delivery on Saturday, all that remained was the TV.   Seeing so much space in the room, I said to Mr. Q ‘hey, this would make a perfect exercise room now!’  Plenty of room to stretch out while doing my favorite Leslie Sansone Burn to the Beat video.

One of the downsides of an older home, the rooms are all fairly small and there isn’t a lot of space to spread out.

Before we bring in the new sofa, I thought this would be a good opportunity to show you what we’re working with.  Our living room is about 11′ x 14′.  Those three windows above face north (and onto the front enclosed porch) and the single window faces east.  The west wall is mostly open to the front hall, and the south wall where I’m standing taking the photo is mostly open to the piano room.  The cable for the TV is in the southwest corner, so the TV is pretty much stuck there.  Not that I can think of a better location for it.

That pretty much leaves me with the space shown above for furniture placement.  During the first decade of living in this house I was determined to re-arrange our furniture on a regular basis (I just love the feeling you get from a freshly arranged room, don’t you?).  There are only two possibilities for a traditional sofa, in front of the radiator or in front of the single window.  As much as I wanted it to work, putting the sofa in front of the radiator just made the room feel long and narrow, like a bowling alley.  That left just the one spot that really worked for the sofa, on that wall to the right.  Adding a chair that faced the sofa meant that the chair had to be rotated for watching the TV.

Factoring all of that in, we decided it was time to consider a sectional.  It seemed like the most functional way to use our limited space and layout.

We can comfortably fit four people on this piece, and now that my sister and niece live in Minnesota we need to have seating for 4 much more often.  And when it’s just the two of us, we can both stretch out comfortably and watch TV.

This sectional came in umpteen bazillion different configurations.  In fact, I think “Popular Configurations:  217” means you can use the available pieces in 217 different ways.

We went with the smallest version, a right angle with a 87″ section on either side of a square corner.  We could have used a ‘wedge’ section to connect them but that added another 13″ in length to each side.  In other words, it would have left only about 2″ to spare on the east wall.  So, while it would have added a spot for a fifth person to sit, I think it would have overwhelmed our space.

For a visual, here is a picture of a configuration using the wedge in the store …

You can really see just how big that wedge is.  I have to admit, it was super comfy and I would have loved it for that reason.  But not only did I think it was too big this way, but I thought that wedge made it look kind of ’90’s sectional’ if you know what I mean.

Here is the store example with the square corner.

It felt a little more tailored looking to me, and it was still plenty roomy for two, and even four people.

We paid an extra $100 to get the white glove delivery service from Macy’s.  But then we got $100 off for opening a new Macy’s charge card (even though we already have one, which seems odd to me but my sister tells me that you can have up to three different Home Depot cards too, so go figure).  Anyway, that made the extra delivery charge a bit of a wash.

The white glove delivery was pretty much amazing.

These guys obviously knew what they were doing and were in and out of my house in less than 30 minutes.  And you should have seen them backing their giant truck down my narrow driveway with 3′ snowbanks on either side.  They took their shoes off, which I totally appreciated.  Then they unwrapped everything, set it all up and took the packaging away with them.  They even offered to wipe up the bit of wet floor by the door, but I sent them on their way.  I could handle that part myself!

For now we are going to try going without a coffee table or ottoman in front of the sectional.  I like how open it makes the room feel.  Plus, although I was joking about the exercise room, I really do exercise in this space so it will be nice to not have to move a piece of furniture every time I want to do that.

One side of the sectional has the entire shelf above the radiator behind it, and I stacked some vintage suitcases on the other end so we have somewhere to set drinks.

I also replaced two of the matching throw pillows that were included with my favorite Restoration Hardware pillows.

The sectional itself is very neutral and has very traditional lines.  I’m adding my own personality to the room with things like throw pillows, the items on the shelves and the stack of suitcases.  This way when I get tired of my Black Locust walls and want to lighten up or just completely change colors I can do that without having to change out the largest and most expensive item in the room.

 I also added a couple of new lamps from Target to the room.  We mounted this one to the bookcase and it will allow me to read while sitting in the corner of the sectional.

I’m a little on the fence about the other lamp.  It looks good, but it’s another lamp that just works for task lighting.  It doesn’t light up the room.  I’m probably going to swap it out for something else.

As a reminder, here was my ‘magic wand decorating‘ plan.

1.  repaint the insides of the bookshelves in the living room
2.  repaint the living room walls
3.  replace the living room furniture
4.  paint the baby grand piano
5.  replace the ceiling fan over the piano
6.  repaint the piano room walls

I’m officially halfway through!

I still have a little tweaking to do in this room.  I need to find something for the wall behind the TV, I will probably switch out that lamp, and I need to draw something on the chalkboard hanging over the sofa.  But for now we’re going to sit back on our new sectional, binge watch season 3 of The Tunnel, and enjoy the feeling of making progress on the list.

Step 2 of my magic wand decorating scheme was to paint my living room.  The biggest challenge was picking a color.  I don’t know about you, but I’m very seasonally motivated when it comes to color choices.  If it’s summer, I want to go all light and airy.

But in the winter I want warm, dark and cozy.  Especially when our temps are hitting ridiculous lows like the -27 F we had last week, or today’s ‘practically balmy by comparison’ -7.

Dark walls have really been on my radar lately.  First I saw Danielle’s home office makeover for her husband …

Gorgeous, right?  You can read all about that makeover on her blog Finding Silver Pennies.

Then my friend Meggan, a.k.a. the thrift doctor, emailed me to say that she painted her sun room walls black!

As a reminder, I shared a full tour of Meggan’s home back in 2015.  At that time her sun room had pale green walls.  But now they look like this …

The dark walls are perfect for showcasing her milk glass collection.

And as a sidebar, isn’t that cupboard fab?  It was free!  As Meggan says, nearly everything in her house was either free or is from the thrift store.  She painted the inside of the cupboard in a minty green and switched out the hardware, but otherwise left it ‘as is’.

I think Meggan’s dark walls are perfect for emphasizing the amazing view out her bay window too.

Isn’t that gorgeous?

So after seeing all of this fabulous inspiration, I decided to embrace the dark side in my living room.  I went to Home Depot thinking that I could easily pick out a deep, rich dark charcoal grey for my walls.  I started pulling out the little paint chips and every time I grabbed a different one, it totally changed the look of the last one.  I don’t know about you, but I find that even when I have a specific image in my head of the color I want, I have a lot of trouble finding it in the store.  The terrible lighting in most of the big box DIY stores doesn’t help either.

Over the years I have found that it’s wise to bring home some samples and test them on my own walls and at various times of day to make sure I get the color I really want.

The Home Depot paint guy recommended I try these Sure Swatch thingies for that.

Instead of painting your test swatches right on the wall, you paint this 9″ x 12″ film and the temporary adhesive back allows you to move it around to different locations on your wall to see how it looks.  For example, you can see how it looks next to the window trim, and then how it looks on the wall that gets the most sun, or maybe the wall that is next to the bookcase.  You get the idea.  They were quite convenient, except I moved them around so much that the sticky back lost most of its stick-ability.

After studying them in various lighting conditions, I was surprised to find that I liked the color called Black Locust (Behr) best.  I thought for sure I was going to go with Grey Tabby (PPG) while I was in the store.  But I really loved the depth of the Black Locust.

Next came the easy part, first I coerced Mr. Q into sanding the edges of the existing horizontal stripes on the walls.

Today’s q-tip:  If you have taped off stripes on your walls, there will be ridges in the paint wherever it met the tape.  You absolutely must sand those down smooth before repainting your walls or you will see those lines.

Then I coerced my bff, Vonda, to come over and help me paint!

Jobs like this always go so much faster when you have some company.

We were done in no time!  The paint covered really beautifully.  We did only one coat of cutting in and two coats of rolling.

You guys, I absolutely LOVE this color!  And it works beautifully with my existing pale blue ceiling and front hallway color.

It didn’t take me long to realize that the farmer’s market sign from my dining room would look amazing hanging above that archway instead.  I made that using a cast off side rail from a bed.

My newly styled bookshelves really become a focal point in the room with the dark walls, although it was a little difficult to get a good picture of them on a gloomy day.

So, the last remaining item to take care of in this room is buying new furniture.  My old stuff is in terrible condition and has needed to be replaced for years now.  I have an idea of what I want but need to find the time to get out there and see if I can find it.  Then I suspect I’ll have to order it and wait 2 years for it to arrive!  So you’ll have to be patient and wait for the final reveal of this room.

In the meantime, I’m going to move on to the next room and see if I can get some of that tackled.

But first, tell me, have you embraced the dark side at your house?

I’m sure that many of you are familiar with Liz Galvan’s blog, Liz Marie Blog.  If not, you should definitely check it out.

I’m obsessed with her style.  I mentioned last week that I wish I had a magic wand for decorating and could just wave it and magically transform my house.  If I had that wand, I would wave it once and my whole house would now look like Liz’s house.

Not only do I love her style in general, but I also admire her bravery when it comes to things like painting all of her floors white.  I love that she doesn’t aim for perfection, or feel the need to spend a lot of money on every project.  Her recent staircase makeover is a case in point.

Well, as we’ve already established, I don’t have that magic wand so I’ve decided to start transforming my house in a more practical way, one step at a time.

Item no. 1 on my to-do list was repainting and restyling the built in bookcases in my living room.  I’ve totally taken my inspiration from Liz’s home office built in bookcases.

After all, my bookcases already had the bare bones in place.  They even have the same bead board backs.  They just needed a fresh coat of paint.  Here’s how they looked before.  White on the outside, and a blue green color on the inside.

By the way, have I ever mentioned that my handyman/neighbor Ken built these bookcases?  And he did it for the previous owners of my house.  I didn’t even know that until after we’d lived in our house for 20 years or so!  I always just assumed they were original to the house.

Anyway, they’ve undergone a couple of transformations since we’ve lived here.  The last one was a coat of blue-green paint on the insides that would showcase my pottery collection.

To prep the shelves, Mr. Q sanded them lightly all over for me and vacuumed up as much of the dust as possible.  Then I wiped them down with hot water and a cloth.

Next came two coats of Fusion’s Raw Silk (thank you Fusion for supplying the paint needed for this project).  It took most of two jars to paint the insides of the shelves along with the long shelf that sits on top of the radiator under the windows.

Fusion Mineral Paint is always my go-to paint for things like shelves.  It’s extremely durable and washable once cured.  It doesn’t require a topcoat, so less money spent on products and less time spent applying them.  I painted the plant ledge in my dining room window in Raw Silk two years ago and it has held up beautifully, even though it frequently gets wet and dirty.

I also decided to remove the wood corbels at the inner corner of each shelf and replace them with a rusty, crusty pair of metal brackets that I had on hand.  I found these at a garage sale several years ago and always intended to use them somewhere in my own house.

Luckily my bff was here helping me paint this weekend so I was able to have her and Mr. Q hold them in place so I could see how they would look before we installed them.

I gave the shelves a couple of days to dry thoroughly before putting things back in.  You need to give any type of paint time to cure to reach maximum hardness.  I find that is especially important for shelves that you’ll be putting lots of stuff on.  Total cure time for Fusion paint is 21 days, but surfaces can be gently used after 24 – 48 hours of dry time.

Next came the fun part.  I pulled out all of my black and white vintage goodies and started styling.

I brought in quite a few of my vintage cameras, as well as a couple of my vintage alarm clocks.

I returned most of my white pottery to the shelves as well.

I purchased this gorgeous old scale at Reclaiming Beautiful a while back and hadn’t quite found a home for it until now.

I added a few old family photos too.

I absolutely love the new look of these shelves, and now I can check off the first project on my magic wand decorating list!

Next on the list is painting the walls in the living room and as I mentioned, my bff came over to help me with that over the weekend.  I’ll be sharing their new look on Friday, so be sure to stay tuned!