Category: my house.

Last year I picked up several original oil paintings while out garage saling.

You may remember my faux Matisse.

I also found a lovely mid-mod painting of the what one of my readers identified as the Moulin Rouge in Paris.

And then most recently, I bought home this landscape from an estate sale.

Originally I was picking these up to resell, but then I decided I rather liked the idea of creating a gallery wall in the q branch using these paintings, and a few other things … like those crusty old paint brushes that I love.

So after I got my Globe Artichoke paint on the walls, I started laying out my gallery wall (FYI, turns out this is another good use for a baby grand piano).

I decided to also use a pair of small bamboo frames that I shared with you guys back in February 2021.  I had originally made up a couple of collages using old family letters and photos to fill them, and I painted them black.  But later I gave the frames a metallic look using Dixie Belle’s Bronze Gilding Wax.

But for my collage wall I wanted to turn them into small landscapes.  So I went on Etsy and purchased some downloadable painted landscape images.  It was simple to print them out, mount them on scrapbook paper and pop them into the frames.

I’m quite happy with how they turned out.

Last, but certainly not least, I had this old oil painting that my grandfather painted.

One of these days I may attempt to clean that painting.  Grandpa was a smoker, hence the yellow tinge to that sky.

It was unframed, but in a miraculous sort of way, I had an old frame on hand that fit it perfectly.

Aside from most of these things being original oil paintings, there wasn’t a whole lot else to unify them.  I’ve got a portrait, a city scape, and a handful of landscapes.  The frames ranged from a bit ornate, to simple barnwood.  I felt like I needed to find a way to tie them all together, so I repeated my use of the Bronze Gilding Wax on the frames.

You can use a brush to apply the wax, but I like to put on a latex glove and just use my finger.

For the barnwood frame, I just used the wax on the thin black wood trim that was around the outer edge of the frame.

It was a small change, but it toned down that black and helped this frame fit in with the others despite that rustic barnwood.

I know some people will cut out paper templates of their items and then tape them to the wall to get the placement right for a gallery wall, but I just winged it.  I started in the middle with the two small bamboo frames and then I worked up and out from there.  I will admit that I had to move a couple of nails after their initial placement to get it just right.  But I’m not someone who gets squeamish about nail holes in the wall.  I just fill them and touch up the paint, easy peasy.

If any of you also have plaster walls, I’ll share my favorite Martha Stewart tip for putting nails into plaster.  Place a small piece of scotch tape where the nail is going to go and then pound in your nail.

This helps keep your plaster from crumbling.  I have my own secondary tip, which is to fold over one edge of the tape onto itself for easy removal later should you ever decide to repaint your walls.

Another tip for anyone with less than smooth walls is to always use flat paint.  If your paint has a sheen it will highlight all of those imperfections.  Flat paint tends to be less washable than eggshell or satin though.

I absolutely love how my gallery wall turned out.

And I created it for under $50 total.  Pretty much every item came from a garage sale (except Grandpa’s painting, and the downloaded prints).

Next up for this room is finding a rug.  It’s a little tricky because a square rug will work best and there aren’t a ton of square options out there.  I’ve found one at Wayfair that I think will work, but I’m really nervous about ordering a rug online.  So often items ordered online look nothing like their photo on a computer screen.  Have any of you ever ordered rugs from Wayfair?  Or do you have another recommendation for finding a square rug?  If so, leave me a comment and let me know.

Mr. Q and I have lived in our house for a little over 35 years.  That’s a long time, I know.

When we first bought it in 1988 we considered it a ‘starter home’ and planned to build equity for a few years and then move on to something bigger and better.

Instead, we fell in love with this house, despite the really drafty windows, the treacherous basement stairs and the world’s smallest bathroom.  Even now I can’t imagine how we’ll ever be able to sell this house, whenever it comes to that.

But I digress, this post is actually about making over the q branch, which is what I call my study … or the room where I write this blog.  I only brought up how long we’ve been in this house to explain why this will be the 5th time I’ve painted this room!

Let’s review, shall we?

First, let me back up for a minute and describe the room.  It is a small, square-ish room that is just off the piano room … or what was originally the formal dining room.  It doesn’t have a closet, and it doesn’t have a door.  It has a wide arched opening into the piano room.

I often wonder what the original purpose of the room was back in 1904 when our house was built.  It may have had a regular door back then, I’m fairly sure that the wide, arched openings between this room, the piano room, the living room and the front hall are not original.  And in fact, we added the one between the kitchen and the piano room.  So it’s possible this room was intended to be a small, main floor bedroom for someone who couldn’t do the stairs … an elderly parent perhaps?  I’ve also often wondered if it was originally a small kitchen of some kind, before the house had indoor plumbing.

Regardless of its original purpose, I struggled for years to create an identity for the room.

The first use we came up with was as a space to display my dollhouse.  My dad made the dollhouse for me when he retired early, and I sure can understand why he made it so elaborate now that I’m also retired! He had some time on his hands.

I papered the room in a mauve and cream pinstripe paper, and painted all of the trim in a matching dark mauve.  Here’s the only photo I could find from that look.

Ugh!  I can’t believe I once liked that look!  Remember balloon shades?  LOL, what can I say?  It was the 90’s.

Next I went through my ‘red phase’.  I painted the living room and piano room walls red.  That definitely didn’t work with the mauve, or with the big pink dollhouse.  So the dollhouse got moved upstairs and then …for some unknow reason I decided to paint the room brown!  Can you imagine?  Brown?!

Well, you don’t have to imagine, here’s a really bad quality photo …

Yikes!  Not much better than the mauve.

The room still didn’t have an identity at that point and we never actually used it for anything.

But then I decided that I needed a home office/craft room and the room underwent makeover number 3.  I painted the walls chartreuse, and the trim went back to white.

Yep, bright green walls with black furniture.  I loved it for a while, until I didn’t anymore.

The next transformation was when the q branch’s identity became fully formed.  I once again painted the walls, this time in what I thought was a neutral greige, but was really more just plain beige, and I painted the ceiling a very pale blue.

That was back in 2015.  Since then I’d made a few changes to the furniture, bringing in my English cupboard …

and most recently, changing out my desk.

I have to say, I never really loved that wall color.  I often admire the all-white, pale neutral sort of look in other people’s spaces, it can work well if there are a variety of shades ranging from pale greige to creamy white, and a variety of textures.  But somehow it never quite works for me.

So after 9 years of that look, it was time to change it up again.

The first step was to pick a new wall color.  I’d been drooling over dramatic shades of dark green over on pinterest, so I went to Home Depot and looked through the paint colors.  I picked out a color called Alfalfa Extract, it looked perfect.

So I had them mix up a color sample jar for me and I brought it home.

I painted up a Sure Swatch paintable test swatch and put it on the wall.  Then I studied it under different lighting conditions.  That was when I realized that the room is pretty dark.  It has west facing windows, but there is a tall arborvitae hedge just a few feet from the windows.  It’s great for providing privacy, but it also blocks a lot of light.

The color that looked perfect in the brightly lit store was too dark for this room.  Even after waiting almost a week for a bright sunny day to light it up, it was still too dark.

So then I went to Menards and picked up a couple more options.  The first of these was so close to the Alfalfa Extract that I didn’t even bother to put up the swatch, but the 2nd was a bit lighter and also a bit more olive.

When I first painted up the Sure Swatch with Globe Artichoke I thought for sure that it was not going to be the right color.  It was too light, and way more olive than I thought I wanted.  But I painted the swatch in the piano room, which gets a lot more light.  When I put the swatch on the wall in the q branch (these swatches have a post-it note like stickiness on the back), I realized that it was exactly what I was looking for.

The moral of my story?  You really need to test paint colors in the room you’ll be using them in before making a decision.  If I have learned anything after painting, and re-painting, the rooms in our house for 35 years, this is it.  So many factors can influence how a color looks on your walls; natural light, artificial lighting, floor color, and/or ceiling color.

So once my color was chosen, I spent a couple of days last week painting the walls of the q branch in Globe Artichoke.

And I love it!  The pine cupboard really pops against the rich deep olive, as does my desk.

You may have noticed that I did not paint the radiator pipes that go up the wall in the corner behind the desk.  That’s because the temps were below zero outside, so those pipes were too hot to paint.  Ditto behind the radiator itself.  I’ll have to save those areas for warmer days, and that may be sooner than I thought since they are predicting temps in the 40’s for next week.

I also think I’m going to want to repaint the ceiling now.  The pale blue isn’t quite right with the green, I think it needs to go back to white.  I am on the hunt for a new desk lamp (I think the current one is too small), a possibly a new chair and/or rug.  I also want to find some olive green throw pillows for the living room sofa so that I can tie in a bit of this wall color out there too.

One last thing for today, I wanted to mention that I did all of the cutting in along both the crown molding and baseboard without any taping.  I used the Zibra Triangle brush and it worked beautifully.

So if you have any rooms to paint, you might want to consider picking one up.  I purchased mine at Home Depot.  Now I just have to get it clean after all of that hard work!

OK, so I’m a little afraid to ask what you guys think of this color.  I know dark walls aren’t for everyone, but I seem to be drawn to them.  What do you think?

Well, shucks.  I’m continuing to work on long overdue maintenance projects at our house, which means that once again this week I don’t have any blog fodder to speak of.

But I thought I’d share what I’ve been doing, just for the heck of it.

First up, I decided to clean up our curb appeal.

We have a small … porch? … stoop? … deck? … step? … not sure what to call it, at the front door of our three season porch.  It’s really just a simple box with decking boards on top that sits on the ground.

To be honest, I’m not sure we’ve ever cleaned the decking.  Surely we must have done it once or twice in the 30+ years we’ve lived here, right?  But I don’t recall when.  Clearly it has been a long time.

  LOL, seriously you guys.  I should probably be embarrassed to even show that.  But just look at the amazing difference a little pressure washing can make!

After a good washing, I repainted the sides in our house color and then added the same sealer to the top that we used on our deck earlier this summer.

So far I’m impressed with the way this is working on the deck, it adds some protection from the weather without changing the natural look of the wood much.  It also soaks into the wood rather than sitting on top of it, so it won’t peel off.

It had rained overnight when I took that photo, so ignore the puddling water on two of the boards.  But truly, I can’t believe what good shape those boards are still in after 35 years.  I’m not sure that you can even get boards that thick and wide anymore.

As you can see, I also painted the front door in my new outdoor green accent color that I’m calling English Green.

Next to the small porch, stoop, step thingie is a Limelight hydrangea that has been there for I suppose about 10 years or so.  It’s really outgrown the space, but I can’t bear to pull it out so instead I give it a massive pruning every spring.  This year I decided to also limb it up from the ground to make it look more like a standard.

That revealed a bunch of space underneath for a new garden.

I tried to fill it in without having to purchase any new plants.  I divided a Guacamole hosta and a May hosta from other areas and put them in here.  I moved some Chocolate Snakeroot from another garden, and also pulled some heuchera from another spot.  The bright green lamium was already growing under the hydrangea.  The only new plant is the taller hosta in the corner (left in above photo), which is a Krossa Regal.

Here’s the front of the house, all spruced up.

Some of you with eagle eyes may have noticed that I’ve made a change or two to the front window box since I last posted about it.  I pulled out the coral colored begonias and replaced them with a white caladium.  The color of those begonias was all wrong with the rest of the deep pinks in that area, plus they were getting totally swallowed up by the other plants.

The caladium is at least holding its own.

With the front of the house looking pretty good, I turned my attention to the back.

We had a lot of peeling paint on the south facing back side of our house.  Repainting it was on our to-do list last summer and we never got around to it.  So I was determined to make it a priority this year.

As I’m sure many of you know, it’s not the painting itself that’s difficult, it’s the prep work.

Ugh!  There was a fair bit of time spent scraping that peeling paint.

I decided it would be easier to break the job down into sections that wouldn’t be too overwhelming.  So for now, I’ve completed the back wall …

And it looks amazing!  Such an improvement.  It has inspired me to keep going, so I plan to get another section of the house done yet this summer, and possibly also the potting shed.  We’ll see how that goes.

In the meantime, I’m stepping away from home improvement for a bit to finish up not just one, but two pieces of furniture.  So be sure to stay tuned for those!

I know it probably seems like I haven’t done much lately in the way of furniture makeovers, and that’s true.  It’s mainly because I’ve been busy with other things, like gardening, garage saling and a deck refresh.

Our deck was starting to look a bit shabby, and when I put my foot through one of the boards this spring I realized it was more than time to freshen things up a bit.

Just for fun, here’s what our deck looked like prior to 2009.

OMG you guys!  Does it look like a jumbled up mess or what?  I know I loved that pergola at the time, but looking back it was just too much.  In the end that grapevine that was trained up the pergola attracted both racoons and Japanese beetles.  It had to go.

Anyway, we replaced that with our current deck back in 2009.  Here’s how the replacement looked when it was brand new.

Phew!  Much cleaner.  We did make it just a tiny bit larger, but it looks so much more opened up without that pergola.

Fast forward 14 years and that brings us to me putting my foot through a board.  It was high time for a refresh.

I had already started with the English racing green paint job on the Adirondack chairs that Ken made for us.  The next step was to replace that rotted board, and some rotted boards on the steps.  Ken helped out with that task too.  The hardest part was getting the screws out of the old boards, they did not want to come out.

But we eventually got them up and pieced in the new board.

It’s going to stand out like a sore thumb for a while, but eventually it should blend in.

We have taken a couple of steps to prevent further boards from rotting.  The first was to have gutters installed all around the roofline over the deck when we did our roof last summer.  The spot that was rotted just happened to be right under the spot where an old gutter stopped short before the the end of the deck.  So when it rained, water poured down right on that area.

The next step was to add a protective coating to the wood this year.  You can sort of see how the decking was looking underneath the chair in this photo.

It was very grey, and very dirty.  I assume that black stuff is mildew.  In case you’re wondering, the last time we cleaned the deck was in 2019, so this is 4 years of dirt.

So we borrowed our neighbor, nnK’s, pressure washer and gave the deck a good cleaning.  Then after waiting a couple of days for it to dry out thoroughly, we applied a product called TWP, or Total Wood Protectant, in clear.

Sure, we could have chosen a tinted version of this product to help that new board blend in, but in the past we have found that those tinted options tend to look kind of awful pretty quickly as they get dinged up.  Our deck sees a lot of traffic year round because this is where we come and go from our house.  We wanted to protect the wood, but not add a product that would peel or show excessive wear over time (been there, done that).  And in addition, we really rather liked the natural color of the wood.

TWP is an oil-based product that penetrates the wood rather than forming a film on top that can peel.  At least, that’s what the paint guy at Fleet Farm said.  He claims that he put it on his parent’s deck three years ago and it still looks good.

I’ll have to report back on how it wears over time, but I can say that it looks fantastic right now.

We are planning to be more diligent about keeping snow cleared off the deck next winter in an effort to keep it looking good longer too, but we’ll see how that goes.  We certainly didn’t accomplish that last winter!

Next came sprucing up the table and chairs.  We’ve had this set since we replaced the deck back in 2009, so it’s 14 years old.  As you can see above, we don’t leave it out in the winter and I think that has helped prolong its life.

It was definitely starting to show its age though.  Step one was giving the tabletop a fresh coat of paint.  There were a couple of spots where the paint was starting to chip and bubble, so I sanded those down and then sprayed the table with Rust-Oleum’s Metallic Oil Rubbed Bronze spray paint.

It was almost a perfect match for the original color of the table, and now it looks like new again.

Next came giving the chairs a much needed refresh.  Over time quite a few of the vinyl straps that support the cushions had deteriorated.  So I ordered some replacement vinyl strapping via Amazon.

Now, I have to tell you, it was quite the production to replace these straps.

If I had read the directions before purchasing the strapping I’m not sure that I would have wanted to tackle it.  Basically, you have to heat the vinyl to get it warmed up enough to fully stretch out, then quickly attach it to the frame with those plastic rivets before it cools down.  As it cools, it tightens back up enough to provide the needed support.  The recommendation on the packaging for the heating process was to boil the strapping in a pot of water!  Then handle it using heat proof gloves of some kind so it doesn’t burn you.

Um, yeah, right.

This was another job that Ken helped out with, and instead of boiling water, we heated the strapping with a heat gun.  It took both of us to attach the strapping on one end, then heat it with the heat gun while also pulling it as taut as possible using a pliers to hold the other end, and then somehow wrangle it into place and attach it on the other end.  Honestly, it was a very frustrating process.

But we got ‘er done.  And really, what was the alternative?  Send these chairs to the landfill?  That seems like it would be a shame.

That left one final issue, the original cushions had gotten rather flat over time.  I looked and looked for replacement cushions that would be nice and full and never really found anything I liked.  So instead, I purchase some inexpensive cushions from Menards and simply added them to the existing cushions inside of the slipcovers that my friend Sue made for me years ago.

The slip covers were always a bit roomy, so fitting a second cushion in them was easy enough.  Now they are super thick and cushy.

The great thing about these slipcovers is that they are washable, so I threw them in the wash quick before putting them back on.  Same with the throw pillows.

You can read more about the slipcovers in this post from 2019 when Sue initially made them for me.

The Adirondack chairs were already painted and my new Flower Market sign was in place on the other side of the deck.

That just leaves the fun stuff, filling this year’s planters.  I’ve placed three of my faux rusty pots (learn how I created my faux rusty pots here) in the one corner of our deck that still gets a fair amount of sun so I can fill them with some sun loving annuals.

I once again chose to start with Proven Winner’s Mini Vista Indigo petunias.  I purchased them for the first time last summer and absolutely fell in love with them.

Isn’t that color gorgeous?

I added in this verbena …

Seriously, how could anyone resist a lilac and white striped flower?  That is another Proven Winners plant, the Superbena Stormburst.

I also have added some white bacopa, some purple salvia and a pink gomphrena.

I realized last year that the two pots that flank the stairs are mostly in the shade now, so I went with some more shade tolerant choices in those.

There is a heuchera, a small ivy and the purple flower is a Summer Wave torenia.  This is the first time I’ve used this particular annual and so far I have to say it looks great.

Now all that’s left is to mix up a Cosmo and enjoy a lovely summer evening sitting on the deck.

Phew!  It’s always good to have a big project like this tackled.

How about you, do you have any big summer projects lined up?  Leave a comment and let me know.

Do you suffer from home décor blindness?

I definitely do.

What is it?  Well, that’s what I’m calling it when you’ve had your existing décor around long enough that you’ve grown blind to it.  You just don’t see it anymore.  It doesn’t necessarily have to be bad or outdated, it’s just that you’ve had it for a while and you no longer notice it.  That means it’s time to start changing things up a bit.

Such was the case with the mirror frame chalkboard that I had in my living room.

I painted this up back in October 2017, and eventually got around to adding a chalked design to it and hanging it over our sofa in March 2019.

But lately I’ve become rather blind to it.  I think it’s time for a new look on that wall, one that will incorporate that fabulous gold framed mirror I found at the Goodwill recently.

So I took the chalkboard down and decided to give it a refresh.

First I removed the chalkboard from the frame.  I gave the frame a good cleaning, followed by a fresh coat of clear wax.

Then I lightly sanded the chalkboard with some 220 grit sandpaper, cleaned off the resulting dust and re-painted it.  Last time I used Homestead House milk paint in Bayberry, which turned out to be the perfect chalkboard green.  But I decided to go back to a black chalkboard this time around, and thus I painted it with Dixie Belle’s Midnight Sky.

Today’s q tip;  both milk paint and chalk paint left bare (no top coat) make great chalkboards!

I gave it two coats of watered down Midnight Sky, and I sanded lightly in between coats.  I find that this is the best way to keep your chalkboard surface nice and smooth.  I also sanded lightly after the final coat was dry.

Then I waited a couple of hours to give the paint a little time to cure and harden up, then I seasoned the chalkboard by rubbing chalk all over it and then wiping it away.

Seasoning your chalkboard eliminates that ‘new’ look and makes your chalkboard look legit.  It also makes it easier to wipe away anything you later write on the board without leaving marks behind.  I can vouch for that because the final result that you’ll see in a minute is actually ‘take two’ (or would it actually be ‘take three’?) for this chalkboard.  The first time around I didn’t like the placement of my wording.  So I wiped it all off with a damp rag, re-seasoned the chalkboard and started over.

Now, I don’t know about you, but I really don’t like my own handwriting.  So I like to cheat a little when writing on a chalkboard.

In this case I pulled out my two newest flower market themed stencils from Wallcutz.  Then I used a chalk pencil to lightly outline my chosen wording onto the chalkboard.

Then I went back over those fine lines with a sharpened piece of regular chalk.

The cursive writing from their Fresh Flower Market stencil was perfect for my chalkboard …

as were the flower names …

The “BLOOMS, SEEDS, STEMS” writing at the bottom is from the Flower Market – Open ‘Til Dusk stencil.

And just like that, the chalkboard has a fresh new look for spring.

I’m still debating whether to put it somewhere else in our house, or to take it into the shop.  Or perhaps one of my locals wants to snatch it up (in which case, be sure to check out my ‘available for local sale‘ page for more details).

P.S. in case you are wondering, all of that white outside the window?  Yep, that’s still snow.  Those windows look out on Ken & Arlene’s north-ish facing front yard, and that’s one of the last areas to lose its snow cover in the spring.  Surely it will melt soon though, right?

Anyway, back to the chalkboard.

Even though I love how it turned out, I’m leaning towards selling it because that will force me to be on the hunt for some new things for our house that I’m not quite so blind to.

How about you?  Do you suffer from home décor blindness?  Leave a comment and let me know that I’m not alone.