Category: my house.

Hey, any of you guys feel like you’re the only one who doesn’t get projects completed very quickly around your house?  Well, you are definitely not alone.  In fact, I may just be the poster child for unfinished projects.

Three years ago I posted about wanting to spruce up my front hallway and stairs.  I started a pinterest board (because isn’t that the way you start every project?) and Mr. Q starting ripping out the carpet.

Once the carpet was out, it looked like this.

And I’m embarrassed to admit that it stayed this way for well over two years!

I managed to get the risers and the baseboard painted last fall, and that was definitely an improvement.

But the treads still looked like this.

One of the factors that contributed to my procrastination on this project was the inability to make up my mind.  Numbered stairs?  Grain sack striped stairs?  Wallpapered risers?  All fun ideas, but I just wasn’t sure.

In the end I really just wanted old farmhouse stairs, maybe with a fun twist.

And I wanted worn looking stairs.  I love old stairs where the paint is worn away from years and years of use.

So in the end I decided to paint the treads with black milk paint (in this case, Miss Mustard Seed’s Typewriter), and I finally got around to doing exactly that last weekend.

I think it will be interesting to see how the milk paint wears over time.  Also, I was originally planning to put black wax over them, but quickly realized I didn’t have enough black wax on hand.  So instead I used hemp oil.  I know that hemp oil is not going to provide a lot of protection, and I’ll definitely have to re-apply at some point.  But I’m OK with experimenting a little and seeing how it goes.  I may end up ordering some more black wax and adding that over the hemp oil.  Ha, ha, is anyone else rolling their eyes?  Do you really think I’ll get around to doing that when it took me three years to get this far?

Maybe not.

But in the meantime, after I got the treads painted and oiled I decided I needed to add a little bit of quirky fun.  So I got out my Cricut and some black vinyl and added a simple message.

The nice thing about the vinyl is that it’s removable.  So if I get tired of this (or come up with a better idea), I can just take it right off.

But for now I kinda love it.

Isn’t it amazing what you can do with a little paint, some vinyl letters and three years?!

You might think that you’re about to read a blog post about some fun and creative project.  But no, I’m actually going to tell you about my window repair which wasn’t much fun but we did have to get a little creative in the end.

Remember way back to the summer of 2015 when I told you that I was making over my dining room?  Yeah, it’s still not quite done.  It’s almost done, but not quite.  One of the big hold ups was the windows.

As a reminder here is how they looked before …

They don’t look so bad in this photo, but if you look closer you can see that trim needs new paint and the window on the right doesn’t have a screen.

I’ve mentioned before that my dining room was an addition built by the previous owner of my home.  The windows are a bit wonky.  They are sort of just cobbled into place and aren’t centered between the two 6″ x 6″ posts that are on either side.  Over time the storm/screen combos and the outside trim boards had started to rot.  Then this spring a bird decided that pecking away at those soft spots was a super fun hobby.  He pecked huge holes in a couple of the trim boards (sorry, I didn’t get a photo of that).  In addition that right side storm/screen had completely fallen apart.  At that point we knew we had to stop procrastinating and deal with the problem.  Plus re-doing these windows entirely, centering them and maybe even eliminating that big trim piece down the center would be a nice improvement so why not just get ‘er done.

In early summer we ‘hired’ (it was just a verbal agreement) a handyman who’d done some work for us before to replace the windows.  He had a busy summer though and thus forgot all about our small window job.  About mid-August I started to panic when I realized he wasn’t going to get to us and we needed another solution.  So we called Renewal by Andersen.

Now before I go further, full disclosure, Mr. Q worked for Andersen Corp. for almost 30 years.  We have been fully brainwashed to believe they are the best windows on the planet.  They also aren’t cheap.  We expected that.  However, when the quote to replace two windows came in at over $6,400 dollars I believe I snorted coffee out through my nose.

Let’s see … new windows or a trip to Belgium next year?  Which is it going to be? That’s a no-brainer, right?

We could have kept shopping around for a cheaper solution, but any way you cut it, replacing custom sized windows and re-building the cobbled together framing was not going to be cheap.

If you’ve read my blog for very long, I’m wondering if you can already guess who came to our rescue.  Ken!  Of course!  With his Ken-do attitude.

Since the windows themselves were still fully functional, it was really just the trim and screens that needed work.  Ken got busy and re-built screens to fit our windows.  He used parts of the existing screen framing and added new pieces where necessary.  Then he replaced the rotted exterior trim with new boards and I painted them to match the existing trim.

Of course, the repairs that Ken did aren’t going to improve our r-value like new Andersen windows would have (although he did add some new insulation to the surrounding framing).  But I did the math, I estimated that it would have taken well over 30 years to save enough money on our heating bill to pay for those $6,400 windows!

In the Q household a trip to Belgium trumps high quality windows every time and unfortunately we can’t afford both.  When Mr. Q and I are sitting in the old folks home reflecting back on our life are we going to regret not spending money on quality windows?  Or are we going to remember how much we enjoyed that trip?

Once the repair work was done, I could focus on the last step, paint.  If you check back to that ‘before’ photo above, the inside trim was painted in a gold-ish color.  As part of my campaign to make my dining room seem lighter, I repainted the trim white.

And by the way, I used one of Fusion’s new colors called Raw Silk (the same color I used on the pumpkin I posted on Monday).  This is the first time I’ve used Fusion paint on trim work.  It occurred to me that it was the perfect product for the job.  Once cured it should be waterproof.

You see, I’m planning a little winter window garden for this spot so ‘waterproof’ would be a good thing.  I found this amazing giant wood tool box at a sale this summer.

 I stenciled it with a french garden stencil and I’ve added some re-potted white geraniums and some lavender plants that I want to over-winter.

Whether or not these plants will do well over the winter is yet to be seen, but I figured it was worth a shot.  This window faces south and gets great light.

Although I put everything in the window for my photos, I then took it all back out again.  I want to give the Fusion paint that chance to cure before adding heavy items.  I’ll put everything back in a couple of weeks.  But just to give you an idea of how it will look …

What’s left in the dining room?  Stripping wallpaper on either side of the window (yep, that’s wallpaper on those walls), painting those white, and then coming up with something amazing for the opposite wall.  I’m still working on that plan.  It may take another year, we’ll see.

But in the meantime, which would you pick?  Fancy new windows or a trip to Belgium?  Who’s with me on that one?

 

 

Up until last winter, I had this black waterfall buffet in my dining room.

I really liked this piece, and I loved the suitcases stacked in the center section.  But I was struggling with how dark the room was.  And that back wall was especially dark, so the big black buffet sort of created a decorating black hole.

When I made the decision to spruce up the dining room, I thought bringing in white furniture would help lighten up the room.  I wanted to use the hutch that I painted way back in December 2013.

I originally took this hutch to the Round Barn to sell, and it never sold.  So when Lori decided to close up shop, I brought it back home.  I didn’t mind that it hadn’t sold, because I really love it.  I thought it was a sign that I should keep it.  So I sold the black waterfall buffet and put this one in its place.

Can you see the problem though?  Here, this picture makes it more obvious …

That poor thing was just lost on that wall.  The scale was all wrong.  I tried to add some visual size with the plates, which did help a little.  I also debated adding old doors leaning against the wall on either side of it.  Maybe adding some sconces to the doors, and hanging some art on them.  That might have worked.

But ultimately I just decided that I needed a bigger piece!  I had a mental image of what I wanted. An open hutch where I could display my ironstone without it being behind glass.  I wanted it to be LARGE to fill up that wall and so that when I painted it white it would bring a lot of light into the room.  So I went to craigslist and I searched “large hutch” and this one came up.

It was priced at $425 which was a bit high for me.  It was also way out in Ham Lake, about a 40 minute drive from here.  However, it was exactly what I was looking for.  I loved the detailing at the top, the size, the boards at the back.  So I contacted the seller and negotiated a price of $375 and headed to Ham Lake the same day!

In person, this hutch ended up being another ‘faux-tique’ just like the Rooster cupboard that I painted for my Q Branch.  It has the same exact hinges (which are hard to describe, but kind of weird in that they twist and come apart) and the same faux-old skeleton key that is required for opening the doors on either side.  Both of these pieces have no labels on them, so I don’t know if there was a particular manufacturer making them or what.  But since I’d had great success with the earlier cupboard, I knew I would love this one too.  So I brought it home and painted it the next day!

And voila!

I think this piece is scaled much more appropriately for this room at 6′ wide and 7′ tall.

Here are the details.  The inside is painted in Fusion’s Linen.  I chose to use Fusion paint on the inside because I didn’t want to have to wax all of that!  Especially those boards in the back.  The outside is painted in Miss Mustard Seed’s Linen.  You know what’s funny, I didn’t realize until writing this post that these paint colors had the same name.  It’s Linen times 2, or Linen squared!  The MMS Linen is a warm white, while the Fusion Linen is a greige with a little bit of a green undertone.  Oh, and the reason I chose MMS on the outside is because I wanted chipping.  The more the better.  I was willing to pay the price of waxing to get that chippy-ness!

And I got it!

Although not at first.  I had to resort to my new trick of using tape to pull the paint off.  But that worked beautifully.

You can see that I also added a little bitty stencil to the top, just to give it a little something unique.

The “1918” doesn’t signify anything special, I just liked the way it looked!  Stacking some vintage suitcases on the top also adds a fun touch.

This thing is huge, by the way.  It’s going to take a lot of ironstone to fill it up properly.

I’ve made a good start, but clearly I’ll be on the lookout for more!

As much as I liked using the French Market wood tote on the table, it turned out that it worked even more perfectly on the hutch.

So for now I have some hydrangeas in an ironstone soup tureen as a centerpiece instead.  The hydrangeas are starting to show their fall colors.

If you’re keeping track, here is what I’ve checked off on the dining room make-over to-do list so far:  new chairs, new light fixture, new hutch.

Here’s what’s left:  paint the window trim white, find new light kit for ceiling fan, a change for the table (you’ll have to wait and see), come up with something for the large wall that was formerly full of mirrors (the mirrors have already been removed and now the wall is a blank canvas).

 So stay tuned!

P.S.  The smaller hutch is for sale if anyone local has a smaller wall to fill!  If interested, leave me a comment and I will email you with details.

I am making steady progress on my dining room makeover.  The chairs are all finished up, and my former chairs have gone to a good home (thanks Patty!)

I’ve removed the bad IKEA lights that were hanging over the table.

For now I have replaced them with a funky junky lamp of my own devising.  I purchased a fab old lamp shade skeleton at the Round Barn’s going out of business sale.  Then I used some simple wiring supplies from my local Ace Hardware to make my own hanging fixture.

I simply threaded the cord through the opening at the top of the shade where normally the shade would attach to a harp.  I wired it to the pull chain socket, screwed in the bulb and voila!

I hung the light from an old pulley that I had in my “stash of stuff I want to use someday” (you all have one of those, right?).

I’d love to now brag about how cheap this project was and how I came up with this cool lamp for less than $20, but that ain’t the case.  I spent around $25 on the electrical parts, plus another $30 or so for the shade.  You can’t really tell in the photos, but that lamp shade is 2′ across.

Next up, an amazing hutch that I picked up last Friday.  I think it’s going to be perfect for the room.  I got it painted on Saturday, but yesterday we went to the zoo with my sister and niece, so I didn’t get it waxed yet.

And yes, we were wearing jackets in August.  It was only in the 60’s here yesterday.  It was a perfect day for the zoo.  No crowds.

Lots of great animals to see.

It was a great break from painting furniture!  But I’m back at it today and hope to share my finished hutch with you soon!

My dining room needs a makeover.

I’ve already established that I can’t bring myself to paint the walls.  If I were to paint over that original barn wood patina there would be no going back.  But I’m going to try to lighten up the room with furnishings.

Starting with the chairs.  These chairs are really dark, and they aren’t very comfortable.  I know exactly what I want to replace them with, french cane back chairs like these at Edith & Evelyn Vintage …

and I found a set on craigslist (unpainted).  They were a splurge at $75 each, but I’ve been looking all summer and not coming up with any more budget friendly options that I liked as well.  So I went for it.  I’ve already begun painting them and hope to have them done soon.

Next, the IKEA lights hanging over the table, they have to go.  I have a plan in mind for replacements.

As you can see, I also have a legit (by legit I mean actually hardwired and works off a wall switch) ceiling fan fixture in the room.  It’s off center, and the light on it is tacky as can be.  But this fan is super functional for us (no air conditioning, remember?), and the fan itself is pretty innocuous stylewise.  I need to do some research on just trading out the light kit.

As for the table, well, Mr. Q made that table.  He is rather emotionally attached to it.  So it stays.  But I plan to dress it a little bit differently.

Next, the buffet.  This black one is already long gone.

I replaced it with a smaller china hutch that I painted.  I think it might be a little small for the space, but I’m working on some ideas for dealing with that.

I also need to re-work this wall.

I initially added all of these mirrors to try and bring more light into the room.  It never really worked.  I love the gold frames on these, but they aren’t working on the red wall.  I have an idea about working some of these into the room still, but I’m not sure if it will work.  I also know exactly what I want for this wall.  A large graphic sign.  Finding such a thing at an affordable price might be another story altogether though.  But next Saturday is the Oronoco Gold Rush, so maybe I can find the perfect piece there!

Meanwhile, in addition to my new chairs, I had a couple of other painting projects going on this weekend.  I hope to get the final details finished on those and share them with you later this week, so stay tuned.

 

I don’t know about you, but I’m never 100% happy with the decor at my house.  There are always just one or two things that I’d like to tweak (or sometimes much more).  I showed you my front porch last year …

And it wasn’t until I looked back at the above photo that I realized exactly how much I tweaked!  Maybe we should play one of those games where you pick out all of the differences between the two photos.

Well?  How many did you find?

Let’s start with the obvious.  You might be tempted to think that I painted the Adirondack chair, but no, I switched it out entirely.  Ken makes these chairs.  It all started with a garage sale chair that my friend Sue had.  She sold it to nnK.  nnK kept it in her yard for several years, but it was getting pretty rickety.  Thing is, it was super comfortable.  Definitely the most comfortable Adirondack I’ve ever sat in.  So nnK asked Ken to make her another one.  Ken took the whole chair apart, made a pattern, and whipped up a matching chair.  That started an Adirondack chair explosion.  I have two, nnK has two, her brother has two (or maybe four?), my friend Sue has two, my friend Terri has two.  And as of this summer, my sister has one also!  We also sold a couple at the Carriage House sale.

And now I have three!  The chartreuse chair was always meant to be outside, along with a 2nd chair that matches it.  That color looks great in the garden.  But Mr. Q found it so comfortable that he insisted on having it on the porch.   I tried to make the chartreuse work out there, but it just didn’t.  So I commissioned chair number three from Ken and painted it white.  I also added a black and white pillow from H & M Home.

The next really obvious change?  I sold the little pale green washstand that was next to the chair, and replaced it with the black cupboard that used to be in the Q Branch.

The black cupboard has a lot more presence than the washstand did.  It is filled with my ever growing collection of vintage cameras.

Another major change was selling the very pretty china cabinet that was on the west end of the room.  Having two glass fronted cabinets so close to each other was a bit redundant.  It was a really pretty piece, but I let it go to one of my favorite customers!  I haven’t actually found a permanent replacement for that spot.  I know the perfect piece will come along eventually, but for now I have a small farm table set up as a desk.

This spot works incredibly well for photos shoots of small items.  Such as my fab two new vintage scales.

The taller one I snagged at my own sale (much like the blue and white truck from last week), the shorter one was a gift from Sue!

It even still has its tag …

Another tweak to this room was adding a stencil to the front of the small trunk that sits between the two chairs.  I’d been meaning to do this for quite some time, but just hadn’t gotten around to it.  I picked up this trunk at a garage sale (naturally).

It came just like this, complete with chippy white paint job and rusty wheels.  And check out the inside.

Isn’t that insert just fantastic?  It’s hidden away in there just waiting for me to find the perfect use for it.

But meanwhile, I added a stencil to the front.

While sitting on the front porch, you also get a great view of my front window box just outside.

I feel like my porch looks a bit more pulled together and cohesive this year.  Not as cluttered.  I’m really happy with all of the changes I made.  Speaking of which, how many changes did you spot?

This past weekend I spent some time revamping my enclosed front porch.  You see, I kind of spent the entire winter shoving stuff out there to get it out of the way.  It was a mess.  With spring officially here, I felt the need to get it cleaned out.  I also took advantage of the situation and decided to swap out some furniture.  Remember the black cabinet from my former craft room?  Well, I wasn’t quite ready to get rid of it after all.  So, I moved it into the spot that was formerly occupied by a little pale green painted washstand.

So now, the washstand is for sale (SOLD!).

And then, it obviously would be silly to have two display hutches out on the porch …

so I decided the white one had to go.  So now, it is for sale also (SOLD).

And since I was getting rid of the white hutch, I also decided to move on from my chintzware collection that was formerly housed in this hutch.

So I posted an ad for it on craigslist.  I have no idea if things like this sell on craigslist, or really even at all.  Floral china is no longer terribly popular.  Hopefully I can find another collector out there who wants to add to their collection.

For the moment, I’m not sure what I’m going to put in the space where the white cabinet sat.  I am quite sure that I will come across the perfect piece at some point though.  I’ll know it when I see it.

But meanwhile, the black cabinet turned out to be the perfect spot to display my vintage cameras.

And some of my other black and white stuff.

I added some new H & M Home throw pillows into the mix.

I don’t think I’ve ever pointed out the reading light over my chaise lounge.  I cobbled it together using an old clamp on shop light with half of an old minnow cage for a shade.

And now the front porch is spruced up and ready for spring.

If you are interested in the washstand, the chintzware or the hutch, please feel free to leave a comment or email me directly at oakdalecarriagehouse@gmail.com.