embracing the imperfections.

Published on by Quandie36 Comments

I have wanted a ship lap wall ever since the first time I binge watched Fixer Upper.  I can’t remember who told me about that show (I’m pretty sure it was Meggan, am I right Meggan?), but I watched the first episode and was hooked.  That was back when I still had cable TV and they happened to be having a Fixer Upper marathon one winter day while I was painting a piece of furniture in my piano room.  I think I watched the entire first season in one day.  I fell in love with ship lap walls that day, and I bet thousands of other viewers did as well.  Twenty years from now the next generation of DIY’ers will be cursing us as they have to remove the ship laps walls that have become dated.

But in the meantime, my ship lap dream has finally come true.  We’ve added a ship lap wall as part of our master bedroom makeover.

I read lots of ship lap wall tutorials before beginning my project and although I took bits and pieces of wisdom from each one, I didn’t follow any one method exactly so I thought I’d share a post about how we did it.

I’ve decided to add a new feature to my blog posts and I’m going to call it the p.p.p., the putzy-est part of the project.  It seems like nearly every project has one of these, right?  Well, in the case of this wall for me it was buying the wood.  Please note the important words for me.  I don’t know why, but I find that figuring out and acquiring the appropriate supplies is always the most intimidating part of the project.  I’m sure most of you have no issues with this at all, it’s just me.

It began with calculating how much wood I would need.  I measured my wall and then calculated the total square footage as a starting point.  Then I decided to make my boards 8″ wide because that would fit pretty evenly floor to ceiling on both the vertical lower portion of the wall and the upper angled part of the wall with a 6″ board at the very top.  Next I did the math to calculate how many 8′ long x 8″ wide boards I would need.  Then knowing that I would get 6 boards out of every 4′ x 8′ sheet of wood that I had, I figured out that I would need 4 sheets.  To double check I calculated the total square footage of 4 sheets, 128 square feet, and compared it to the total square footage of my wall, 112 square feet.  Seemed like a good bet, so I went with it.  It was a little nerve wracking because after I had the pile of wood everyone kept looking at it and saying “are you sure you got enough?”  No, I wasn’t sure, but I was optimistic.

Next I made a few phone calls to find out which DIY store would cut the sheets into 8″ strips for me.  Menards was out, they don’t provide that service.  Home Depot said they’d do it for 50 cents per cut.  Perfect.

So Mr. Q and I drove over to our local Home Depot and this is where things really got putzy.  First we had to find someone to help us find the right wood (we ended up using 1/4″ thick sheets of 4 x 8 underlayment).  The first employee had no idea where that was, so she had to call someone from lumber.  That guy pointed out the right wood, but then sent us to the Pro desk to arrange to have it cut.  The guy at the Pro desk was on the phone, so after waiting for about 5 minutes for him to finish that call, he then told us that we needed to go back to the lumber guy to arrange the cutting.  When I pointed out that the lumber guy sent us to him, he then suggested maybe someone at the customer service desk could help us out … all the way at the other end of the store.

But then we got lucky.  Sarah at the customer service desk was super helpful and friendly.  She arranged for our wood to be cut, told us they’d call when it was ready and processed our payment for the sheets without charging us for the cuts.  Nice!  The p.p.p. was done!

My next step was painting the room.  I painted the other three walls and the ceiling in a Benjamin Moore color called Edgecomb Gray.

I wanted just a hint of color so that our beautiful white trim would still pop.

I expected this color to be more gray, after all ‘gray’ is in the name.  It really is a greige, in bright light it looks like a very pale warm gray and at dawn it definitely looks more beige.  The color changes throughout the day as the light outside changes.

The ship lap was was going to be painted in a shade of white from Dutch Boy called Cotton Blossom.  I used this color in my living room and piano room and I knew I liked it.  So I painted the wall that was going to be ship lapped with the Cotton Blossom.  I highly recommend doing this, especially in my case because I can see little bits of wall behind the ship lap.  It’s good that I didn’t leave that wall blue.

Next I had to sand both edges of each of the 24 – 8′ boards.  I tried hard not to think about the math … sanding 48 edges … but sometimes I can’t help myself.  The blade that Home Depot used to cut them must not have been terribly sharp because those edges were pretty jagged.  This was certainly not the most fun part of the project, but I cranked it out in an hour or two.

With the boards sanded and the wall painted, it was time to attach the boards to the wall.   For this we called on our amazing handyman neighbor, Ken.  He brought over his chop  saw and his pneumatic brad nailer.  We absolutely could not have done this job without Ken and his tools.  So many DIY’ers talk about how easy these sorts of projects are, but the reality is that unless you already have the tools, it’s not really do-able.  If we’d had to buy the tools for this project, it would have cost quite a bit more.  Thank goodness we have Ken!  We set up the chop saw right in the bedroom which ended up being the best decision ever.  Running up and down the stairs every time we needed to make a cut (which ended up being a lot) would have really been a pain.

And since we’re having those floors sanded and refinished this weekend anyway, what’s a little more sawdust?

Now, keep in mind that I have plaster walls in my 1904 house.  We’ve never had much luck trying to find studs, so we decided not to bother about that.  We used 1″ brads and just used plenty of them to keep the boards in place.  I didn’t want to use glue of any kind because I know that one day, when it has become outdated, someone (possibly even me) is going to want to remove the ship lap.  If the boards were glued in place that would be so much more difficult.

  I know Ken struggled to come to terms with my decision.  He’s afraid one day a board will fall off in the night and take out Mr. Q and I while we sleep peacefully underneath.  But I seriously doubt it.  If anything the end of a board might pop up, in which case we’ll just add a couple more brads to hold it down.

Ken also wasn’t happy with the cutting job that Home Depot did.  As you can see, some of the cuts were really not straight at all.  Plus the boards ranged in width from 7′ 7/8″ to 8′ 1/8″.  This left gaps between the boards that varied from one end to the other.  At this point, I had to introduce Ken to the concept of embracing the imperfections.

After all, those original ship lap walls were certainly not perfect.  Ship lap was just a base to build upon with plaster, it wasn’t precise or even meant to be seen.  I direct you to this photo from magnoliahomes.net.  Take note of the total lack of perfection, fairly raw edges, uneven boards, and also note that the nail holes are not filled.

To me, this is ship lap at its finest and this is the look I was going for.

So ’embrace the imperfections’ became my mantra of the day as Ken and I attached the faux ‘ship lap’ boards to the wall.  This part of the project went way faster than either of us expected.  We started after lunch and were done before dinner.  I think it took about 4 hours in total.  We did get a little help from nnK and Mr. Q towards the end of the day as we got to the top of the wall.  We needed two people to hold the planks in place and a 3rd to operate the nailer.  We just randomly staggered the lengths of the boards.  I didn’t want to see any sort of pattern.

The next day I primed the boards with a stain blocking primer.  I wasn’t sure what those water stains on the boards were all about, but figured a stain blocking primer would be a good idea.  Then I added a coat of Cotton Blossom.  And if you’re wondering, no, I didn’t fill the nail holes.  They are just barely visible up close.

And voila, my ship lap wall is finished.

Speaking of imperfections, you may have noticed that my bottom ship lap board ends about 2″ above the baseboard.  Yep, my math wasn’t quite right after all.  Ken really wanted to fix that, but I decided to just let it go.  This wall will have stuff in front of it all the way across and no one is ever going to even notice this flaw.

Mr. Q must really like how the ship lap turned out because he suggested we consider adding ship lap to the same angled wall in his new study (the former guest room).  Now that he’s suggested it, I realize he’s totally right.  It would be perfect in there.  While we’re at it, it would also be fabulous in the guest room.  And now that I know how easy it is, we just might do it!

But first, I have nnK’s college kids coming to refinish the floors this weekend.  Once that task is done, the really fun stuff begins.  Bringing the furniture back in, some old pieces and some new pieces (not brand new, but new to me), and changing out some fixtures.

 Be sure to stay tuned to find out how it all turns out!

 

 

the shetland islands.

Published on by Quandie10 Comments

After Mr. Q and I booked our May trip to Norway & Scotland, we happened to stumble across the TV show Shetland.  If you haven’t heard of it, it’s a BBC Scotland crime drama based on a series of books by Ann Cleeves.  We binge watched seasons 1 and 2 before our trip.  We fell in love with the unique landscapes that were used in the show (some of which aren’t really in Shetland at all, but mainland Scotland).  Still, we were really looking forward to seeing the place for ourselves.

One of the main things you’ll notice is the lack of trees.  I was curious about that so I googled it.  According to this article from shetland.org, that is mainly due to the sheep rather than the climate.

Before I continue on about our day in Shetland, let me explain something.  One of the really fun things about taking a cruise is the opportunity to meet people and get to know them a bit.  These days on most cruise lines you’ll have some options for dining.  You can choose ‘any-time dining’ where you just show up at the dining room and get seated anywhere, or you can choose a specific time slot and be seated at the same table with the same people every night.  You can choose to have just a table for two (or however many are in your group), or you can do what Mr. Q and I like to do, choose to have additional dinner companions.  On this cruise we chose the late seating (8 pm) and a table of 8.

We always feel like we are taking a bit of a risk with this option.  What if we get stuck with a total bore?  Or worse yet, someone totally obnoxious?  But if that happens, you can always ask to be reassigned.  So far we’ve always been lucky and have ended up with friendly, interesting dinner companions.  This time we ended up with Ann & Alex from Australia, Craig & Cheri from California and Paul from Boston who was traveling on his own.  What a great way for him to have company at dinner, right?  We all got along really well and had some great conversations over dinner.

The reason I’m bringing this up now is because Mr. Q and I didn’t have any pre-booked plans for Shetland.  While discussing this over dinner, Craig and Cheri (the couple from California) mentioned that they were renting a car in Lerwick and were planning to drive all over the island.  So we asked if they happened to have some extra room in the back seat for us.  They were willing to let us tag along, and we insisted on paying for half of the rental fee (a whopping $30) and considered it a total bargain.

By the way, kudos to Craig for being willing to drive on the ‘wrong’ side of the road and on some very skinny winding roads at that.  Not to mention some ‘single track’ roads, which I’ll talk about more when I post about the Isle of Skye.

Our first stop was the archaeological site, Jarlshof.  This site was discovered in the 1890’s when some heavy storms washed away the surrounding vegetation.  It was later excavated to reveal a series of dwellings that dated from 2500 BC to the 1600’s AD.

We rented the audio headsets and if you ever make it to Jarlshof I totally recommend this.  You’ll get so much more out of the site if you have a little explanation of what you are looking at.

For example, the large structure in this next photo is the hall of what was the laird’s house.  Those stones in the yard are exactly what they look like, grave stones.  In this case, marking graves of shipwrecked sailors from the 1600’s.

After exploring Jarlshof we moved on to the Sumburgh Head Lighthouse.

This spot is known for bird watching.  It wasn’t quite the right season for their famous Puffins, but we did see a couple.  We also saw quite a few Guillemots.  In addition, the lighthouse has some interesting historical displays such as the replica of the WWII radar station.

By the way, this next photo is taken from the parking lot.  Yes, you have to walk from here up to the lighthouse, see it there at the tippy top?

Although they do allow cars to drive up and drop off handicapped visitors.

The next stop on our very well planned (by Cheri) itinerary was the Croft House Museum.  I was so excited when Cheri mentioned they were planning to visit this spot.  It was a place I had read about online and really didn’t think I would get a chance to see.

This is a mid-19th century croft that was lived in until the 1960’s.  It was fascinating to get a glimpse of how people once lived in Shetland, with burning peat in the fireplace and box beds for keeping warm at night.

The inside was very dark, with low ceilings and even lower doorways, but I bet it felt like a really warm, snug refuge from the wind and rain on cold winter days.

Of course, there was no rain on our day in Shetland (although wind is another story) as we continued to be really lucky with the weather.

Our last stop of the day was Scalloway Castle.

Construction on Scalloway began in 1599 by Patrick Stewart, the Earl of Orkney.  Apparently Black Patie was not a good guy.  He was a ruthless tyrant who oppressed the Shetland people and was ultimately executed.

It does have a bit of a sinister vibe, right?

Not much remains except the shell of the castle, but it was interesting to see how it was constructed.  This was a fun stop for us as well because there was a great chase scene in Shetland (the TV show) that was filmed inside Scalloway Castle.  By the way, we heard that they were going to be filming some parts of season 3 the day after we were in Lerwick.  Dang!  We just missed seeing it.

All in all, sharing a rental car with friends turned out to be an incredible way to spend the day in Shetland.  We saw 4 different sights that would have been separate shore excursions from the ship each one costing more than our share of the car for the full day.

If you are brave enough to drive in a foreign country, this is definitely the way to go.  And honestly, once we got out of Lerwick the roads were mostly empty here.  The most complicated part of the journey was getting out of the parking lot at the port!

Our next stop is the Isle of Skye, check back next Wednesday to hear more about the seat of the MacLeod of MacLeod, Castle Dunvegan, and what ended up being the most disappointing touring experience from our trip.

 

the family discount.

Published on by Quandie28 Comments

I was so surprised by the outpouring of comments on my post about the dollhouse from Friday!  My dad would be have absolutely loved hearing all of the compliments from everyone.  A huge thanks to all of you for taking the time to leave a comment, I appreciated every single one!

Now, on with today’s post.

A while back Mr. Q brought home two dressers from the daughter of one of my blog readers.  The first was the french provincial dresser that I painted a couple of weeks ago, and the second was this one.

It’s a bit more traditional than the pieces I normally choose to work with, but it’s a  solid, well-made dresser.  I love giving pieces like this a new lease on life with some paint.  This dresser is going to last another 75 years easily.  It’s not going to fall apart in 5 years like inexpensive (or sometimes not so inexpensive) new furniture made out of particle board (not that I’m naming names, such as IKEA, or anything).

Ken helped me out with reattaching a drawer glide that had come free, but otherwise it didn’t need much work.  Ironically the aspect of this job that took the longest was removing the old contact paper that was lining the drawers.

I wish I had gotten a photo to illustrate, but basically that stuff came out in a million little pieces that I painstakingly scraped off with a razor blade.  And it left behind a sticky gooey mess that required a couple of applications of Goo Gone to remove.  This is exactly why I rarely choose to line the drawers of dressers that I sell.  Because I know that inevitably down the road someone is going to have to get that stuff back out of there and it won’t be fun (and oftentimes that someone  is me!).  The only time I line drawers is when the drawer bottom is too stained to salvage.

Funny little story though, I slogged through the first 7 drawers one evening after work.  Stripping out that liner, cleaning with Goo Gone, removing the hardware, sanding the drawer front and cleaning it with TSP Substitute.  I really wanted to finish all nine drawers that evening so I could start painting right away the next evening.  But as the sun was setting, I looked at those last two drawers still in the dresser and thought “nope, I just can’t face them, I’ll have to do them tomorrow” and I went to bed.  The next evening I went to pull out the first of the remaining two drawers and guess what?  It wasn’t lined!  Neither was the last drawer.  Ha!  Had I only looked inside the previous night I would have realized that I could easily prep them before bed.  Too funny!

Anyway, the next step was painting and that part was a breeze.  I used Fusion paint in a rich, dark grey color called Ash.

I painted two coats of paint, and shortly after the 2nd coat was dry I sanded the edges lightly to distress.

Just the other day my friend Sue was commenting on the fact that a lot of the furniture painters out there don’t distress their pieces.  She and I are of the same mind when it comes to distressing.  We are not fans of non-distressed pieces.  The only time I don’t distress is when I’m working on a mid-century modern piece with really clean lines.  Otherwise, in my opinion distressing is what really brings out the character of a piece.  I know it’s a personal preference thing though, and it just happens to be my preference (and Sue’s!).

One tip, you absolutely don’t need to add a topcoat over Fusion paint, but when I distress the edges I’ll often put a little Homestead House or Miss Mustard Seed beeswax on a cloth and run that over those exposed edges.  It will help protect that little bit of bare wood, but more importantly it will take away the ‘freshly sanded’ look of the wood and make it look more as though it was worn over time.

I have to tell you, I did absolutely nothing to the drawer pulls.  I didn’t polish them or even really clean them. Yet this next photo really shows how different they look on the grey.  Isn’t that kinda crazy?

So normally this is the point where I say “this dresser is available for sale”, but no, this one isn’t!  My sister stopped by shortly after I finished it, decided she really needed to have it for her new house and asked if she could get a ‘family discount’.  Naturally I agreed.  I’m pretty thrilled because she’ll be replacing an IKEA dresser with it!  My plan is to slowly work on her over time until her whole house is de-IKEA-fied.  I’m working on convincing her to replace the console thingie that her T.V. sits on next, but shhhhh, she doesn’t realize it yet so don’t tell her.

 

 

the dollhouse.

Published on by Quandie75 Comments

Once upon a time, way back in the early 90’s, my dad took an early retirement from his job at IBM.  I believe he was around 55 or so at the time.  Back in the day an early retirement from an excellent company was totally do-able because companies were more likely to provide you with health insurance after retirement.  That’s no longer very likely and now people like me will have to work until they are medicare eligible because health insurance has gotten so ridiculously expensive.  But I digress.  This is not a post about the ongoing woes of our health care system, this is a post about a dollhouse.

You see, once retired my dad quickly grew bored.  He desperately needed a project.  So when I casually mentioned how I’d always wanted a dollhouse, he took that idea and ran with it.

At the time my parents lived in Kentucky, and I was here in Minnesota.  Now remember, this was the early 90’s.  We didn’t have email.  Nor did we have cell phones.  My dad would take photos of his progress, get them developed and then send them to me in the mail.  I would send paint chips, wallpaper (dollhouse sized) and tiny furnishings back to him in the mail.  It was an awesome way for my dad and I to connect.  We were both so excited about the project.  I will always have fond memories of that time (my dad passed away about 10 years ago).

All of that being said, the dollhouse is large and heavy.  For a long time it resided in what is now the Q Branch and it took up the entire room since you really need to be able to get around all sides of it.  I used to decorate it for the holidays when it was on display in that room, I even had a Christmas tree with working lights.  But eventually I decided that it was a poor use of a really great room so we moved the dollhouse up to the guest room where it has been sitting and gathering dust for quite some time.

Since we had to move the dollhouse downstairs to refinish the floors in the guest room, I did some serious thinking and decided it wasn’t going back up.  This will allow Mr. Q to take over the larger room as his study, and the smaller room will become the guest room  with no space for the dollhouse.  I just don’t have a large enough house to devote so much space to something that I barely pay attention to anymore.

My niece used to always say she would take the dollhouse one day, so I asked her if she really wanted it.  The answer was no.  I offered it to a couple of other family members who also didn’t want it.  I was starting to think I might have to just sell it, when Mr. Q’s step-dad mentioned that he would love to have it!  He loves anything miniature (just check out this post about his workshop for proof of that), plus he’s an extremely talented wood worker, so the dollhouse will be in good hands.

So it’s a happy ending.  The dollhouse is going to a wonderful new home.  Tom is in the process of adding a three season wrap around porch at their farmhouse and the dollhouse will fit neatly at one end.  I’ll be able to visit it whenever I want to, and the grandkids will all be able to play with it whenever they visit.

Before I send it off to its new home, I thought I’d take a few photos to share with you guys.

Gosh, where do I even start?  If you haven’t already gotten yourself a fresh cup of coffee, you might want to do that now.  This may be a long one.

Since this dollhouse was for me, obviously it had to have impressive gardens.

Most of the flowers are made out of Fimo clay.  I made some of them myself, like the trailing vines in the window boxes, but it didn’t take me long to figure out that I really don’t have the patience for working with tiny things.

Let’s head inside …

 and begin our tour in the kitchen.

Did you notice the tin ceiling or the ceiling fan?

Remember, this was decorated back in the early 90’s.  Stenciled borders were all the rage.  I added that stencil myself with a tiny little metal stencil.  And even though farmhouse sinks weren’t quite as popular yet, I wanted one in my dollhouse!

My dad was very detail oriented.  The door between the kitchen and the dining room is a swinging door.  And check out the paneling below the chair rail, the parquet floor and the dentil crown molding above the stenciled border.

I don’t know if you’ve noticed yet, but the dollhouse is fully electrified.

Another example of attention to detail, there is a little door under the stairs that opens and closes.  I suppose I could store the Christmas tree under there.  See it back there?

You can catch a glimpse of the foyer through the arched opening in the dining room.  The floor in the foyer is a type of blue shale that is found in Kentucky.  My dad just gathered some up from a field near his house and ’tiled’ the floor with it.

Boy, you can also tell the era of this dollhouse by all of the wallpaper!  My real house was entirely wallpapered at that time as well.  And the garish shades of pink, burgundy, sea foam green and forest green (all chosen by yours truly).  Yikes!

Here’s the living room.  See that wedding photo on the wall to the left?  That’s me and Mr. Q!

Oh, and did I mention that my dollhouse has two original water colors on the walls?  Yep, my dad was friends with local artist at the time and he asked him to paint a couple of paintings for the dollhouse.  The first one hangs over the living room fireplace.

The second one hangs over the master bedroom fireplace.  I really can’t decide which one of these is my favorite, I love them both.  Had I ended up having to sell the dollhouse I would have removed these and kept them.  But now they will stay in place.

Can I just mention here how much I love that fireplace?  Isn’t it fantastic!  This is another great example of my dad’s attention to detail.  He purposely added black ‘soot’ to the brick fireplace insert so it would look well used.  See it?  The little pile of logs on the fire is electrified so that it glows like a real fireplace.

Currently the master bedroom is sparsely furnished with just this lovely four poster bed.

Next door is the bathroom.  Originally there was just going to be the claw foot tub with the towel bar above it, but my dad found this amazing hot water heater and had to have it.

I love all of the details in this room; the tile floor, the wainscoted wall, the tin ceiling, the wall mounted sink, even the little toothpaste box next to the sink.

But I can’t lie.  My favorite detail in the bathroom is the tiny roll of toilet paper.  Seriously, does that thing just crack you up or what?

I decorated the second bedroom in the house as a young girl’s room.  Naturally.

Complete with a faux wicker vanity.

Just above the girl’s room is the attic.

I believe my dad originally came up with the idea for this space when he found the newspaper wallpaper.

My dad had a lot of fun with the details of this room like the exposed studs and electrical, and we both had fun coming up with stuff to ‘store’ in the attic.

The other room on the 3rd floor was inspired by the pool table.  When my dad found that, he knew he had to have a room for it.

Last, but not least, there is one more tiny room tucked away in the tower.

A cozy little reading nook.

I hope you enjoyed this tour of the dollhouse.

I’m looking forward to a week off the day job next week.  A little staycation, during which I plan to work on my master bedroom makeover.  I’ve got several projects planned, so be sure to stay tuned!

 

 

bergen.

Published on by Quandie11 Comments

Today I’m sharing the last of the Norwegian ports of call on our recent Holland America cruise, Bergen!

Bergen is known for being one of the rainiest cities in Europe.  Everything we read about this city said to be prepared for rain, and so we were … and it didn’t rain at all.  It was a bit overcast in the morning, but it cleared up after noon and was perfectly lovely.

Once again our ship was docked in the most convenient location just across the street from the Bergenhus Fortress.

We walked around the fortress and admired the grounds a bit.

Then headed out the other side to walk toward Bryggen.

Bryggen is the old Hanseatic Quarter of Bergen.  The oldest wooden buildings date from the early 1700’s and were built by the German merchants and traders who established a Hanseatic trading post here.

This area continues as a ‘trading post’ and was filled with touristy shops and tourists.

Next we hopped on the Fløibanen, or the funicular, to ride up to the top of Mount Fløyen to check out the views.

I have to admit, Mr. Q and I are not big fans of the ‘view panoramica’.  I guess we just prefer seeing things up close and personal rather than viewing sweeping vistas from on high.

So, after enjoying a cup of coffee with some friends from our ship, we didn’t linger long at the top.  We decided we’d prefer to walk back down, but we weren’t sure just how intense a walk that was going to be, so we took some advice from our Rick Steves’ guidebook and we took the Fløibanen halfway down, got off at the mid-way point and walked the rest of the way (note: if you are ever in Bergen and want to do this, only the funiculars that leave on the hour and half hour stop at the halfway point, Promsgate, the others do not stop).

As it turned out, we could easily have walked the entire way down.  It was a very lovely walk through a wooded area …

And then a really charming residential area.

By the way, Rick Steve’s calls these ‘delightful cobbled and shiplap lanes’.  Huh?  Shiplap lanes?  Clearly the Norwegians had shiplap way before Fixer Upper came along!

I loved the profusion of flowers along these cobblestone lanes.  Despite the almost total lack of garden space, there were still flowers everywhere.  They were even growing out of the crevices in the rock walls …

I recognized this corydalis right away, I have these in my own garden …

After making our way back to sea level, we headed out to the fish market.  I didn’t take a single photo there.  It was just so touristy and honestly, kind of lame.  We wandered around it for a few minutes, but then after hitting a couple of shops back in Bryggen we headed back towards our ship.

Along the way I spied this lovely azalea in front of the Domkirke, Bergen’s main church that is dedicated to St. Olav the patron saint of Norway.

We had a beautiful sunny evening for sailing out of Bergen.  Mr. Q and I enjoyed it from our balcony.

And alas, this was where we had to say goodbye to Norway, the land of my ancestors.  Our next stop, the Shetland Islands!

Be sure to stay tuned!

 

the dollhouse dresser refresh.

Published on by Quandie11 Comments

I posted all about our plan to makeover our master bedroom on Friday.  As is the usual case, the project has grown beyond its original boundaries.  When the college kids were out giving me a quote on the bedroom floor, they suggested I do all of the upstairs floors at once.  It makes sense since they all flow together.  Then, one thing led to another and since doing the floors involves moving all the furniture around anyway, we decided to swap the guest room and Mr. Q’s study.

Mr. Q’s study was in the smaller of the two rooms and he felt pretty crowded in there.  Our guest room, on the other hand, is only used once or twice per year and the rest of the year just lies idle.

There was one small … or kinda big … obstacle to this plan.  My dollhouse.  Yep, I have a pretty amazing dollhouse.  My dad made it after he retired.  He was bored and he needed a project.  When my dad took on a project, he pulled out all of the stops.

The dollhouse is big.  And cumbersome.  And bulky.  And any other word you can think of to describe a rather large item that takes up a lot of space in a room but doesn’t really serve any purpose.  The dollhouse was doing just that in the guest room.  Swapping the rooms is going to require relocating the dollhouse, but you’ll hear more on that plan later.  Today’s post isn’t about the dollhouse (but don’t worry, that will be coming soon), or about swapping the two rooms around, it’s about the dresser that the dollhouse sat on.  This may be the nicest ‘before’ photo of a piece of furniture on my blog ever …

I have to say, this dresser was pretty much invisible underneath that dollhouse.  I’d forgotten both how big it is and how pretty it is.

I don’t even remember how long ago I painted this piece.  I know it was quite a few years ago.  It was certainly before I knew about milk paint or Fusion acrylic paint, and even before I knew about chalk paint.  It’s from way back in the dark ages when I was painting with regular old latex paint.  I painted quite a few pieces in this color from Behr called Beluga (as in the caviar which is black, not the whale itself which is white).

The dollhouse did do a little bit of damage to the top of the dresser …

It left a couple of big scratches.  But the rest of the dresser still looked great.  So I decided to just freshen up the top with a couple of coats of Fusion paint in Coal Black.

I scuff sanded the top with some fine grit sandpaper, wiped it clean with a damp cloth and then added two coats of Coal Black.  Easy peasy.

Although the blacks don’t match precisely, it’s not noticeable at all.

The details on this dresser are really pretty.

Unfortunately, with the room switch taking place, I no longer have a place for it.  So I staged it up with my faux dress form, Lula, to get some pictures to use in my Craigslist ad.

Lula is made from an old yellow Styrofoam manikin body that I painted with black chalkboard paint, a lamp table base (also painted black) and an old black porcelain door knob.

One of these days I might change it up and paint her white and add an Iron Orchid Designs transfer … hmmm … I’ll just add that to my to-do list.

In the meantime, I got the dollhouse dresser all cleaned up and posted on Craigslist and it sold right away.

The new owner is going to add a sink and use it as a bathroom vanity!  Probably a much better use of this dresser than hiding it under a giant dollhouse, don’t you agree?

 

 

 

 

mission possible.

Published on by Quandie33 Comments

You may remember that earlier this year I posted about getting a quote to have my wood floors refinished.  The cost was over $6,000 to do the entire house.  But to be truly honest, not only was it the cost that bothered me it was also the idea that we would have to move all of the furniture out of our house and store it somewhere (including a baby grand piano).  Also, the quarter round on the baseboards would all have to be removed.  I don’t care how careful you are doing that, you are going to break some.  And you are definitely going to chip some paint, thus requiring the baseboards to be repainted throughout (by yours truly of course).

So after giving the matter some serious thought, Mr. Q and I opted to take our trip to Norway and Scotland instead.

Ironically both my BFF and nnK (that’s my neighbor across the street) did opt to have their wood floors refinished in the last couple of months.  They both chose a matte finish (which is also what I would have done) and they both now have gorgeous floors.

So as I gaze at their beautiful floors, do I wish I had decided differently?

Nope!  Our trip was amazing.  We’ll have those memories forever (well, until the Alzheimer’s kicks in anyway).

best.  decision.  ever.

I don’t have much money left over after our memorable trip though, so I decided to do a budget DIY makeover in our master bedroom this summer.

I’m dubbing this project ‘mission possible.’  Because while I felt like the whole house floor refinish was entirely impossible, I think this one room makeover is certainly possible.

Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to hold me accountable.  You really don’t have to do anything, just the action of putting my plan in writing and sharing it here will give me some additional motivation to actually get this project done (I hope).  Also, feel free to leave occasional comments like “hey, what ever happened to the bedroom makeover?” As always, should I or any of my I.M. (interior modification?) Force be caught or killed, the Secretary will disavow any knowledge of our actions.

 So let’s go over the plan, shall we?

The walls.

I’ve been wanting to do a faux ship lap wall in here for some time now.  Ken (amazing neighbor/handyman) has already agreed to help Mr. Q and me with this project.  It’s just a matter of putting it on the calendar.  I plan to do just the angled wall behind the bed all the way up to the ceiling (wall seen in photo above).

But first, I have to paint that wall white.  The ship lap will be white also, and I don’t want any blue peeking through the gaps.

Although I think the current pale blue walls are pretty, I’ve grown a little tired of them.  So since I’m painting one wall anyway, I might as well paint all of them, as well as the ceiling.  I’m still trying to decide if the un-shiplapped walls will also be white, or possibly a very pale greige.

The framed vintage maps that are currently hanging on the walls are also going to go.  Those white IKEA frames are just not doing it for me anymore.

but I think my pretty floral plates may stay in some capacity.

The floor.

When we purchased our house 30 years ago (good grief, has it really been that long?), the downstairs wood floors had obviously been recently refinished while the upstairs floors had not.  Thus, the floors in here weren’t in the greatest of shape to begin with, and 30 years of living has taken its toll.

As it turns out, nnK knows some college kids that refinish gym floors as a summer job. I’ve scheduled them to do just my upstairs floors at a budget rate.  They may not do the same professional level work as the expensive guy, but it will most likely be good enough and for a fraction of the cost.

The fixtures.

The last time I remodeled this room I was going through a phase.  I liked the idea of combining antiques with modern, clean lines.  Um, yeah.  I don’t know where I got that ridiculous idea.  But as a result, I have a shiny modern chrome ceiling fan in place.

That’s going to be replaced.  I’m still debating replacing it with another fan, or just a light.  Ceiling fans are so ‘out’ at the moment, but they are so very functional when you don’t have central air conditioning.  And now that it’s the middle of July I’m realizing just how valuable it is to have a ceiling fan.  Anyone want to weigh in on this subject?

I’m also planning to replace the current bedside lamps.  I picked these up at a garage sale several years ago.  They are really functional, and actually not terrible looking.

But I found some vintage looking wall sconces at World Market a while back that I love, so they will be taking the place of these.

The furnishings.

Back in the day buying a matching suite of furniture for your master bedroom was the thing to do.  Not anymore.  Now the key is to mix and match.  Over the last several years I have been slowly working on getting rid of each piece of my matching suite (I originally had bedside tables and an armoire to match my sleigh bed).

The bedside tables went first and I replaced them with a pretty table on my side …

and my grandparent’s spoon carved washstand on Mr. Q’s side.

They are about the same size and height and they are painted in the same shade of pale grey, all of which makes them perfect as mismatched bedside tables.  So these two pieces are going to stay.  The pale grey never worked that well with the blue walls, but I think it will be perfect with my new look.

The current cupboard that holds my clothes will also be staying (now that I’ve cured its bad smell), although I’m probably going to paint it.  As much as I love the aqua and white combo, I’m going to be moving away from that color in the room.

I also plan to keep the chippy white stool.

The bench at the foot of the bed is going to go.

Again, it’s the wrong color.  Plus I’ve found an amazing replacement for it, here’s a sneak peek.

so you’ll have to stay tuned to see more on that down the road.

I have a plan in mind for the bed too.

It’s definitely time for the old cherry sleigh bed to go.  Initially I debated just painting it, but Mr. Q really doesn’t like having a foot board.  Then I remembered an idea I saw a while back and was able to find just the right supplies needed to make it happen via Craigslist, here’s another sneak peek …

This is another future post to look forward to!

The window treatments.

I’ve had many different treatments on these windows over the years.  I’ve had wood slat blinds, bamboo roman shades, roller shades, fabric curtains on a rod, yada, yada, yada.  I really struggle with window treatments.  For the most part, I don’t like them.  I would prefer to have nothing at all, but that’s just not possible in a bedroom that faces the street, as well as the house across the street.  I’m sure nnK would prefer we have some kind of window covering.

The current treatment consists of three different vintage linens tacked to the lower half of each window.  The functionality of this system is spot on.  When I open the windows (remember, we don’t have a/c in this room), the curtains go up with them allowing for unimpeded air flow.  When the windows are closed, the top halves are uncovered which lets in maximum light, and the bottom halves are covered which blocks the view of any peeping toms out there.  I really love the trim around my windows too, so I hate to cover that up with heavy window treatments.

Plus, I also happen to have a really lovely view.  Even though these windows face the street, they also face nnK’s yard which is this year’s winner of the Acorn Award, the local award for properties that go ‘above and beyond’ with their landscaping efforts (here’s a post I wrote about her water feature).  As I frequently like to tell nnK, her yard looks amazing from over here!

Window treatments.  Still a question mark.  Any ideas?

So, Mission Possible starts next week, who’s with me?!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

flåm.

Published on by Quandie20 Comments

For those of you who may be new to my blog, in May Mr. Q and I took a Holland America cruise to Norway and Scotland.  I’ve been slowly posting about each of our ports of call on Wednesdays.  So far we started in Copenhagen, then went to Oslo, Kristiansand and Stavanger in Norway.  Today I’m sharing our next port of call, Flåm, Norway.

I have to say that sailing down the Sognefjord and the Aurlandsfjord to Flåm was one of the most amazing travel experiences I’ve ever had.

Mr. Q and I woke up in the very early hours to this view outside our window.

We sailed through this misty and magical scenery for a couple of hours…

passing about a gajillion waterfalls.

By the way, this was one of the moments on our cruise when we were really glad we upgraded to a balcony cabin at the last minute.  We were sailing through here at about 6 a.m.  It was easy to just pop out of bed, walk out on the balcony and enjoy the scenery.  Had we been in an inside cabin I am quite sure we would have slept right through this, and wouldn’t that have been a shame?

We passed the little town of Undredal.

We docked in Flåm around 8 a.m.  The immediate area around the dock in Flåm is very touristy.

 There is a huge souvenir shop, a tourist info center, a couple of restaurants, the train museum and the train station.  I would say that probably 99% of the passengers on our ship either took the scenic train ride, or else they took a fjord cruise right from here.  We decided to do something else altogether.  We walked the 3 km along a rushing stream to the real town of Flåm.

According to the Rick Steves guidebook there isn’t much to see in Flåm proper and no real reason to go there, and I suppose he is right if you are looking for castles, museums, historic sites or other tourists.  He recommends taking the scenic train ride, as do most people I know who’ve been to this area.

But if you prefer your stunning scenery without having to battle for elbow room with 300 other tourists, well, then I recommend this walk instead.

Is anyone else tempted to break into song looking at that picture?  The hills are alive, with the sound of music … wait, wrong country.

This place simply could not have been any more beautiful.

As we walked further and further up the valley, the sun got brighter and the air got warmer.  It was so peaceful and quiet.  We saw very few other people.

Our final destination was the old church.

This church was built in 1670 (or 1667 depending on the source) and replaced the original stave church that once stood in this spot.  And P.S., there is a handy (and free) public restroom at the church.

We wandered around the tiny cluster of homes that made up the ‘downtown’ hoping to find somewhere to get coffee, but no such luck.

 So we turned around and headed back to our ship, which was getting ready to sail back down the fjord and out to sea.  Shortly before sailing, our captain made an announcement that a pod of Orca’s had been sighted in the Nærøyfjord.  So although our ship was too big to go very far down that fjord, he was going to take a detour down it to see if we could spot them.  Unfortunately we never saw them, but we did enjoy the dramatic scenery of the Nærøyfjord.  I think the most entertaining part was seeing how the ship did a complete 180 degree turn to get back out again!

This truly was one of my favorite days on our trip.  Mr. Q and I both really enjoyed being surrounded by spectacular scenery during our peaceful walk up the valley, as we practically had the place to ourselves.  We also loved sailing through the fjords.

Next Wednesday I’ll share our last port of call in Norway, Bergen (which we definitely did not have to ourselves)!

I hope you’ll stay tuned.

 

the seed & horticulture dresser.

Published on by Quandie25 Comments

I didn’t mention it earlier, but the washstand that I painted in Grain Sack a couple of weeks ago was part of an entire bedroom set.  There it is in the front.

I purchased this entire set for the bed.  I have plans for that bed.  You’ll just have to wait for that.  But in the meantime, I’ve given the dresser (just behind the washstand in that photo) a makeover.

Here’s a better look at just the dresser ‘before’.

Although it came with a mirror, the two will be parting ways.

I knew I wanted to use milk paint on this one, and I also wanted to use an Iron Orchid Designs transfer.  I’ve mentioned before that you have to be a little careful with this combo.  If your milk paint is too chippy, it’s hard to get the transfer to stick to the paint rather than the paint sticking to the transfer.  So I gave this one an extra good scuff sanding and then cleaned it with TSP substitute to help control the chipping.

I also decided to go with a wood top on this dresser, so I stripped the original finish off the top which was pretty scratched up.

Next I mixed a custom milk paint color, mainly to use up a few partial packets of paint I had on hand.  I started by mixing equal parts Miss Mustard Seed’s Eulalie’s Sky and Shutter Gray.  The resulting color was just a bit too blue for me, so I then added another equal part MMS Grain Sack to both lighten it up and add a little more grey.

I love this color!  I’m going to keep track of this color recipe for future use.

After the paint was good and dry, I added the Iron Orchids Design’s Seeds transfer.

I had to ‘cut and paste’ it a bit to fit the dimensions of this dresser, and also to avoid the rectangular drawer pulls.  Your hardware probably won’t be in place when you are adding a transfer, so don’t forget to take it into account.  In this case I had to move “Autumn Catalogue” up a bit to avoid the pulls.  The entire transfer didn’t fit on this dresser, but this is most of it.

I mentioned in my last post about the furniture transfer fail on the Bayberry dresser that Sally at IOD recommends distressing the transfer lightly with fine grit sandpaper to reduce the ‘halo’ effect.  I gave that a try with this transfer and it definitely minimizes it. That ‘halo’ is most apparent when looking at it from an angle, so here’s a good angle shot so you can see what I’m talking about …

It’s practically invisible looking at it straight on.

I decided to go a little old school on finishing the wood top.  After stripping and sanding, I stained it with Varythane Dark Walnut gel stain and then added a couple coats of Minwax Wipe on Poly in a satin finish.  By the way, I used Homestead House Beeswax finish over the milk paint and the furniture transfer.

I focused on the ‘seed catalogue’ garden theme of the transfer when choosing my props for these photos.

I really love how this piece turned out.

What do you think of it?

If you are local and interesting in purchasing this one, be sure to check out my ‘available for local sale’ tab for more details.

the greens of scotland.

Published on by Quandie27 Comments

While I was inspired by all of the shades of blue I saw in Norway on our recent trip, in Scotland it was all about the greens (and maybe the sheep!)

So when I saw this pretty green transferware platter at the Barn Chic Vintage sale, I snatched it up and decided that I needed to paint something green.

Mr. Q had recently brought home this tall serpentine dresser with lovely claw feet.  His step-dad’s ex-wife (is there a better title for that relationship?  step-ex maybe?), who is also a very supportive follower of my blog, snagged this for me from her neighbor who was having a garage sale (thanks again Sherry!)

It needed a little work.  Ken replaced a drawer bottom that was damaged beyond repair and I dealt with some veneer issues by patching with wood filler.

Next I pulled out my paints to see what my options were for green and I had quite a few.  I had some of Miss Mustard Seed’s Lucketts Green and Boxwood.  I also had several shades of green milk paint that Homestead House sent me, Upper Canada Green, Gatineau, Acadia Pear.  In the end I opted for Homestead House’s Bayberry.

I found it a bit challenging to get a photo that shows the true shade of this green.  It’s a deep green that leans more towards the blue side rather than yellow, and with a grey undertone.  I added a topcoat of hemp oil, which deepened the color quite a bit.

While working with the Bayberry, I discovered it makes the perfect ‘chalkboard green’.  That’s it on the gold framed chalkboard, without hemp oil and after being ‘seasoned’ with chalk.  From now on rather than mixing MMS Boxwood and Artissimo to make green chalkboard paint, I’ll just use Bayberry straight up.

I also tried a little experiment on this dresser.  I added part of an Iron Orchids Design furniture transfer.  I wasn’t sure how well it would show up on a dark color like this, and I knew I was taking a chance that it wouldn’t work at all and I’d have more work to do to correct it.

And as it turns out, transfers and dark colors don’t mix.  I expected that the transfer wouldn’t be as obvious over a dark color, but I didn’t expect that that filmy sort of white halo would be so much more noticeable.

Speaking of which, after getting a question from Nancy recently about the ‘cloudy halo’ that you can see with the IOD transfers, I reached out to Sally at Iron Orchid Designs.  She told me they are working on improving their product to minimize that halo, but in the meantime the transfers are best suited for light colors.  In addition, she said that a little light distressing with a fine grit sandpaper can help blend it more on light colors as well.

OK, so next came the ‘fix’.  I was hoping I could use a sharp razor blade to remove the transfer without damaging the paint too much.

Nope.  That didn’t work.  That transfer was stuck good.  Really, that’s good news since it means the IOD transfers are pretty durable and won’t just easily peel off your surface.

On to Plan B (or would it be C at this point?)  I knew this was going to be dicey at best, but it was worth a shot.  I sanded down the two drawers with the transfers, sanding off the transfer as well as most of the hemp oil.  Then I wiped them down with TSP substitute to further reduce the oil.  I had a little bit of my mixed paint left, so I stirred it well and added a fresh coat to the two drawers.

I’ve had issues in the past with getting different shades of green doing this.  I posted about that here.  Over time as green milk paint sits it tends to change color slightly.

So, I do know better.  But I thought I might as well try it since I had the paint.  Worst case scenario I have to re-do ALL of the drawers.

Yep, worst case scenario.  It’s not a really glaring difference, but enough of a difference that it bugged me.

So, back to sanding and cleaning each drawer with TSP substitute, mixing up a fresh batch of Bayberry paint and repainting each drawer.  I didn’t have to do the body of the dresser, just the drawer fronts.

In the long run it would have been smarter to try this experiment with Fusion acrylic paint or chalk paint.  That way I could have gotten away with just repainting the two drawers.  Hindsight is always 20/20.  I hope that by sharing my failures in this way, you guys can learn from them and not make the same mistakes.

To recap.  New lesson learned:  don’t use IOD transfers on dark colors.  Old lesson reinforced:  paint your milk paint pieces all at once, you can’t go back later and just paint one or two drawers.  Got that?

I promised ‘dibs’ on this dresser to the original owner.  But if she doesn’t want it back, it will be for sale.  Be sure to check my ‘available for local sale’ tab for more details.