q is for quandie

Yesterday my handyman/neighbor Ken and I worked on a project in my piano room that is almost finished, and I’m so excited to share it with you guys.  I’m planning to have that room ready for next Wednesday’s room tour.

In the meantime, before I get to today’s room tour, I have to tell you all that we’re feeling pretty fortunate here at our house.  We had a ferocious (Mr. Q’s word) storm blow through here on Monday night and the maple tree in our front year came down.

I’m a bit bummed because this tree had finally gotten to the right size to block the street light from our bedroom window.  I also really enjoyed listening to birds singing in this tree in the early morning hours.  However it missed our front porch by about a foot, which is incredibly lucky.  It didn’t do any damage at all except to one little corner of my front garden.

As you can see, there are plenty of bigger trees around our house that would have done much more damage if they had come down.

Not only that, but when we got up in the morning there was a tree service company working a block over so I asked them if they’d look at my tree too.  While they were at it, I also asked them to take down the pear tree in my front yard.  It didn’t do well over last winter and was looking pretty sad (you can just see it to the left in the photo above).  I had been thinking about having that one cut down anyway.

They had both trees down, everything hauled away, and my entire yard cleaned up by 9 a.m.

So although our front yard feels a little barren now, and we feel a little more exposed,  we’re definitely going to have fewer leaves to rake this fall.  Overall we are counting our blessings because this certainly could have been much worse.

  OK, on with today’s normally scheduled programming.  We are heading inside to tour a branch of a different kind, the q branch.

This room is directly off the piano room and I have no idea what purpose it was originally meant to serve.  Possibly it was just small sitting room all along, or it could have been a very small main floor bedroom at one time.

We’ve tried a number of different looks for this room.  It once housed my dollhouse, which basically took up the entire space.  Then we turned it into a small dining room, which we never actually used.

Now it is the q branch, or my study, and it gets more use than it ever did before.  I last redecorated this room back in January 2015 (oh my gosh, can you believe that was over four years ago!).  Mr. Q is the one who thought it should be called the q branch.  If you’re not a James Bond fan, the q branch is the fictional research and development segment of the British Secret Service in the Bond movies.  Clearly it was the perfect name for the room where I write this blog.

The biggest change to this room since I originally finished it in 2015 was the addition of my giant English cupboard.  I purchased this via Craigslist back in August 2017.

When I brought it home the inside was completely empty, but handyman/neighbor Ken kitted it out with shelves for me and then I painted the inside.

I was on the fence about whether or not to paint the exterior at the time, but now I’m really glad I didn’t.  I love the patina of the bare wood.

I only recently moved my stack of vintage suitcases into this room (and clearly I need to move my paint brushes up a bit on the wall).

They used to be in the dining room.  I think they fit better here though.  Some of them house my vintage Christmas ornaments, and some of them are just empty.

The opposite side of the room contains my rooster cupboard.  It is painted in Miss Mustard Seed’s milk paint in a coat of Flow Blue over a coat of Artissimo then finished with her antiquing (dark) wax.

This cupboard is one of my favorite pieces.  I love the chippy paint and that fabulous rooster grain sack that I used to line the glass doors.

The room does feel a bit ‘cupboard heavy’ though, with two cupboards in a fairly small space.  They are really great for storage though.  Some of you ask how I can bear to part with some of my pieces, well, this is one that I just can’t seem to let go of.  I do wish I had a better spot for it though.

My giant ‘q’ still hangs on the wall above my desk.

My sister gave this to me for Christmas several years ago and I gave it a chippy paint job.  I think I’m going to re-do it soon though, I have another idea in mind for it.

I’m realizing now that I could have done a much better job staging this room for these photos.  A professional would have hidden all of those cords coming down behind the desk, and straightened out the lambs wool throw on the chair.  Maybe found a cuter mouse pad too.

But this is real life guys.  This is where I sit in the early morning hours writing my blog posts and editing my photos.  There are cords, and messes, and usually a cup of coffee next to that unattractive mouse pad.

I hope you enjoyed today’s tour.  Be sure to check back next Wednesday to see what Ken and I were up to in the piano room!

Welcome to the third installment of my house tour.  I had originally planned to go in order with the rooms (because I tend to be a organized, linear sort of thinker) , which would have meant that the piano room was next.

But I have a big project planned for that room in the coming weeks, so instead today I’m going to share my ‘outside room’ otherwise known as the deck.

Do you have a wooden deck?  I’m not gonna lie, I think maintaining a wood deck is one of the most annoying chores.  Our deck is made out of cedar and we’ve tried several different sealer/weather-proofing products over the years and none of them have lived up to my expectations.

Now, granted, Minnesota weather can be pretty harsh.  And we enter our house via the deck, so it gets a lot of wear and tear year round.

But so far every product we have used has looked not so great within a year, and downright crappy within two.

So this year we decided to go back to basics.  Mr. Q put in hours and hours of stripping, power washing and using brighteners to un-do the damage caused by the various products we’d applied over the years.  Before you get all excited and think that I’m about to reveal a miracle deck product that you should all run out and buy, think again.  In fact, once he had finished all of that work, we decided to just try going au natural this time around.

We are accepting our own limitations, following the maxim ‘know thyself’, knowing full well that we won’t keep up with the regular maintenance required for a good looking finish on our deck.  Since our deck is made of cedar though, we are going to just let it weather naturally for a year and see how we feel about that look.  After all, if we end up hating it, we can always get out the pressure washer and do it all over again.

In addition to Mr. Q cleaning up the wood decking itself, I also freshened up the patio furniture this summer.

You’ve already seen the Adirondack chairs that our handyman/neighbor Ken made for us.  One is brand new, and one we’ve had for several years, but I gave both of them a fresh coat of RustOleum spray paint in a color called Eden.

Oh hey, speaking of the chairs, here’s a photo I shared after painting them back at the beginning of July and it shows the ‘before’ state of the decking.  That gives you an idea of where Mr. Q was starting.

Yeah, definitely not great, huh?

And here are the chairs on the newly stripped decking.

Definitely an improvement.

In addition to having a great eye when it comes to garage sale finds, my picker Sue can also sew.  So I asked her to sew up some simple drop cloth slipcovers for my cushions for the dining set on my deck this summer as well.  They are just simple pillow sham style covers that allow me to slip the cushions in and out which makes it easy to wash them if necessary.

Initially I was going to stencil them with some of my European grain sack style stencils.  However, the throw pillows that I already had for the chairs have French writing on them so it seemed like that would be a bit much.  Instead I simply stenciled them with just the grain sack stripes.

I used Dixie Belle paint in Gravel Road, a grain sack stripe stencil and a fabulously large stencil brush from the Prima Marketing re.design line.

That brush with its big ball handle is easy to hold and the size made quick work of stenciling that wide stripe.

And I love how they turned out.

Now the chairs are much more ‘me’.

The throw pillows came from Restoration Hardware quite a few years back.  They had a bit of a story behind them too.  I purchased them online at a sale price without really paying attention to the measurements.  As it turned out they were far too wide for my chairs.  So once again Sue came to my rescue and modified them to fit.

They’ve held up pretty well over the years, all except this one.

I store these upstairs in the carriage house over the winter, and last spring when I pulled them out this one had this gaping hole.  I hate to say it, but I suspect mice chewed that hole.

So while I was working on the slip covers for the seats, I decided to create a patch for this hole.  I started by stenciling a scrap of the same drop cloth fabric used for the cushions.

Then I just sewed it in place behind the hole.

I’m quite sure that some of you are going to think I’m totally nuts, but now this is my favorite of the pillows.  I adore that little union jack patch job.  Unfortunately, it barely even shows when the pillow is in place on a chair.

Oh well.  I know it’s there, maybe that’s all that counts, right?

You may have noticed that I moved my rusty planters up to either side of the door.  It’s easier to see their fabulously rusty patina up on the deck.

I still have my house number plate hanging below the porch light.

I did this ages ago.  I used my Cricut machine to cut the ‘no. 6041’ out of adhesive vinyl and then stuck it to an ironstone platter.  I have to confess, I’m surprised it has held up as beautifully as it has.  I leave it there year round, take it down and wash it occasionally, and it still looks just like it did on day one.

Speaking of whether or not things hold up, remember the metal picnic basket that I added a Prima Marketing transfer to?  It’s also holding up quite well out in the elements despite not being sealed with anything at all.

I think how well the transfers hold up outdoors is entirely dependent upon what kind of surface you put them on.  This is a very smooth metal surface, although it is rusting in spots, the finish isn’t peeling or flaking underneath the transfer.  Plus I got a really good seal (ie. no air bubbles at all) with the transfer over the smooth surface of the metal.  I think a transfer on glass (or on a china plate) would also hold up really well outside.  However, you might get a different result with a transfer placed over a rougher surface like painted wood, unfinished barn wood or something like that.

That monster of a shrub beside the deck is a Limelight hydrangea.

Well, technically it’s two of them.  I planted them there to provide some extra privacy for our dining area and I never expected them to get so huge.    They provide a ‘wall’ on that end of the deck which makes it feel secluded and cozy.  As an added bonus it provides tons of dried hydrangeas to use in my window boxes for fall and winter.

You may have noticed that lump of something on one of the chairs in the photo above.

Lucy is once again up to her photo bombing ways.  She likes sleeping out here almost as much as the front porch.  She seems to be drawn like a magnet to anything that is freshly upholstered.

By the way, in case you are wondering why the Limelight hydrangea flowers look so green on the bush, while the ones in the ironstone pitcher on the table look creamier, that’s because the ones in the pitcher are Vanilla Strawberry hydrangeas.  I have one of those over by the carriage house.  The flowers start out fairly white but turn pinker over time.

Mr. Q and I have quite a few dinners out on our deck in the summer so it’s nice to finally have it all spruced up.

Now we can just focus on relaxing and enjoying it for the rest of the summer, while it lasts.

Next on our tour I’ll take you inside the photo cottage, so be sure to check back next Wednesday.