the principle bedroom.

Published on by Quandie27 Comments

Are any of you fans of Sarah Richardson?  If you’re not familiar, she’s a Canadian designer and has had several decorating shows on HGTV.  This summer I’ve been watching her makeover her cottage on YouTube.

None of that is really relevant to this post except to explain that she always calls the master bedroom the ‘principle bedroom’ instead.  And the feminist in me rather likes that idea.  I googled it, and apparently this is a Canadian thing.  How about it my Canadian readers,  have you always called it the ‘principle bedroom’ too?

Well, today I’m sharing our principle bedroom as we continue the tour of our home.

If you’re new to my blog, you may not know that we totally revamped this room back in the summer of 2017 from the floors on up.  We started by hiring some college guys to refinish the floors.  I chose to go with a matte finish and I absolutely love how they turned out.

They aren’t perfect, but then again they are over 100 years old so how could they be?  Matte finishes are always better at minimizing flaws than shinier ones.  The same is true for walls and painted furniture too.

Next up we painted the room in Benjamin Moore’s Edgecomb Gray.  I’d seen so many people raving about this color online so I went with it.  In hindsight I wish I’d tried a few more colors and found a better choice for my room.  This color tends to turn a sort of pinky beige in both early morning and late evening light.  It just goes to show that you really can’t pick wall colors based on pictures you’ve seen.  You need to get samples and try them on your own walls in your own lighting conditions.

After painting, we added a faux ship lap wall (which is painted in Dutch Boy’s Cotton Blossom) behind the bed with the help of handyman/neighbor Ken.

We modified a full size antique Eastlake style headboard to fit a queen sized bed, and I painted it using Homestead House milk paint in Coal Black.

I also painted a pair of mismatched pieces to use as nightstands, but for them I chose Miss Mustard Seed’s milk paint in Grain Sack.

The bench at the foot of the bed is one of the rare instances when I chose not to paint something.

I used some of my non-collection of vintage advertisement hangers to hang a few of our travel photos on the wall next to the closet.

And in case you are wondering, yes, that is the only closet in the room and it’s pretty small.  It just contains my current season’s wardrobe.  Mr. Q has a closet in his study for his clothes, and we both use the guest room closet for our off-season clothes.  I just moved the summer clothes into the guest room.  Yep, it’s that time of year.

 I keep my non-hanging clothes in an old jelly cupboard that is also painted in Miss Mustard Seed’s milk paint in Grain Sack.  I added a couple of Prima Marketing transfers to the doors.

These are an old design called French Pots III.  Unfortunately this design is discontinued.  You may be able to find it online, but no promises.

I’ve made a couple of tweaks to this side of the room since we originally finished it.  I brought in a companion for Lulu (the black manikin).

Collette, the dress form, has been stripped of her original covering and then dressed back up with another Prima Marketing transfer called Catalogue (sorry, also discontinued).

I also hung the vintage laundry drying rack that I found at a garage sale this summer on the other side of the cupboard.

I find that I’m often adding things to a room, or moving things around from room to room so that a space just keeps evolving.  I’ll never be one of those people who decorates and room and then considers it ‘done’, never to be touched again.  How about you?

the cabinet of curiosities.

Published on by Quandie36 Comments

In early September I set a goal for myself of completing all of the large pieces of furniture that were being stored out in my workshop before the snow flies.

Here in Minnesota that could be sometime soon.  If you’ll remember, last year we had snow on October 14 …

It didn’t stick around for long, but still … that meant it was already too cold to paint in my workshop by mid-October last year and it looks to be going that way again this year.  Last I heard snow is in the forecast for Friday.

I had one especially large piece at the top of my to-do list.  Some friends of ours gave me this piece for free.  I meant to get to it last fall, but I never did.  Then it spent all winter being stored in the carriage house.  Then I spent all summer just looking at it and thinking ‘I really need to get around to that one!‘

Somehow the summer just flew by and I never managed to get ‘er done.

Here’s what was holding me back:

no. 1 – It’s really large.  This piece is just under 7′ tall and 42″ wide and for some reason I always procrastinate on larger pieces and then later wonder what I was worried about.

no. 2 – This piece needed quite a few repairs, although my handyman/neighbor Ken cranked most of those out pretty quickly.  But the veneer was in pretty rough shape and needed a lot of gluing (by yours truly) which just isn’t one of my favorite things to do.

no. 3 – I couldn’t decide how to paint it.  I went round and round trying to decide on a look for this piece.  Do I go with a color?  Do I play it safe with a neutral?  Should the inside be a different color or the same color as the exterior?  Should I use a transfer or stencils?  I just wasn’t feeling inspired by any of the ideas I was coming up with.

Before we get to the painting part though, I have to share this clever ‘fix’ that Ken devised.

  One of the shelves was absolutely loaded with cup hooks.

I was thinking it would be a colossal pain to unscrew each one of them by hand.  I mentioned that to Ken and he came up with a really creative solution.  He modified a wooden clothes pin to fit into his drill …

Then he cut a slit in the end of the clothes pin to fit over the cup hooks.

Throw the drill into reverse and it’s easy peasy to remove all of those hooks.  Seriously you guys, how clever is that?  And now I have a lifetime supply of cup hooks.

The top of this piece was in especially bad shape.  One corner in particular was completely broken off.

Ken did a fantastic job of repairing this spot, but I did a crappy job of smoothing it out with filler.  At that point I was starting to feel like this piece was going to be pretty quirky no matter what and it might be wise to just embrace the quirky-ness instead of trying to fight it.

And thus, the Cabinet of Curiosities was born.

I painted the entire piece in Dixie Belle’s Caviar and finished it with their Big Mama’s Butta.

I used several different stencils on it.

Including this Antiques and Curiosities stencil that I used in an attempt to draw attention away from my wonky filler job.

And I also used some of Prima Marketing’s knob transfers.

The glass doors have their original wavy glass.

One of the really cool features is the fold out desk top.  There is a support on each side that you pull out for the top to rest on.

Then you just flip it open.

So, yes, technically this is a secretary desk not a cabinet per se.  But somehow ‘the secretary desk of curiosities’ didn’t have the same ring for the title of this post.

And with the desk top folded back in, this just looks like your typical glass fronted cabinet.

I always have fun staging photos of black cabinets.

Pretty much all of my non-collections work well with a black background.

When we added the faux board and batten paneling in this room I figured it was up high enough to allow me to crop out the dark grey wall color for most pieces of furniture, but not the 7 footers like this one!

As always, many thanks to Dixie Belle for providing the paint and the Big Mama’s Butta, and to Prima Marketing for providing the knob transfers for this project.

If you’re wondering where to purchase the Prima Marketing transfers check out their ‘where to buy’ page.

If you’re wondering where to buy the Dixie Belle products, you can shop with them directly online or find a retailer near you.

And finally, if you happen to be local (Twin Cities, MN) and in need of a cabinet to house your curiosities, please check out my ‘available for local sale’ page for more details.

a thing for boxes.

Published on by Quandie10 Comments

I seem to have a thing for old wooden boxes.

Remember the one I found at the estate sale back in August?

I ended up simply adding a portion of the Prima Marketing Somewhere in France transfer to the front and then sprucing it up with a little furniture wax.

I was hoping it would work on the shelves in either our living room or piano room, but it’s just a tad too big.  So for now I have it in our bedroom.

We had a couple of my South Dakota cousins over for dinner a while back and my cousin David insisted that this box looks like a tiny casket.  It’s far too small to really be a casket for a person of any size though, so then he claimed it was a cat-sket.

Hmmmm.  Well, I guess it could work for that.  Luckily our cat Lucy is still going strong.  We did have a bit of a scare with her last week, but after a bunch of expensive tests her vet has decided she simply had a virus.  She’s doing much better now, knock on wood.  Plus all of those tests did show that she’s doing pretty good for a cat of 13, so hopefully we won’t be needing a cat-sket any time soon.

My love of old wooden boxes continued with my ‘find of the day’ from the St. Anthony Park sales.

I decided to give this one a paint job in Dixie Belle’s Drop Cloth, then I added an old Prima Marketing transfer called Memoir (the small size).  This transfer is no longer being manufactured but you may be able to find one online if you search.

Just about half of the transfer fit on the front of the box, and I put another section on the top.

I decided to leave the inside of the box alone.  I didn’t want to cover up the King Radio decal.

Those dividers pretty much eliminate any chance that this one is a cats-ket 😉

I used Dixie Belle’s Big Mama’s Butta in Orange Grove on both the inside and the outside of the box.

That freshened it up a little and gave it a fabulous scent.

I was having a bit of a split personality moment while staging the photos for this one.  I was initially thinking that it would be perfect for storing old family photos or other ephemera.

But then I switched gears and realized it would also work well for storing some art supplies.

Either way, it’s a fun little storage box.

Once again, it’s too big for my living room/piano room shelves, so I’ll likely take it in to Reclaiming Beautiful to be sold.

If you have a thing for old wooden boxes too, check out some of the others that I’ve done here, here, here and here.

the world’s smallest bathroom.

Published on by Quandie22 Comments

Today we’re moving on in our house tour to the one and only bathroom in the house, which is just off the kitchen next to the pantry.  In other words, a long way from the bedroom at 2 a.m.

Well, technically it’s a long way from the bedroom at any hour, but it seems especially far in the middle of the night.

That’s probably the biggest ‘con’ to living in an old house.  I don’t mind not having a dish washer, or central air, or an attached garage, or laundry facilities on the main floor.  But we sure would love to have a bathroom upstairs.  We looked into it once and we simply couldn’t justify the expense.  When we consider expenses like these we think ‘how many trips would we have to forgo to have a bathroom upstairs?’, and in this case it was at least 4 or 5.

So instead we make do with the world’s smallest bathroom.

I ended up having to recycle some photos for this post that I took way back in 2014 when my blog was new.  The weather has not been cooperating around here lately.  It’s been rainy and gloomy and generally not conducive to getting photos of a small dark bathroom.

But I haven’t changed anything in the bathroom since then, so good enough!

Much like many of the rooms in our house, this one has seen a couple of different looks over the years.  When we moved in it was wallpapered in pink and blue and had some hideous square stick-on linoleum tiles on the floor.  We swapped out the sink and toilet, added the wainscoting and re-wallpapered in a Waverly pattern of purple and green violets complete with a matching border.  Come on, I bet some of you remember when Waverly was all the rage.

Eventually of course all of that wallpaper had to go.  We took it down, had the walls and ceiling skim coated, re-painted, added a heated floor (absolutely one of the best things we’ve ever done, and not terribly expensive at all) with ceramic tile and some new light fixtures, all around the same time we re-did the kitchen.

The only things that have remained from when we moved in are the tub and the mirrored medicine cabinet over the sink.

I’ve debating changing the medicine cabinet out, but I’m glad now that I’ve kept it.

By the way, those light fixtures on either side of the mirror may look like they could be original to the house but they are reproductions from Rejuvenation.  If you have an older home and are looking for some period style lighting, be sure to check out Rejuvenation.

The tub sits in an arched alcove and I imagine it would be rather difficult to find a replacement of exactly the right size.

The shower curtain came from H & M Home.

You have to get creative about storage in a small bathroom.  We have one tiny linen closet plus the medicine cabinet and that’s it.  So I keep my makeup in that old metal tin, and makeup brushes and q-tips are in those galvanized containers hanging on the wall.

The wall mounted soap dish came from Restoration Hardware.

We use an old stenciled bucket for trash.

I debated even including a post about the bathroom in this Wednesday house tour series.  There just isn’t much to show.  But if nothing else, maybe it will make the rest of you feel pretty good about your own more sizable and luxurious bathrooms 😉

Be sure to check back next Wednesday when I continue the tour of our house with the master bedroom!

safe and reliable.

Published on by Quandie24 Comments

I brought this washstand home from the Mac-Grove sales back in August.

The finish was in pretty rough shape and it was missing a drawer pull.  The hinges on the little door were held on with nails instead of screws.  Otherwise, it was in fairly decent condition.

I started by removing the towel bar/harp thingie.  I find that leaving those in place really limits the usefulness of these pieces.  It also makes them look a little too 80’s country.  I do re-use these harps by turning them into shelves.  I’ll share a post on that soon.

Next I simply sanded down the top.  Most of the finish was already worn off and the wood was somewhat stained and beat up.  I was planning a rustic look for this piece though, so I simply sanded it well and then applied some of Miss Mustard Seed’s Antiquing Wax to the top.

I decided to paint the rest of this one in Dixie Belle’s Putty.

If you’ve never tried this color I want to encourage you to give it a try.  Just look how gorgeous it is.

If you’re familiar with other brands of paint, this color reminds me a lot of Annie Sloan’s Coco or Fusion’s Algonquin.  It’s a deep, rich, taupe and it pairs beautifully with a dark wood tone.  This is the first time I’ve tried it, but you can bet you’ll be seeing it again in the future.  It’s definitely a ‘safe and reliable’ neutral.

I thought it would be fun to play up the rustic nature of this little washstand by using Prima Marketing’s Fine Horseman transfer.  Here’s what the complete transfer looks like …

As you can see, I only used parts of it.  I cut out sections and re-arranged them where I wanted them on my piece.

Always keep this possibility in mind with these collage style transfers.

I was initially planning to use some clear glass knobs on this piece, but they really didn’t have the right look.  So instead I pulled out my stash of wood knobs and found 5 matching ones.  I filled the holes for the original pulls using Dixie Belle’s Mud before I painted and then drilled new single holes for knobs.

I really had some fun staging this one for photos.

That mesh dome on top of the books is actually a vintage horse muzzle.  I didn’t realize that when I purchased it, but later saw one in Flea Market Style magazine and realized that was what I had.  I have to admit, I never thought I’d actually have a specific use for a vintage horse muzzle but it sure worked well for these photos.

You also just never know when your non-collection of whisk brooms is going to come in handy.

What?  You don’t have a huge stash of old whisk brooms?  Actually, there’s a story behind mine.  I saw a wreath made out of old whisk brooms in Country Living magazine many years ago so I started grabbing them when I saw them at garage sales (and my picker, Sue, found quite a few of them for me too) so that I could make one for myself.  As it turns out, it takes quite a few brooms to have enough for a wreath.  Naturally, by the time I had enough, I no longer wanted to make the wreath.

But they look kind of cool piled into this canvas wine bucket.

I knew I had an old family photo or two with horses in them, so I dug this one out for staging as well.

My mom swears that is my Aunt Lu, but it sure looks a lot more like my grandmother to me.  She should know though.  Those horses certainly do look safe and reliable, don’t they?

It really was just a pleasure working on this piece.

If you’re a horse lover and a local, be sure to check my ‘available for local sale’ page to see if it’s still available.

As always, many thanks to Dixie Belle for providing the paint, the Big Mama’s Butta and the Mud, and to Prima Marketing for providing the transfer for this project.

If you’re wondering where to purchase the Prima Marketing transfers check out their ‘where to buy’ page.

If you’re wondering where to buy the Dixie Belle products, you can shop with them directly online or find a retailer near you.

my v.l.f.g. addiction.

Published on by Quandie10 Comments

My name is Quandie and I am addicted to v.l.f.g.

What?  You haven’t heard of this one?

It’s an addiction to vintage light fixture globes, naturally.

I see them at garage sales at ridiculously low prices and I just can’t stop myself from buying them.

The latest addition to my non-collection (because as we’ve previously established, I am not a collector!) is this beauty …

Isn’t that gorgeous?  I paid $5 for it at an estate sale earlier this summer.  I just couldn’t pass it up.  I purchased it hoping it would fit the fixture in my guest room but unfortunately it didn’t.  So if I want to use it, I’ll need to get a base that fits this size globe.  I’m still considering that move.

On Wednesday you saw this pretty pink globe in my pantry.

It was also a garage sale find.

Last year I bought this gorgeous wedding cake globe at the Linden Hills neighborhoods sales.

You can buy one of these at Rejuvenation for $180, but I paid $10 for mine.

I put it on my bathroom light fixture, but since I have the world’s smallest bathroom I’ve found it next to impossible to get a good photo of it in there.

Another of my favorites is the gorgeous black & white globe that I put on my front porch.

Using vintage globes is a quick and easy way to add some instant character to your house.  If you are safety conscious, as we all should be with electricity, you can put the vintage globe on a new fixture.  A basic flush mount fixture is usually less than $20.

So, I’m curious, am I the only one who is drawn to v.l.f.g.’s?

 

the pantry.

Published on by Quandie32 Comments

In last Wednesday’s post you saw the door to our pantry.

Despite the signage, that door doesn’t really lead to any public phones.  I got that sign at Junk Bonanza many years ago and it’s been on the pantry door ever since.

It also doesn’t really lead to a pantry.  Instead it opens onto the stairs to our basement.  But there is a 12″ or so ledge around two sides that we’ve taken advantage of by adding some built in shelving and calling it a pantry.

Once again, let’s start at the beginning though.

Oh boy, right?

Yep, this is where we started.  How embarrassing is that?

At that point we had a solid door.  It could be closed so that no one could see this awful mess.  Closing the door is also a good thing because in the winter it blocks the radiator when open.

But as you can see, we have a window in this space.  And closing the door resulted in shutting out the light it allowed in as well.  So we decided we needed a door with a window to allow the light into the kitchen, and that also meant we needed to make this space presentable.  It would no longer be out of sight, out of mind.

I found the door on Craigslist.  It had to be cut down just a tad to fit our opening.

We then embarked on the big clean-out.

It was still looking pretty shabby once everything was removed.  That’s when we hired our friend Ben (Ben also did all of our sheet rock/archway building work in the kitchen … oh, and he has also painted our exterior as well, and he removed all of our popcorn ceilings on the main floor) to skim coat the walls and ceiling.

Once they were skim coated, I repainted.

It was already looking so much better.

Next I shopped around for more attractive shelving for the space.  I was limited to the 12″ depth of the ledge though and I just couldn’t find what I wanted anywhere.  Enter our favorite handyman/neighbor Ken.  He custom built shelving to fit the space and to suit our needs.

Now, here’s the thing.  As you move into the pantry, you’re also going down the stairs into the basement.  So we can’t actually reach the things on the top of the shelving unit under the window, or the things on the top right shelf or very top of the taller units.  They are just for looks.

Well, let’s be honest, there might be a few more items in here that are really ‘just for looks’.  This is the perfect spot for displaying a few of my non-collections like the bluebird china, vintage scales and flour sifters …

and don’t forget the vintage tablecloths.

Uh, that’s a lot of non-collections, right?  I guess denial is not just a river in Egypt.

But I also like to use awesome vintage (or maybe not so vintage) containers to store mundane, but more practical things.  The taller breadbox holds the cat food, the smaller breadbox holds Keurig coffee pods.  The other vintage breadboxes hold Kleenex.  The enamelware bucket holds cleaning rags.

Vintage locker baskets hold paper towels and toilet paper.

The wall opposite the shelves, which I practically have to do contortions to photograph, is painted in black chalkboard paint and contains a message that I try to live by.

That wall also houses the light fixture.  I swapped out the plain glass shade that was on it originally for this fabulous vintage one that I found at a garage sale.

The pantry was the absolute last space in our house that we tackled.  We’d redone every other room, and some twice, but we didn’t get to this one until we’d been in our house nearly 20 years.  It was so easy to just shut the door and ignore it.  But now that it’s pretty, it’s one of my favorite spots.  Especially in the evening when the sun starts going down and it floods the pantry, and now the kitchen, with light.

Do you have a space like this in your house?  You know, that one area that you’ve been neglecting for a really long time?  Please tell me that we’re not the only ones who took 20 years to get something done!

st. anthony park 2019.

Published on by Quandie8 Comments

This past Saturday my sister and I planned to go garage saling, but if it was as stormy as predicted we had a backup plan of heading to the mall instead.  Sure enough, I woke up at 5:30 a.m. to the sound of thunder.  However by 7 a.m. the storms had passed leaving behind just overall dampness and overcast skies.

But I was especially motivated to get out there and garage sale because this was the last big neighborhood sale of the season (or at least that I know about, if you any of you locals know of more please leave a comment).  So clouds and occasional drizzle weren’t going to hold us back.  We threw rain jackets and hats in the car just in case and headed out.

This time we were in St. Paul’s St. Anthony Park neighborhood.  This neighborhood was developed in the late 19th century as a streetcar suburb (ie. you could commute to the city via streetcar) for the wealthier residents of Minneapolis/St. Paul (wikipedia).  It’s full of large 100 year old homes and each one is unique (unlike more modern developments).

Debbie and I decided this house was most definitely haunted …

This pretty yellow and white house had a charming farmhouse look with its wrap around porch.  Check out that chippy bench under the window.

And this next house had another of those gorgeous hydrangea trees.

I didn’t come home with any super amazing finds, but I really loved each thing that I threw into the car starting with this kid sized cupboard.

These tend to be a little more difficult to sell, but they are so fun to work on!  I’m hoping to come up with an adorable look for this one and I may use some vintage wallpaper to line the back of it.

Funny enough the tiny tea set came from a different sale a couple of blocks later.

As soon as I saw it I thought “that would be perfect for staging the little cupboard!”

And then, I found another little vintage tea set later in the day too.  It’s funny how often this happens, you find several of the same random items on any given day.

I’m planning to bring these sets to Reclaiming Beautiful for the Christmas season.  Wouldn’t they make a fabulous Christmas gift for some lucky little girl?

Yep, I’m already thinking Christmas.  I know, it’s way too early, but somehow it always manages to sneak up on me in the end, so this year I am planning ahead.

The foot board that is leaning in the back of my first photo is just that, a lone foot board.  The sellers said they are using the headboard but had no use for the foot board.  It was definitely priced to sell, they just wanted to quit storing it.

I may add a shelf to it or maybe turn it into a ‘sign’ of sorts.  I’ve done a few foot board makeovers in the past and you can see them here, here and here.

I found a couple of creamy white McCoy’s to add to my non-collection.  I have a little empty space on the shelves in my piano room so I need just a few more to fill in.

I’ll save that little aqua planter for spring and take it to the shop to sell.

My sister came home with a couple of items this time.

She’ll definitely use the old cast iron corn bread pan.  We all love her cornbread and with this pan every piece will be a crispy end piece.

There really wasn’t a stand-out choice for ‘find of the day’ this time, but I decided to give that status to this King Radio box.

I have no idea how a radio fit inside, or even if a radio fit inside, but it says King Radio inside the lid so I’m going with it.

As you can see, it has dividers inside.  Maybe those were added later?  No idea.  But this will be fun to paint and turn into some sort of keepsake box.

On the one hand I’m sad to see the 2019 neighborhood sale season coming to an end, but on the other hand I’m ready to have my Saturdays back for other things like actually painting furniture.  I’m working on a really fun piece currently that I hope to have done soon.  In the meantime, check back on Wednesday as I continue my house tour in the pantry.

not reinventing the wheel.

Published on by Quandie45 Comments

OK, so I’m not reinventing the wheel or anything with today’s post.  I’m sure you’ve all seen old windows turned into photo frames many times before.  Initially I wasn’t even going to blog about this project, but it was a fun one to work on and I love how it turned out so I decided, why not?

What’s the worst that can happen?  You’ll all get bored, move on to the next thing in your day and not leave any comments.  I can live with that.  So here it is.

My neighbor, nnK, has a stash of old windows from a barn that was torn down.  I was over at her house one day because one my fellow vendors from Reclaiming Beautiful, Amy, was looking for old windows to build a green house (I can’t wait to see how that project turns out for her!)  Amy left with a truck load of windows, and afterwards I noticed that there was just one 3 pane window left in the stash and it had perfectly chippy white paint so nnK let me have it, sort of like a commission for finding her a buyer for the windows.

I brought it home and gave it a good cleaning.  Then I sanded it down to knock off any really loose paint.  Finally I used The Real Milk Paint Co’s Dead Flat Finishing Cream to seal it.

Today’s q tip:  Always remember that old paint may contain lead.  You can buy inexpensive testing kits at any DIY store if you want to know for sure.  Lead paint is more dangerous for children than adults, but still you should take proper safety precautions when working with it.  I like to seal chippy old paint like this to keep it from continuing to flake off.

Once the Finishing Cream was dry I added some random leftover bits from the Prima Marketing Seeds transfer.

I also added the old window hardware.  This was some old hardware that I picked up at a garage sale once upon a time.

Next I went through my photos and picked out some of my favorite travel pics.  I used PicMonkey to make them black and white and then printed them off as 5″ x 7″ photos on 8.5″ by 11″ matte photo paper.

I chose this picture from our trip to Budapest.

This one from our trip to Venice.

And this one that I took at the Beamish in England.

I totally loved that place, so if you’re ever in Newcastle upon Tyne you should absolutely check it out.

Initially I was thinking that the tricky part of this project would be trimming the photos just right to fit the window panes, and then figuring out how to adhere them.

But then I realized that I liked the look of the photos with a little space between them and the glass.  So taping them to the back of the window frame without trimming them at all worked out perfectly well.

And the 5″ x 7″ dimensions also worked perfectly leaving some visible white space around each photo, sort of like a mat.

I added these hangers to the back of the window …

I prefer this style hanger to the saw tooth version because they screw in and will hold heavier items like this with no problem.

So, to recap, the window was free, the photos were free (unless you count the ink and paper, which presumably one already has on hand), the transfer was left over from another project and the window hardware was something from my stash of old hardware.  The only things I had to purchase were the hanger thingies.

Although I originally intended it for the living room …

I’ve now moved it to the piano room.

Down the road I can always swap out the photos for different ones, or move this to yet another room.

Not bad for an investment of just a couple of dollars and about an hour or so, huh?  Do you have any old windows lying around that you can turn into photo holders?

treat the cheese nicely.

Published on by Quandie31 Comments

Welcome to the next installment of our house tour series.  Today we’re visiting the kitchen.

If you’ve been reading my blog for any length of time you’ve probably figured out that I don’t really cook.  You’ve wondered how I can find the time for a full-time job, plus a blog, plus furniture painting?  Well, the answer is, I don’t cook.  OK, maybe that’s not the full answer, but it’s certainly part of it.  Any cooking that takes place at our house is usually done by Mr. Q, and occasionally even by my sister.

That being said, having a gourmet kitchen is pretty low on our list of priorities.  We are very happy with having a mostly functional kitchen instead.  We have the basics; a stove, a microwave, a sink, some cupboards and a fridge.  None of which are fancy or expensive.  And in case you are wondering, no, we do not have a dishwasher.  But who really needs one for just two people who rarely cook?

But you know what?  Let’s stop here and put this kitchen in perspective by hopping into the time machine and heading back to 2006.  This was another of my domino effect decorating projects.  It started out with a plan to put in a new sink and counter tops, re-paint the cupboards and walls and tile the floor.  But it ended up morphing into something a little bit bigger.

To begin with I started out by removing the existing wallpaper in preparation for painting only to find that the lower half of the walls were covered with a thin layer of hardboard.  When we pulled that off, we discovered that the board had been put in place as a quick fix for plaster walls that were in really terrible condition as evidenced by this old page out of my ‘home redecorating’ scrapbook.

At that point my friend/picker/co-worker Sue and her husband kindly offered to help us remove the plaster so we could put up sheet rock instead.  Looking back, I still can’t believe how generous that was of them.  I’m pretty sure I had no idea what we were getting ourselves into.

That lead to the next unexpected decision, to open up the wall between the kitchen and the piano room.  You see, Sue’s husband accidentally got a little carried away with the sledge hammer and went right through that wall to the other side.

Rather than panic, we decided that it was sign that we should open up that wall and I’m still grateful to this day that he did that.  This change added much more light to the kitchen and really just opened up the entire first floor of our house.

Since we had the walls down to the studs, at that point it made sense to update the wiring in the kitchen and why not put in some counter top lighting as well, right?

Luckily Mr. Q’s brother Joel was able to help us out with that.

We had also planned to rip up the linoleum and do a ceramic tile floor instead.  We had even purchased all of the tile.  However, when we pulled up the linoleum we found wood floors underneath.  So instead we had the wood floors refinished in a checkerboard pattern.

The dark squares are stained and the light squares were left natural.

We hired various people to do most of the rest of the difficult work including sheet rocking the walls and ceiling, and putting in that new arched opening to match the other existing arches in the living room.  Plus putting in new counter tops, a new sink and faucet and tiling the back splash.

I still love the simple white subway tile back splash 13 years later.  It’s a timeless classic that works really well with the age of our home.

We also purchased new appliances back then, and as I’m writing this blog post I realize that means our kitchen appliances are all 13 years old too.  Yikes!  They’ll probably start dropping like flies soon.

We have just the one wall of cabinets and we never even considered replacing them.  Doing so would be expensive and I like the charm of these originals.  They are in really good shape considering they are over 100 years old.  I did switch out the knobs though.

They badly need to be repainted at this point though, maybe I’ll get to that next summer.  Next time around I’ll likely use Fusion paint for its durability.

Those cupboards at the very top originally had solid doors.  We cut out the inserts and replaced them with chicken wire.  Since they are up so high it was never practical to store anything we needed to be able to access on a regular basis up there.  So it made sense to make them decorative instead.

I have them filled with white (not all of it is technically ironstone) china serving pieces.

The rest of the decorative details were up to me and as per usual there are a lot of garage sale finds in this room.  That sisal runner in front of the cupboards was purchased at a garage sale and it’s the perfect size for that spot.

The little cupboard above the radiator by the stove is also a garage sale find.

I keep some of my favorite dishes inside including my french cafe au lait bowls, my numbered plates from Target and a couple of ironstone pieces.

My favorite garage sale find in the room though is the pair of plates hanging on the wall between the pantry door and the bathroom door.

I’ve learned that these are Norwegian cheese plates.  I had found an article once that said the writing on them roughly translates to ‘treat the cheese nicely’, but I’ve since lost track of that article.

  If any of you out there reading this know anything about these plates, I’d love to hear it.

Anyway, I paid just $1 for these plates and the man selling them said they had belonged to his Norwegian mother.  I love them, and even though they didn’t come from my own Norwegian grandmother I still treat them as though they did … and I also always treat the cheese nicely too 😉

Be sure to check back next Wednesday when we’ll take a look behind that pantry door!