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Southern Snow 2015
As the temperature outside currently falls from 76 to a freezing 26 later tonight and an ice storm approaches from the west, I thought I would share some pictures of our big snow storm from last week. We ended up with 8-10″ which beats the previous record (since we’ve lived here) of 8″. Usually, if we get snow, it’s only an inch or 2 and it’s gone by noon. It’s a big change from Indiana where we grew up.
It snowed hard for several hours.
The neighbors’ Golden Retrievers thought it was great!
In lieu of snow mobiles, everyone gets out their four-wheelers. The kids like to ride on sleds (or whatever works) behind them.
The next morning, it was blinding outside because it was so bright!
Here are a few pictures of my parents’ Eastover Cottage.
Like I said, an ice storm is on it’s way here now as I type. Schools are already closed for tomorrow. It’s not supposed to warm up until Friday, so the ice, and whatever snow we get, is going to stay for at least a day. I’m ready for shorts weather!!!
DIY Fabric Ottoman
This post received a comment from Eric asking about the ottoman in our living room. This isn’t the first time I’ve been asked about it, so I decided it needed it’s own post. Here is the current version below. Information about the fabric is in this post. Our kitchen chairs are covered in the same fabric and the pillows are in coordinating fabrics. It is a home decor fabric, but I would not recommend it for ottoman, chair applications, etc. (I did give it at least 2 coats of Scotch Guard). It has faded quite a bit due to wear and I actually need to recover the ottoman because it has a tear in it now. It’s fine for the pillows, just not for a heavy duty surface like chairs or ottomans.
Here is the original version with Crypton fabric and black legs. It still looked new when I took it off, but I needed something different to go with our new couches.
The second version was an outdoor fabric I picked up at Hancock Fabrics.
Here’s a close up of the current fabric with one of our neighbor’s honey bees checking it out (ironically). I had it outside to apply the Scotch Guard.
I also spray painted the legs when I recovered it last time. They are now Rustoleum Anodized Bronze instead of black. I don’t have any in progress pics from when we built it, so these were taken today.
It’s not too different from any other ottoman tutorial you might find. We cut a sheet of plywood to the size we wanted – I believe 42″ square. You could make it any size or shape. We added some furring strips to the bottom to make the sides taller. The angled pieces you can see below help brace the furring strips along the sides.
I believe we screwed the furring strips on thru the top of the plywood along with using some glue (close up picture below). The legs are just 2×2 boards we cut to the desired height and screwed on thru the top of the plywood. You could also use furniture legs purchased from the lumber store, but we went with the simpler (and cheaper) version.
On top of the plywood is 4″ of foam I picked up at Hobby Lobby. I glued it to the plywood to keep it from shifting. I topped that with a couple layers of batting, then the fabric. I cut the top of the fabric to the size of the ottoman along with 4 side pieces, then sewed it all together. The key is getting it the right size to fit snuggly, but not too tight or loose. The batting and fabric is just stapled to the underside of the ottoman, as you can see.
Like I said, the ottoman needs to be recovered and I’ve been in search for new fabric. I’ll try to update this post with pictures of it uncovered once I find something.
Meanwhile from my last posts, the craft room has been repainted, our new office furniture arrived and the new hardwood is down in the master bedroom. I’ve been taking pictures of all the progress which I will post soon. The craft room is awaiting the old office furniture which still needs to be carted out to the garage for it’s makeover. Snow and cold temps have prevented me from being able to paint it, even in the garage. I hope to at least get started on it this week during the couple warm days we are supposed to have.
David installed the quarter round over the hardwood in the bedroom after I put 2 coats of paint on it. It still needs to be caulked and the nail holes filled, then another light coat of paint over that. It’s been a dramatic transformation though. The room seems so more open and, of course, cleaner without the carpet.
Going, Going, Gone
As often seems to be the case, our house projects have compounded all at once. I had been planning to work on my craft room while we waited for the new office furniture. A couple trips to Nashville resulted in a long awaited purchase for our bedroom. Among the random places I wanted to stop was discount flooring store we had visited a while back. I wanted to see if they had any solid oak that would work for our bedroom. With 2 dogs and lots of allergies, I’ve long dreamed of a bedroom without carpet. Our bedroom is the only room on the first floor with carpet, so ripping it out has been high on my list since we moved in. They ended up having a few options I thought might work, so we bought some samples on our first trip. We probably would have bought some that day, but I didn’t think my car would appreciate being loaded down with half a ton of wood. That gave me time to make a decision though.
The rest of the house has site finished 2 1/4″ oak floors finished in Minwax Early American.
I wanted to keep with oak since that is what we have everywhere else. (Would have loved to go with something else though – walnut, bamboo, acacia, etc). I was less concerned with the stain matching since almost no one but us sees our bedroom, and eventually the whole house may be refinished to a different stain which will make it all match. (That also meant whatever we bought had to be solid as opposed to engineered so that it could be refinished). I prefer wider planks than what we have, so I had considered using a 5-6″ plank, if possible. I wanted it to be close to twice the width of the existing floors so it wouldn’t look like we tried to match it and failed. I was worried a 3-4″ plank would be too close to the existing floors and just look like an error. The Nashville store had this White Oak which I thought would be a great compromise.
The planks are 8″ wide, but are made up of smaller pieces – like butcher block. So, it has the wide plank look I love, but also has the narrow boards like the rest of the house. The finish is a nice neutral brown which I also like. The store had it labeled as Cambridge Russet, but I did some searching online and I believe it’s also known as Canyon Ridge White Oak in Flint.
We drove back up there (with the truck this time) two days later and purchased 15 boxes – just under 300 square feet. It has been acclimating in our bedroom since.
We pulled back the carpet under the window before we brought the flooring in so we wouldn’t have to move it again. We plan to start laying it on the opposite side of the room by the door. It is the same 3/4″ thickness as the existing oak, so we are hoping to make the transition in the doorway seamless.
(Note: The color is probably more accurate in the store pictures above. The cloudy winter weather we are having made it difficult to get decent pictures in our room.)
We are planning to rent a flooring nailer, most likely this weekend. It will have acclimated for 2 weeks at that point. We installed Pergo click-and-lock flooring in our first house, but this will be our first time installing real hardwood. I’m not anticipating too many issues once we get the first couple rows started and the transitions from the other floorings done. I can’t wait to haul out that carpet!
Back to the craft room, I had intended to paint it last week, but never got to it. We finally got the walls and ceiling done on Sunday. As a reminder, here’s the before. BM Jalepeno Pepper (2147-30) on the walls and Sherwin Williams Linen Cloth (SW1150) on the ceiling and trim.
Here is after one coat of Behr Silky White on the ceiling . . .
And a coat of Behr Cameo White on the walls . . .
And here it is after the second, and final, coat. The wall color is not as white as the ceiling, but the old ivory trim color is making it all look really stark right now.
I’m hoping to get the trim painted (same Behr Silky White as the ceiling) tomorrow. That will make a huge difference and I’m anxious to see it. Our new office furniture should be at the delivery company by now, but we still haven’t heard from them. Unfortunately, I wouldn’t be able to paint the old furniture this week anyway. It’s so cold that painting wouldn’t be possible, even if I did it in the garage as planned. Meanwhile, we’ve got the bedroom flooring to keep us busy this weekend and I’ll be sure to post about that as well as any more progress on the craft room 🙂
Furniture Swap
New office furniture is on order which has the added bonus of meaning 2 rooms are about to be “complete”. The old office furniture will be moving upstairs into my “craft” room, which is in desperate need of more workspace. We bought the current office furniture shortly after we moved into our old house. It came from Office Depot (OfficeMax?) and we have the desk and matching credenza.
Since this house has a built-in entertainment center, we also have our old tv stand in there. It came from Sam’s Club, but is very similar to the desk. I used frosted spray paint on the glass doors to block the view of the electronics.
Here is the craft room in it’s current state. There is a cedar cabinet (built by David’s grandfather) that’s not in the picture. The desk and chair are my parents’. They gave us 2 daybeds and the second daybed in now in that room, but it’s pretty similar. I have my Silhouette cutting machine on the desk and, between that, the computer and the keyboard, there isn’t any room to work. I haven’t done much sewing since we moved here, but that’s another purpose of this room, along with being a secondary guest room for the rare times we need it.
Here are a couple pictures sans furniture. This is the smallest bedroom and it shares a bath with The Kid’s Room.
My challenge is to fit 3 pieces of office furniture and the daybed in the space. We could put the daybed in another room or get rid of it all together, but I like the idea of having it in there for extra seating and an extra bed. Below shows all the pieces drawn to scale.
The desk is the largest piece. I’d like to keep it on that side of the room because I like to look out the window towards the main road in front of the neighborhood. If it’s where the daybed is shown, I’ll just be looking at houses in the neighborhood. I could move the daybed to the back wall next to the door, but it’s going to stick out pretty far and we’d be walking around it all the time. For now, I’m showing the tv stand on that wall. The credenza is not finished on the back, so it pretty much has to be against a wall. Ideally, I’d have it away from the wall so my cutting machine can sit on it (it needs space behind it for the material to move back and forth). I was hoping to arrange the desk and credenza in an ‘L’ shape, but that either requires leaving open space in the corner of the ‘L’ or blocking the doors on either the desk or cabinet. I don’t know. I may just have to wait until we get everything up there to decide although that stuff isn’t real fun to move around.
For now, I’ve been working on the design scheme for the craft room. The office has already been painted and decorated, so we just have to move the new furniture in there once it gets here. As you can see above, the craft room has not been painted and is still the original color – BM Jalepeno Pepper (2147-30). It’s a bold color and I actually don’t mind it too much (The Kid’s nursery was actually close to this color once), but I’d prefer something more neutral in a room where I’m trying to match colors and work on projects. I came across this picture a while back and it became my inspiration for the room.
Photo via Visbeen.com
LOVE the blue lacquered cabinets! And the neutral walls. This week, I’ve been trying to find the right shade of blue and best paint option to achieve a similar look.
I think I found it on the first try. I painted the keyboard drawer from the desk with Rustoleum Gloss Protective Enamel in Navy and it turned out better than I hoped. It was really hard to photograph – trying to show the sheen and the actual color. Overall, it’s darker than it appears in the photos. It can almost look black if the light isn’t shining on it. The paint chips are potential wall colors. I want something extremely light (but not white) to contrast with the navy furniture. I also still need to paint the trim and ceiling in that room which is still the original ivory color.
Here you can see the sheen. It looks like lacquer, which is awesome 🙂 It will take several cans, but I think this is the best option to get the look I want. My only concern is the various dings on the furniture and how that is going to look. I’m going to have to do some prep work before I start painting to fill in and smooth out as much as I can
I’m going to replace the brushed nickel egg knobs with chrome ones (still TBD). I also want to do something different with the glass tv stand doors. I may trying painting the glass to look like mercury glass or replace it with metal mesh, similar to the picture below.
Photo via HomeAdore.com
In addition to new paint and furniture, I want to hang some of my photos of our fur kids, past and present, and I have a couple quotes I’d like to cut out of vinyl to apply to the wall. Eventually, I wouldn’t mind redesigning the daybed. I’d reuse the existing mattress supports, but build the sides and back out of wood painted to match the other furniture. I also need to find fabric to match for a new daybed quilt and pillows. That is what will decide the accent color – I’m thinking a shade of green or coral. Since this is “my” room, I want to try something a little bolder than I would do in the rest of the house. Check back to see how it comes together! The new office furniture will be here in 1-2 weeks, but I will probably go ahead and start on painting the walls, trim and ceiling in the meantime.
New Lighting
Last fall, I went on a Craigslist selling spree to get rid of a bunch of stuff we no longer needed. Old furniture, toys, etc. I had already replaced two of the chandeliers in the house – the powder room and the small hall outside our bedroom.
Since 3 of the 5 chandeliers in the house were from the same collection and all 5 went together, I wanted to sell them all at once. I decided to go ahead and post them all, even though I didn’t have replacements for 3 of them. It worked out perfect cause I ended up selling our master bathtub chandelier to one woman and another woman bought the other 4, all in the same day. However, that left us with no lights in the Foyer or Dining Room. I had a good idea of what I wanted, but finding something at a price I could justify was a challenge. I ended up ordering 2 from the same company with 20% off in a pre-Christmas sale. I had actually seen the foyer light in a local store a while back. The dining room light came before Christmas and the foyer light came after New Years.
The foyer light is the Stanton by Capitol Lighting in Polished Nickel. It has twice as many lights as the old fixture and is really bright with the halogen bulbs I put in it. It’s a little large, but I think it looks fine. The walls are Behr Sculptor Clay (PPU5-8) – my Benjamin Moore Revere Pewter alternative – with Behr Silky White on the trim and ceilings.
I’m done decorating the foyer except for possibly adding a shallow table/cabinet along the wall, if I can find one I like.
The word collage is something I had in our old house and wanted to recreate here. It is based off of this template and I cut it out of vinyl with my Silhouette machine.
The Dining / Piano Room still has some details to finish, but it’s mostly done. The chair and chaise came from Home Goods and I painted their legs high gloss black to match the piano.
The Dining Room walls are now Behr Atlantic Shoreline (PPU13-4) with Behr Silky White on the trim and ceilings. I may still add some more trim to the ceiling just to spice it up a bit. I’ve been trying to find pillows, or fabric to make some, for the chairs. I also need artwork or something for the walls. I can’t decide whether to use one of my one photographs, a mirror or something completely different.
I also need something to store my piano music – either a cabinet for this room or it could go in the foyer cabinet, if I find one. I’m not 100% thrilled with the layout of the piano room, but I haven’t been able to come up with anything better. I prefer the piano to be somewhat out of the way so it’s not walked by constantly. (The layout of our house is a big square, so we cut through this room a good bit).
For the chandelier, I wanted something not over-the-top, but with a touch of glamour. I wanted something fairly simple and not too busy. It also needed to compliment the foyer light (and vice versa). I decided on the Alisa 9 light chandelier from Capitol Lighting. Since both lights are made by the same company, they have the same polished nickel finish. I considered getting the smaller 6-light version of the chandelier, but I liked the look of having two tiers.
The crystals and “candle” bases are all heavy glass.
I’m not exactly sure what is next on my project list. I’ve been working on several ideas, so we will see. I’m hoping to use the money I made selling our old stuff to put wood floors in our bedroom and get rid of the carpet (the only carpet on the first floor). I started working on renderings and drawings of the pantry as I would like to remove the wire shelving and make better use of that space. David gave me the fanciest Dewalt miter saw for Christmas along with the stand for it, so the pantry would be a good project to break that in. I also still want to build some shelves for The Kid’s Room. We have also been looking at new office furniture which will kick off the redecorating of my craft room. New furniture for the office means the old stuff will move to my craft room upstairs and I have big plans for that – refinish the furniture in a fun color and finish, paint the walls and possibly modify the daybed we have in there. I’m currently using my mom’s writing desk which is nowhere big enough for the computer, my cutting machine and everything that goes with it. Moving the office furniture up there will give me a ton of surfaces to work on. That is one room where I look forward to having fun with and making it all “me”. Stay tuned cause I’ll be sure to post about whatever ends up next on the list!