Random & Unfinished

So the title of this post describes my projects right now, and a bit of my life. But that's another story. On to the projects!

My sister so delicately reminded me that I haven't posted in a while. I was waiting until I had something to show for all the time I've gone between posts. But, alas, (Vino makes fun of me when I say "alas") nothing is finished. Here's what we've been working on lately:

1. Installing the bathroom sink.
We are SO close! We would have had it done a couple of days ago except that we got the wrong water line hoses. Hopefully we'll get the right ones today so we can brush our teeth in the bathroom for the first time tomorrow!

The bathroom as it looked when we first bought the house

mid-way to completion

My inspiration photo (Cottage Living)

2. Finishing the enclosed front porch.
Here's what it used to look like.

 I have since painted the walls the same gray as the living & dining room, the floors white (same as before but cleaner!) and the ceiling Tiffany blue. I LOVE the look of a light blue bead board ceiling on a porch. It's tradition! The porch will eventually be a great introduction to our home, but for now it's a storage place for stuff I'm trying to sell on craigslist and the place where I'm working on my next project...

3. Painting the buffet.

 Sorry for the bad photo of the buffet - this is in our old house. I painted the buffet & mirror above black.

My cherished buffet has been in storage for about 3 years and we finally brought it home a couple of weeks ago. It was painted all black, but I decided that for this house I want light colored furniture so I'm painting it white. Except for the top. I peeled off the black paint, sanded off the old stain & did my very first stain job. It was really easy! I'll post about that process when it's all done.

 Inspiration photo (Miss Mustard Seed blog)

One thing I have learned about myself: I am not good at painting furniture. Even when I prep like I'm supposed to (light sanding, priming & then paint) the final paint almost always peels in some spots. And doors don't always close. My solution? Distress. Take a sanding block or a palm sander to the corners, edges & raised parts & take off a bit of paint. It looks intentional & naturally worn & takes care of any painting gone wrong. :)

4. Painting the "new" hutch to go on top of the buffet.
As you probably know about me now, I have issues with buying new stuff for my house. I can't do it (unless it's on major clearance).

 I forgot to take a photo before I prepped it for painting. But it wasn't much better.

This hutch and the accompanying tiny tiny little buffet were free. Someone else didn't want them, and I did! I'll post on the little bottom piece later, but just know that the whole thing was fairly top-heavy.

 You can see here the porch mid-paint. The walls are primed.

 Notice where the original finish just peeled off. Instead of doing the right thing & peeling it ALL off on that one surface, I peeled off what came easily & then sanded down the edges.

 So I'm painting the hutch to match my buffet. It's not the best quality piece - the decorative details are plastic (shhhh!) but no one will know after it's painted. Except me. And you now.

 What?!? Is that a hollow plastic crown moulding? Yes, yes it is. And those are Vino's "Hulk Hands" in the background.

I really hope this thing looks good on top of my buffet. I've only seen it in my mind, not in real life.

6. Rescuing a desk.
We don't have a desk. A few weeks ago I noticed that our neighbors a couple of houses down had put some furniture out by their trash can in the alley. Every time I drove by I thought about how sad it was to throw away wood furniture. If only we had a use for it. Then one day I walked down there (when they weren't home) to take a closer look. Some pieces had been destroyed, probably when they had been thrown out back. But this desk & the hutch that goes on top were in really good shape. They are real wood. The drawers are dove-tailed. I carried each piece down the alley myself. Shameless. I was REALLY hoping no one saw me.

Not sure what will happen to the hutch. I'll use it for something! I think with a coat of creamy white paint & some new drawer pulls this desk will be perfect on our front porch. I need somewhere to sew and this will be perfect. But for now, it sits in our garage.
5. More projects that are finished IN MY MIND ONLY.
I have made an upholstered headboard. It looks exactly like this:

Pottery Barn

IN MY MIND. And it won't cost me $500 +$75 shipping. There is a room divider at a local junk second hand store for only $15. I've measured it. It's perfect for a queen sized bed. And when it is painted & upholstered with something linen-ish & nailhead trim, it will be perfect. I really need to go buy it but it will just go in the basement or garage with all my other unfinished stuff.

6. Last but definitely not least, I've started running.
I have never liked running & I don't like it yet, but I need to get in shape. Vino is a good running coach. He has taught me the correct way to hold my hands, roll my feet heel-toe, pace myself, etc. Last night we ran 2 miles. A month ago I couldn't run 1/4 of a mile. What I'm most proud of was running a 5k only 2 weeks after I started running.

I ran VERY slowly, but I didn't stop or walk the whole run. I will not quit running now that I have started. I am getting in shape, which I like, but what's more, I bought running shoes. Since I'm so cheap, there's no way I'm going to stop running & waste the money we spent on the shoes. :) Sneaky!

So that's it. My dining room has a mattress & boxspring leaning against the wall, my front porch entry is full of stuff piled on stuff and one corner of the living room, which will someday have a piano, is stacked with frames & artwork to hang on the wall after everything else is in place. Random & unfinished. What projects are you working on that seem like they will never be complete? Do share!

How I Met My House

I'm going to a party today! AnNicole at Our Suburban Cottage is hosting. We're all going to sit around on the virtual front porch telling the stories of how we met our homes. I call the porch swing.

Last year at this time we were living in Spain. I know, fantastic. We were there for two years doing missions work. Loved it. My posts from 2007, 2009 & early 2009 are from that time. Check them out on the sidebar!

Before we went, we sold our 3+ bedroom, 2 bath house. Granted, it was a small starter house, but it was big enough for us & our frequent guests. We actually made a good profit from the sale of that house (which is a whole other story about God's grace in allowing us to sell in a pretty scary market). We used a little bit of it to live on between the time our jobs ended & we moved to Spain, but the rest we saved. No touching until we could buy a house again.

So here is our list of living arrangements after selling our house: 3 months in a 5th wheel, 6 months in our boss's basement (one big room), 1 1/2 years in a tiny one bedroom apartment, then another 5 months in the 5th wheel. All this while the majority of our belongings are in storage. Being a homebody, I really (hope I) learned that home is so not about the stuff you put in it or how big it is. I can make a comfortable, relaxing home for us just about anywhere. It doesn't have to look amazing.

So starting about fall of 2008, I began stalking real estate websites. We didn't know what we would be doing or where we would be going after we left Spain. There was even the possibility that we would make Spain a more permanent home. But there's this part of me that needs to have something to plan for. Thus the stalking. I ended up focusing on the city we had lived in before and the surrounding small communities.

I'm cheap. Thrifty. Whatever you want to call it. Not knowing what our incomes would be when we moved back to the States, the crazy cheap part of me started looking for houses under $50k. "What??," you say, "You wanted to live in a shack down by the river?"

Let me just say that after months of searching real estate sites in our area, I am confident in saying that it is absolutely possible to buy a house in that price range (or less) that is NOT a dump or in an area where you need bars on the windows. First, we are in the Midwest, so house prices are lower. Second, smaller towns close to cities have great options for lower priced homes. We had to decide what our priorities were. Were we ok with a 30 minute commute to the nearby city? Were we willing to pay more in gas and less in mortgage? Yes.

Ok, enough jabbering from me. That was a long intro. Meet our house:

Yes. It's not a lovely little cottage. In fact, "cottage" is a generous description. But here's the deal. When I found this place online (on a local real estate site, while we were still living in Spain), it was listed at $49k. It is in a town that is about 20 miles from our city. It had 2 bedrooms & one bathroom, which honestly, was enough for the two of us (especially after living in such small quarters for almost 3 years). I checked it about every week. When we moved back to the States & contacted our real estate agent, Mary, I had narrowed the search down to this one town. We spent ONE DAY looking. We saw about 5 houses that day, 4 of them complete dumps that would have taken LOTS of money to fix up, not to mention the MOLD. Gross.

When we walked into what is now our house, it was not what I expected, in good ways & bad.

 
Bad news: it was a foreclosure, sold as is, which included a house full of trash - furniture, dirt, leaves, mud, poo, pizza boxes, dead plants, etc. The smell was...not pleasant. The paint colors were...bold. Good news: it was bigger than it looked in the photos. The structure was sound. The character (built in bookcases with columns, french doors, thick baseboards) was intact. The kitchen & electrical had been updated a couple of years before. Honestly, even though this house was the dirties & cheapest, it was the BEST house we looked at that day. And by that time, the bank was so desperate to get it off of their hands that the price had been slashed in half. We (& Mary) believed that this house was truly a blessing from God!

Take a tour of our house as it was the day we met it!

It's much better now.

Not finished yet, but is a house ever finished?

Here is our plan for this house: make it not only livable, but lovely, add function (paint the exterior, put another bedroom & bathroom in the basement, rebuild the enclosed back porch to include laundry, office space & mudroom, build 2-car garage), pay it off in 5-7 years and live in this house as long as we can. This is NOT our forever house, but it is a tool for us to get our dream house. We don't have a lot of money, but we don't think we NEED a lot if we use what we have wisely.

My self-imposed rules for decorating this house is to use only second hand, things on major clearance, things I make, or things we already have. I don't look at it as a negative. I love the challenge. Maybe because I'm UberCheap, but my preference really is older stuff with a unique history. And there are so many other things we could spend our money on than lamps & furniture & doodads. Game on!

This house has a history. It was built in 1913. It has been loved by many who have put their own stamp on it. It has been unloved by a few. We are happy to be a part of this house's heritage. Sometime in the future, someone else will live here. They might make snarky comments about things we chose to change (like I have about the smurf & turquoise paint combo!), but I hope they love it and even more, that they contribute to the good things that happen in this house. I hope that it is a place of peace and joy. I hope that this house is home for many to come.

How did you meet your house? Come hang out with us at AnNicole's place & hear everyone else's stories. Tell your own!

Little spring things that make me happy: turquoise & fringe

thrifted fringy turquoise table cloth

Not much blogging going on here. Too much work...and flu-ish yuckiness...

But Spring is here!!! The daffodils and hyacinths are coming up all over town. The snow is gone. That's the best part. No freezing cold, dirty, wetness.

I don't know why, but this table cloth brings a smile to my face. It's a happy color and I like the thick fringe. I know it's nothing important in the large scope of life. But when I see things in our house that need to be done that I don't know when I'll get to, when I think about unencouraging issues with infertility & adoption, and any number of other stupid things I could fixate on, seeing something that brightens my day helps me to focus on things that I really am thankful for - the things that do matter. My faith in God, health, family, friends, the good man that I married.

I know it's just a table cloth. I'm not going to get dramatic about it. :)

What kinds of things help you to focus on what's really important? There's gotta be something.

Before & After: Re-Covered Dining Room Chairs

I have this great table & chairs set. They belonged to my grandma, then my parents, and now me. They are painted an olive green, which I love. I suppose some day I could strip them or paint them a different color, but for now I love exactly how they are.

Except for the seats. Gross.

They are ancient, cracking vinyl. And they are really hard. No cushion for the tush.

So I've actually had these chairs for several years and never done anything with them, even knowing how EASY it is to change them. Lazy.

So I was at our local little thrift store the other day and found this fabric:

It was only $2 for 1 3/4 yards, more than enough. I'm not sure how it will wear over the years as seat cushion fabric, but seriously, does it matter? They are so easy to recover that I can replace them when I want.

Bad blogger, I didn't take during photos. But just so you know, I unscrewed the seats from the chairs, set them on the floor over the fabric and cut the fabric with a few inches extra all the way around. I also got a 4-pack of 1-inch foam & cut those the same shape as the seats. I made a sandwich - fabric, foam & seat - then stapled the fabric to the back, stretching as I went. Then I screwed the seats back on and...

New chairs!

Are they perfect? No.

But are they better? Yes. Much better. And much more comfortable.

And just to keep it even more real, that little coaster on the floor in the above picture is there to mark a spot on the floor where a wood splinter needs glued down.

We're pretty casual here.

Thanks for stopping by!

I love you, Craig. You and that list of yours.

I think I'm doing pretty good with my self-imposed rules of decorating our house in nothing but thrift, gifts & what we already have. I'd like to add major clearance to that list. You should see the lamp I just found on clearance from TJMaxx. But that's for another post.

This one is all about Craig and his magnificent list. Since we returned from overeseas last summer I've discovered the thrifty joy of craigslist! The bathroom vanity that's still in process was from the list, and I'm sure it won't be the last.

Our living room is...petite. The giant sofas we had in our last house probably won't even fit through the doors of our little house. Knowing that we would need flexibility, I started lurking around on Craigslist weeks before we bought our house.

I was specifically looking for a sectional sofa that could be moved around however we wanted. Stop picturing that giant hunter green pit group in your best friend's basement that you spent hours on watching MacGyver.  Sectionals now-a-days are streamlined and contemporary, and they are perfect for small spaces! I was inspired by this photo from Brooke over at Velvet & Linen:

Except on a rather less grand scale.

After viewing lots and lots of horrid puffy 1980s sectionals, I found this:

What? You don't think it's fantastic? Have a little imagination. Picture it in a home with beautiful hardwood floors. Throw some pillows on it. Add a nice coffee table. And eventually a neutral slipcover. Trust me. It's fantastic.

It has clean lines. It's quality construction. It is in pristine condition. It doesn't smell.
I'm not super wild about the flame-stitch, but I don't absolutely hate it. I googled "flame stitch" and found that it is making a comeback in interiors. Yay for me!

Bonus: look what you can do with it!

Talk about pit group.

There are six individual pieces that can be arranged lots of different ways. Three corner pieces and three slipper chairs. I'm not sure what decade this thing comes from. Anyone know? If it's from the 80's, I'm impressed at how streamlined it is. I'm thinking 70's, but it's in such good shape!

And best of all, it was only $150.

Seriously!

When our floors were finally finished, this was the first piece of furniture we moved it. Here it is as it looks currently:

It's really comfy & lets both of us stretch out & still sit together. We have one of the slipper chairs in the guest room and one in the corner of the living room. I have no idea where that one will go when we get our piano in... But when we have company & we all want to watch a movie, we just add in a chair to expand the sectional.

Since I bought a new sewing machine, I've started the long process of making slip covers for all six pieces and the cushions. Daunting! But since the lines of this piece are straight, and I'm not using piping, I think it will be pretty easy (famous last words). I've made slipcovers before here and here, so I know what a pain it will be.

I'll let you all know when the slipcovers are finished. I'm using natural cotton duck. I'm excited to be able to replace the winter-y sweater pillows add summery throw pillows with pattern!

I'm currently trolling Craigslist for the perfect daybed with a pop-up trundle bed for our guest room. I know he won't let me down.

So, all my love to you, Craig. Thank you for making a list.

Oh, The Carnage of Poor Packing!

So as many of you know, we spent two years living in Spain doing missions work. While we were gone, all of our possessions that we didn't take with us sat in storage that whole time. Some things lived in my mom & dad's basement (thanks!!) and the rest lived in a storage trailer behind their barn (thanks again!!). It was a great option for us because we didn't have to pay for storage, but the trailer wasn't climate controlled. As you can imagine, we've had a few casualties of storage.

Some of those unfortunate losses were because of moisture or varmints that we tried our best to prevent, but you can't stop everything. However, I recently found a tub of carnage that was completely my fault.

NEVER, and I say NEVER, pack a SNOW GLOBE to be stored in a non-climate controlled environment. Water freezes & expands. Then the glass breaks. I knew that. Now I really know it.

These were iron reindeer. Now they are rusty reindeer.

This gal looks more like a mummy than an angel.

These were olive wood bells from Israel that have been in our family for years.

My collection of vintage glass Christmas balls were all wet inside & out.

But there is hope. Some things can be salvaged...

She looks disgusted with me, as she should be. But look, lady, now you have a lovely "patina".

This is probably why she's ticked. Nothing a little glue won't fix.

The bells have their own patina now. They look like they've been in our family for centuries!

And after washing the vintage glass balls, most of the paint came off. I kind of like them now, though. They look like bubbles.

Something that seems like a disaster doesn't always have to turn out that way. I may have lost a few things, and I had to put some elbow grease into cleaning up my mess, but it's not the end of the world for the things that were damaged. The scars can give them character that may end up being appreciated more than a flawless finish.

Got disasters? Got flaws? Find the value in the scars. It's there. Trust me.