Sleep Tight: The Bedrooms

While our style is a bit subdued in the rest of the house, we cut loose color-wise in the bedrooms. My husband picked the color for our bedroom walls . . . .

. . . .  and Will picked the color for his bedroom. And people think that I use color liberally! Ha! 

A funny story: When Bill suggested, one hot summer morning, that we should paint Will's bedroom, I went along with the idea; I was eager to check that task off our to-do list. The problem was, it was very hot that day. So While Bill went in to start painting, I had a brilliant idea: I would paint naked! It was that hot! So I took off all my clothes and sauntered into Will's room, where Bill was busily rolling paint onto the walls. And, guess what? Bill was naked! He had the same idea I had. Well, you know, people do say that Bill and I work well together!! They don't know the  half of it.....

Bible Pages On the Wall

My sewing room has gone through many metamorphoses in the past seven years. Since I don’t have a lot of time this morning I think I’ll share just one photo: This is the way the wall in my sewing room looks now; it is covered with pages from bibles. After those pages went on the wall, I thought to also add some photos I had left over from another project.

Boat Oar Trellising

When we needed trellising for my husband's berry vines, we used old boat oars. I have no idea where we got the oars; they were sitting around in the garage, so we put them to use!! 

Please note the rain barrels. There are two of them to the right in this photo, above. Bill set up a system whereby, when the first rain barrel gets full, the water pours into a second barrel! 

Copper Soffit

When I found a copper-clad blind at a second-hand store one day, several years ago, I was stunned by its beauty. I was standing in the aisle, checking out this blind, asking total strangers as they walked by, 'Is this COPPER?' I'd never seen anything like it before. I thought I would buy it ($3.99), take it home, cut off the slats and apply them to the soffit in the kitchen - apply it to the area between the top of our cupboards and the ceiling.

But my plans changed when I got home and found out that the blind just fit our dining room window, width-wise. So our son Allen helped me install it. It was a bit long, but I just left the extra slats puddled at the bottom. Then, some time after we installed this blind, I was walking through the dining room when it suddenly occurred to me that there might be enough extra slats to re-implement the original plan for that blind: Maybe I could have a copper soffit after all....

Long story short: I removed those extra slats, cut the slats to fit above the cupboards, and hot-glued them in place. I almost ran out of slats, so I had to start using the parts of the slats that had holes in them. I remedied that situation by strategically placing the holes so that, when I covered them with pieces of slatting, it looked like a weave of sorts!! I'm am sooooo funny!!!

The whole project pleased me no end. If you were to walk into our kitchen, you might not consciously notice the copper soffit; but it adds a certain . . . . ambience, if you will. Plus, you know, it's unique: Not many people have a copper soffit!!!!

Drapes - Revisited, and Revisited, and Revisited Again

There are two large windows in the living area of our home. This picture shows what the front window looked like when we moved in - droopy old drapes and now cornice covering the traverse rod.

I made new drapes out of natural-colored muslin. This pic shows the second, dining area window, with the new muslin drapes.

This photo shows the front window with its new muslin drapes . . . . and a cornice. I got two cornices at a yard sale for FREE. The second cornice was too short for the top of the dining room window, so I lengthened it 68" with plywood. The tricky part was matching the birch stain: I ended up mixing all sorts of paint to get it right.

Then, one morning, I awoke with an idea buzzing around in my brain: Tea-dye the muslin drapes. This was some years after I made the original drapes. I was tired of the off-white, you see, by then. So I threw 400 tea bags in the washing machine, let them 'steep' in hot water, then pulled them out. Then I added the muslin drapes. As they were agitating in the tea, I thought to add some green Rit dye, so that's what I did. The resultant drapes turned out the EXACT color of the newly-painted wall. I'm not kidding; it was a perfect match. This photo also shows the copper-clad blind I got at a second-hand store for @ $4.00; I brought it home to find that it just fit our dining room window. Whoo Hoo!

Then, some time later - after yet another wall-color change - I dyed the drapes brown. Then I dyed them with black dye. Then I added a black striped to each set of drapes. Then I lined them, using old white sheets for the liner. This photo shows the front window, with a black stripe on the drapes, and the new brown color. 

This pic shows the back window when the drapes were still green/tea-dyed. This window was replaced with a sliding glass door just recently - Fall of 2011.....

In this photo, you can see the new door that replaced the back window. You can also see, in this picture, that the drapes have been lengthened to accommodate the new, bigger opening. 

[Note: you can also see the new wood floor in this photo - another story for another time...]

It took me @ 8 hours to lengthen those drapes. I added 7 new stripes to make them long enough. Hm. I wonder if those drapes will go through any more changes in the future! 

Thanks for reading this, thanks for letting me ramble on about our chameleon-like drapes!!!!

Tiled Table

This is one of those projects that I love to revisit, and not just because it was a fun project that turned out just as I envisioned it would. The thing is, before our town could rebuild the schools in the area, they had to get rid of the old stuff in those schools. So they had auctions. These auctions spanned two summers; that was about, oh, ten years ago.

I got the table for just $2.00 - a solid oak table that was perfect for my purpose. It even had a trim board around the edge that would eventually be moved higher so as to keep the grout from oozing over the edge . . . .

I broke the tiles into smaller pieces - tiles we picked up off the ground at a tile plant. 

Once the tiles were broken, I could arrange them in a pattern.

After the tiles were glued to the table top, this project languished in the basement for days and days. My husband finally carried the table out onto the front porch and poured glops of grout onto the top of my beautiful design, thus forcing me to finish it. And I'm glad I did finish it; it remains one of my favorite pieces. 

Trellis Project: Magnetized Photo Display

To make this photo display, I got added metal flakes - bought on-line - to oil-based primer. After that dried, I painted over the area with the room color. Then I tacked the trellising to the wall over the area.

Now it was ready for photos. I attached those to the now-magnetized wall with strip magnets - from Hobby Lobby.

Voila! Project done.....

We eventually put a HUGE display of pics on this wall. To see more about the newer display of photos, please click the link below. Thanks for reading!!!!

Rogue Gallery - a way to display pics in a BIG way...