A New Door? No Problem!!!

Our dining room has gone through a lot of changes in the past seven years. 

After we built a deck just off the dining room, I started to look for a door to replace the dining room window. 

I published an ad for the door on a local radio program, Tradio - a format that allows folks in our area to buy and sell things. I got a call from a man who had a door for sale and we went to check it out. We brought the door home and put it in the garage.

We took a break from big projects and did a smaller one: We shortened the dining room table; we would need the extra room a shorter table would provide, to get to the anticipated new door. We found a pedestal-style base at a yard sale, brought it home and painted it black. Then we removed the center insert of the old table and covered the old table [top] with barn wood, center. Voila! We now had a nice table - shorter, yes, but wider. 

Shortly after we got the door home and the table shortened, someone loaned us a masonry saw. That thing was HUGE! We picked a day to cut the hole in the house, and we were ready to go. 

After the window was removed, it was time to enlarge the hole to accommodate the new door. 

It was a very scary thing, watching the beautiful sandstone of this house being assaulted by a saw. I would have taken pictures but I couldn't muster the courage to watch the actual cutting!

The actual installation of the door straddled two days. 

Bright and early the second day of the installation, we removed the tarp we'd put over the hole the night before and got busy building a frame for the new door. We rallied the troops: our sons came by to lend a hand off and on throughout the day. 

By the end of that second day, we were able to start enjoying the newly-expanded view. 

Thj

The finish work would take another week - dry-walling, painting, re-installing the cornice and curtains, etc. 

In retrospect, I think it's a good thing I didn't know all the ins and outs of what this sort of project entails. I was, like, 'Hey! Let's put a door there!' It wasn't until after the thing was installed that I thought, 'This could have been a disaster!'

All Decked Out

I can't be sure about this, but I think that most people, when they want to do a project around the house, tallly what it will cost then go buy materials and begin the project. 

That's not the way it works in our household; we usually wait till the materials . . . . . materialize, then we make plans to use the materials for this or that. 

When someone gave Bill some wonderful hefty 2x10's last summer, we decided to use those boards to build a deck. Stakes for the new deck were soon in place, and the project was underway. 

The plan was to eventually put a door of some sort that would lead from the new deck into the dining room. So while the deck went up I put the word out that we were looking for a sliding glass door. The planning stage is always my favorite part of any project, so I had fun checking the prices of new doors and thinking about how I could avoid having to buy a new door. 

The deck was soon in place, and I did find a door - but that's another story for another day. 

And of course we'd need to add a tree to the landscape, too, eventually, for shade. I love the way one project feeds into another one. 

I love the whole process.

Oh, oh! I also began to formulate plans for incorporating the new deck into its environs......

Plants! We'd need more plants! A happy problem! Something to look forward to as the colder weather started to set in.

The new deck was in by the end of summer, 2011. 

Now it was time to start planning for that new door!

To be continued....

We eventually installed a sliding glass door - cut through the stone to add a door where the big window is in the photos above. To see more about the new door, please click this link:

Sliding glass door

Pallet Wood Redo In the Bathroom

When it came time to redo our bathroom floor and counter top, we turned to our tried-and-true material: wood. We chose pallet wood - hard wood from pallets. We covered the floor and counter top with beautiful, warm wood. We made our own wood putty by combining sawdust - from the same wood - and wood glue. For the finish, we used tung oil - another one of our favorites because it's a natural product and easy to use.

When it came time to sand the wood, we fired up two sanders and went at it in a marathon session! We were covered in sawdust!! 

These last two photos show Bill and I taking a breather - literally: we had to exit the bathroom to get our breath back! 

Daisy Border

My sewing room has been through m any changes in the past seven years. After we painted the walls two-toned green - with two colors of paint in the same roller pan - I wanted a trim  between the lateral green striped effect on the top part of the wall and the scumbled green on the bottom of the wall. I was not happy with my first attempt to create a border - see photo; that's orange paint applied with a sponge cut in a rough square. At least I had some sort of border, though, right? I eventually decided I wanted a more structured design for a border/trim. So I scanned a real flower from our garden, dropped the scan into a Word Doc, then added a black border around the flower. I printed up a batch of these so I could glue them on the wall....

Trouble was, I had to cover up those ugly orange squares first. For this, I turned to my trusty old friend, brown wrapping paper. I cut the brown paper into strips, then glued it on the wall where I wanted the border to be. Then I glued the flowery squares over the brown paper.

PS: I love working with wallpaper paste; it's fun and easy to use.

Things Aren't Always What They Seem

This curtain - in photo above - was made from old silk scarves . . . .

The shower curtain in our bathroom was made from an old linen duvet cover. The wood finial used to be the base of a lamp . . . .

This is pallet wood, in the bathroom - on the floor and on the countertop. Notice, too, the 'legs' I attached to the old wooden box; those are old ceramic knobs.

For more about pallet wood in the bathroom, click link.

And the wood on the ceiling in the bathroom is from an old barn. 

An old feed sack makes a wonderful lampshade redo....

The back splash in the kitchen was fashioned from plywood cut to size, covered with burlap and painted with coppery paint.....

More info about burlap back splash here:

I used old blue jeans to make a big ball for our son's room. The ball has a zipper so that it can be opened to hide....our sleeping bags - sleeping bag storage!!

I think I deserve the award for the Most Creative Use of Jar Lids. I used them to hold the bottoms of fishing poles in place in the garage....

Notches cut into wood - with rubber 'stops' added - keep the tops of the fishing poles in place. 

The window decorations in the basement came from the filigree from an old wooden shelf.

The built-in planter in the front hallway was not in an area that had enough light to support plants...so I turned it into storage. See next pic also.

In the garden, and old antenna was employed as a trellis. In the background is another 'trellis' - made from an old room divider; the divider was covered with rattan when I bought it so I threw the whole thing on the b burn pile and sent the rattan up in smoke!!

We have 3 bookcases in my sewing room in the basement. We installed them with the shelves facing out, but I eventually took the backs off those units and put a fabric-covered boards on the original fronts. Now fabric is hidden behind and I have a padded surface for display facing the room.....

For more about the sewing room, click on link.....

The curtains are really shower curtains. They hide the walkway to the storage area behind the shelving. 

When we moved in here, there was nothing decorating the tops of the large windows in the living/dining areas. I found the two cornices at a yard sale, one of which was the perfect size for the front window - 12'. The other one had to be extended 62" to fit the other window. That was no problem; I extended it with plywood. The problem was finding stain to match the other cornice. I eventually hit upon the idea to use acrylic craft paints - red and yellow. It worked. Unless you look really closely and are looking for it, you cannot tell this was not made of birch: 

I had to seam the front of this cornice, but, there again, it's not noticeable. It will never be seen on a galloping horse, as my mom would say.

This wall-hanging was made from hand-loomed potholders. I got them for just 10 cents each at a yard sale. The trick was hooking them together. I tried all sorts of methods - crochet, etc - but finally just sewed them together with strips of fabric in between. The wall-hanging is pinned to a very large cork board, found at a yard sale some years ago.

The wall-hanging also acts as a place to store my costume jewelry!!

The kitchen curtains were made from a beautiful beaded Indian fabric.....

And the bathroom curtains were made with old hankies....

After spotting this bingo thingie at a rummage sale, I walked away from it, only to go back to snatch it up before I left. It's brass and beautiful. I got an old sports ball at another yard sale, cut it and turned it wrong side out to hold a plant. 

This half wall hides the hot water tank and water softener in the basement....

Behind the wall is plenty of storage for paints and such - the studs we used are 2x6's, wide enough to store such things. 

The decorations that grace the arch between kitchen and dining room started life as . . . shelf brackets. Aren't they lovely?

 When I found a wonderful copper window blind at a second-hand store, I had every intention of using the slats from that blind to embellish the soffit in the kitchen. But instead, I installed the blind in our dining room window - it just fit. Some time later, I realized I had enough extra slats to go ahead with my plan to add slats to the soffit. So that's what I did: I hot-glued those coppery slats above the cupboards. I looooove copper. 

For YEARS after we moved here, I wanted to get everything up off the counter - paper towel dispenser, knife block and microwave. Finally I came up with a plan to do just that, and convinced my husband to help with this project. I could not find a magnetized strip for hanging knives, so we fashioned one out of some old wood from a paper cutter, then we added magnets from an arm band designed to hold tools on one's upper arm. In the picture above you can see a close-up of our knife holder. 

In this pic (above) you can see more of the burlap/copper back splash and the knife holder. The metal filigree surround the range hood is from a 60's-era light fixture. I like having a mirror above the stove, by the way; when the mirror gets grimy I figure the wall is also in need of a good cleaning, so I clean them both.

For more info about the kitchen, click on link.

http://redoredux-faywray.blogspot.com/2012/04/wood-counter-top-kitchen.html

Here's a picture of the old paper cutter (you can barely make out the groove profile that used to hold the wooden foundation, now used as a knife holder). We added old hooks to it for hanging coats and bags in the basement-way. 

At a yard sale some years ago, the man whose yard sale it was tried to convince me that I needed some wood from an old organ. I demurred, he persisted, and I'm very glad he did: I ended up buying several pieces of that old organ wood and using in various places in our home. In the pics above and below this writing, you can see one use we found for some of that wood. This set-up is just at the bottom of the basement stairs. The light fixture was also a good find: Vintage, and only 25 cents.

View of organ wood/light trim from basement

Here's more of that organ wood. Isn't it fabulous? This long piece has its original felt backing and a ledge where we can set bottles of water while we play ping pong. The metal piece is an old funky planter - now used to hold table tennis paddles (some of the hand made by son Bob). The silver thing holds ping pong balls; I have no idea what it was designed for originally! 

To read more about the basement project, click here:

Oh, look! Another piece of old organ wood, this time employed as a vent cover......

And here's another vent - this one covered by an old metal floor vent cover.

Before we tackled the huge job of replacing our back window with a door, we had some fun: We shortened our existing dining room table to make more room for people to access the soon-to-be-installed door. We found a pedestal base at a yard sale and took the leaf out of the original table and added old barn wood to the top. 

For more about installation of sliding glass door, click here:

Another shot of the newly-shorted table

I love decorating with photos, and I like photos in a display to be interchangeable. The photo display in the living room holds 84 pictures. The pics are glued to boards that have been cut to fit into the nifty rail attached to the wall. In the pictures below you can see how this works: photos can be taken out and flipped over; the back sides also have pics glued to them. Photos slide in and out of the rail, and can be removed mid-wall too - making it easy to swap out photos when company comes and we want their picture on the wall to surprise them!! 

For more info about this project, please click on link.....

You can see the rails' profile in the photo above. 

The doorbell cover is really an old tin!! 

This couch used to be a sort of green/beige plaid. There was no wood on the arms and the legs were shorter and not as hefty as the ones you see on the couch in this photo, above. My husband and I work together on such projects, but the sewing of all cushion covers falls to yours-truly. Maybe someday I'll teach Bill to help with the sewing too.....

I hope this picture is clear enough. What you see here is an old.....Amish buggy part, now used as a drink holder above the workbench in the garage!! This was once used as a step up into a buggy. Cool, heh?

That cute metal stand near the rain barrel is an old fish tank stand!! It's handy to have it there next to the workshop, as a tool holder in summer. 

I collect old wooden boxes - I've been doing this for many years. You see those old boxes throughout our home. I love using them as storage and as organizers. 

I quit, er, at least for now. Here's a smiley face for you. Our son Bob drew this when he was quite young. I transferred it to canvas, and, oh, I lengthened the line on one of the 'b's in his name when I reproduced it; otherwise it looked like it was drawn by . . . . Booby! 

Happy Day!!!!