Friday, February 1, 2013

Starting Off The New Year Right

The holidays have come and gone, and with the beginning of the new year, we are starting to work on the inside of our house. It is definitely a work in progress, but things are starting to come together. No major renovations, but we're getting down to the details.


Finally purchased doorknobs for our downstairs doors! We searched for old-looking knobs that would fit on modern doors and wouldn't break our budget. I stumbled across a website - lookintheattic.com - they had just what we were looking for  in terms of restoration hardware. So many pretty things! I could have purchased hundreds of items from them. We'll definitely be buying more once we get to working on other parts of our house.

Daniel is very pleased to have office doors that latch,
and I am happy to have at least one bathroom with a locking door!


I've finally finished restoring the old coat stand that we found in the barn. Took me many sheets of sandpaper and more than a few coats of polyurethane, but I am pretty pleased.

Before.

After.

It is really beautiful! Turns out it was hand cut and shaped, as is evidenced by a number of rough chisel marks on parts of it. It's very old, and I love it! I had a minor freak-out moment after I put the first coat of polyurethane on it, because the wood turned pink. Seriously, it was a dark pink! After previous experiences with wood turning funny colors, I was ready to toss in the towel and never touch old wood again. Dad figured out that the stand was made of red oak, giving it a pink color. Thankfully after the subsequent coats of polyurethane, it didn't look so bad. 

Had to replace most of the old hooks - they were rusted pretty badly.

Not quite as fun as the old ones, but they look pretty good!
If you look closely, you can see chisel marks on the
horizontal piece between the hooks. So cool!


Next up is the master bedroom closet. It needs a floor and trim, as well as places to hang clothes. Right now, half of our clothes are in the suitcases or boxes that we put them in when we moved. It is high time to put this to rights!