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We desperately needed a toybox for Logan, especially after Christmas! I wanted an old wooden box to fit with our rustic barnwood/ old crate furniture pieces around the house. Dave, of course, knew just the box for us. Sadly, it was covered with old wallpaper, so I had some work to do.
Tools: Plastic scraper, hot water, vinegar, rags
Time: About two days of Logan naps (4-5 solid hours)
How To: Mix 1:1 ratio vinegar to hot water. Apply mix to wallpaper with rag. Wait 5 minutes.
Scrape off wallpaper. Repeat if necessary.
Some spots were a bit trickier than others, but it was
a pretty simple process. Oh, what's that under all
that wallpaper? *Gasp*
I LOVE this box. It fits perfectly with
our house and my personality :)
And Logan loves playing in the box
with his toys.
~~~
I've also done some scraping/sanding of an old window I found in our barn. I'm planning on turning it into a photo frame for some of Daniel's best photographs.
Doesn't look like much.
First I had to remove all of the old putty from the windowpanes without cracking the old glass. Once I did that, I was able to remove the glaziers points from behind the glass and take out the panes. Then came the sanding. And sanding. And more sanding.
Here is what I have now. I'm planning on following a This Old House tutorial on how to replace pane glass windows, so the next time I post I'll be able to show you just how I did it. I haven't decided if I should paint the frame, poly it, or just leave it. If I poly it, it may look like all the barnwood in my house, and y'all know how much I love barnwood!
~~~
Daniel and Dave did a bit of work around our library fireplace, covering up some of the gaps and seams.
Before.
After. Hurray for crown moulding, corner trim
and the obligatory deer antlers :)
~~~
We bought Dave a scroll saw for Christmas, mostly because he wanted to redo the gingerbread pieces that had been on the house when he originally bought it. The old gingerbread was falling to pieces, rotted through. Sadly, no restorative efforts made there, but we did make carbon copies of the old pieces.
Starting with these. As you can probably tell, these
are not even close to being the same shape, so I took
up my dremmel sander and got to work.
After many hours of sanding, smoothing and doing my darndest to make each piece congruent with itself, I had more than a dozen of these little pieces ready to be made into decorative pieces.
All set and ready to go on our porches
once the weather warms up! I'll be sure
to post a picture of what these look like
on the house.
~~~
Speaking of porches... our new contractor, Fred, replaced all of our blocky, unpainted porch posts with these beauties.
They need a good coat of paint, but again,
we need to wait for some warm, dry
weather to make that happen.
I can't wait to get the gingerbread up, and everything painted! We are planning on painting our porches the proper color of grey (not the odd bluish shade they are now), the posts and gingerbread white, as well as painting the garage. Lots of spring/summer plans around our house!
~~~
Carrying on with the painting theme, we FINALLY agreed on colors for our bedroom. It has taken us five months to accomplish that much. Five. Months. It only took Mary Ann and I two days to paint, but five months for Dan and I to decide on a paint. It'll be a miracle if we ever finish this house.
Thanks to a Facebook query and a number of suggestions, we decided to paint the walls a very light brown and paint a green accent wall behind our bed.
The colors work great together, but now that I'm looking
at a picture, I realize how much we need an accent rug,
and maybe some matching nightstands. And things on
the walls. Someone help! I can't decorate.
We just yesterday decided on a color for the window and door trim as well as the baseboard. White. Seriously? But it had to be the correct shade of white, otherwise the walls would look like they blended into the trim. And honestly, why are there so many shades of white? The walls are painted, and the trim is being worked on now. I'll post a picture once everything is up.
~~~
I also managed to paint our spare room this winter. Dan gave me permission to paint it whatever color I wanted, so the next day I went to Lowes and bought purple. No surprise to anyone who knows me. Mary Ann and I painted it just a few weeks ago so as to be ready when my parents came to stay with us. While they were visiting, Dad took it upon himself to put up the baseboard in the room. Now our spare room is almost complete!
Dave is working on putting up the window trim as I speak. Once that is up, it's touch up paint and putty, window blinds and curtains to make this room look amazing!
We also have plans to do a bit of trim around the fireplace, same as we did downstairs. The fireplace itself needs a bit of work: re-bricked on the inside, new tile outside, and a pipe down the chimney to make it usable. All in good time. That might just wait until next winter when we look for indoor projects to work on.
~~~
As we head toward spring, I'm looking forward to doing much more outside. My early garden plants have been planted, I have lots of landscaping to do, as well as a lot of outdoor painting. Looking forward to getting out of the house and into the sunshine!
