Odds & Ends – Chapter 3 and counting….

Here friends, is the next chapter in my Odds & Ends project list.

So far I’ve given you an update on:

• dining room redo
• guest room redo

Let’s see … what’s left?  Oh yeah…

• dining room redo

• guest room redo

• furniture piece redo

• new 46” LCD TV placement

• hanging of my Matt Leblanc original won on Design Ties

• placement of my giveaway prize from Low Tide High Style

My fabulous kijiji furniture find!  As I was browsing, which I quite often do, through the many furniture ads on kijiji, I found the most gorgeous dresser, bedside table and mirror.  Apart from a few scratches and chips, this is a piece was perfect candidate for a makeover.  Here it is with the hardware removed and ready for sanding:

Can you believe this was the first week of December last year?  No snow (which is huge in Ottawa) and the weather was beautiful!  I guess admitting this is part of my procrastination therapy – yep 5 months ago I started this project!

OK – back to the furniture.  Here’s a close up of the scratches on the front and top:

    as well as a few places on the legs where the veneer chipped off

But look at the lines of this piece:

And if you remember my post about Celtic Knots, you’ll understand why I’m over the moon about this little detail …

And for you detail oriented readers, this piece was built in July 1956 and all 10 drawers {yippee} are solid wood with dovetail joints!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Having 10 drawers is going to be A.M.A.Z.I.N.G, because this is what I’ve got now:

Hubby and I have a matching set of these IKEA dressers {cringe} that were purchased when we had a tiny little bedroom with no room for much more than a bed.  They’ve served their purpose well and will be lovingly disposed of, probably to one of our children :)! 

So now that the nice weather has arrived again AND I got the paint gun I asked Santa for, I’m planning to get going on this piece in the near future.  And, of course, now that I’ve shared more details with you, my blogger buddies, I’ve got just a bit more pressure {I know you don’t mean it} to get this done! 

And just to show you how addicted I am to “adding projects” (but not actually completing them), here is another piece I’ve been eyeing on kijiji, although, I don’t think I’d do a thing to this one!

Stay tuned friends – there are pictures of my new guest room coming soon!

You are such great motivators!

One nifty Wine Cellar

Someone sent me an email the other day with the coolest wine cellar, I just had to share it.  Check this out ...

Isn't this the coolest thing - it makes me think about the gag some people play pretending that they are walking down stairs behind a sofa - you know the one I mean?  Only this is the real thing!

These amazing wine cellars are from Spiral Cellars in the UK.  If you decide this is something you must have in your home, they've got the kit for you!  And to top it off they will do it all - dig the hole, remove the dirt and install the wine cellar - in 5-9 days!  Only thing you have to do is fill it - well, and pay for it too {darn}!

Here are a few more of their installations:

I love the different colour lights - reminds me of our hot tub!

This one is space-age!

These put my puny little 15 bottle wine fridge to shame!  Check out their website for more!

Before I go, I'd like to leave with a quote from their website ...

"If you install a Spiral Cellar you'll never need to worry about your wine being in less than ideal condition.  You'll be able to pull wine off the shelf with confidence, whether it's been there six months or six years or more."

Hmmm - not sure how much my wine storage keeps me awake at night...but it sure is nice to dream!!!

Odds & Ends continued…..

Alright, now I’ve updated you on my dining room redo that is more like a kitchen/dining room reno dream, I’ll take a stab at the other projects on the list…

• dining room redo
• guest room redo
• furniture piece redo
• new 46” LCD TV placement
• hanging of my Matt Leblanc original won on Design Ties
• placement of my giveaway prize from Low Tide High Style

This little project has more to report!  At some point last year (August timeframe) our oldest daughter moved out and freed up a bedroom on the second floor for some creativity on Mom’s part – yippee!!  She has since moved back – sigh – but that’s another post for another day :)!!

Some inspiration. pondering and planning discussions with the labour half of this marriage and we had a plan.  My initial plan was only to paint the room, but after our “planning” discussions it turned into a bit more (isn’t that always the way???).  So painting the guest room turned into:

• Close up the existing closet (which is between guest room and master) to be opened from the other side doubling the closet space in the master
• Build a new closet in guest room with colonial sliders
• Remove and replace existing ugly trim with colonial trim – which turned into new trim on the whole 2nd floor
• Replace bedroom door with new colonial door – which turned into new colonial doors on the whole 2nd floor
• Replace door handle – do I have to say it?
• Replace the electrical outlets and switch – uh-huh, more of the same :)
• Paint ceiling, room and trim

Although we are doing one room at a time, the first one seemed to take for-ever!!!

Right now it is 99.9% complete with only trim to complete on the hallways side of the door and furnishings.  Here are some pics taken through the process so far:

Looking in from the hall – the old closet door has been removed.

 

My “handyman” checking out the inside of the closet.

Ugly baseboard and the complicated wiring setup.  The cable wire comes up the register and is stapled around 90% of the baseboard in the room then goes through a couple of holes in the closet into the master where there is more of the same.  And we won’t even try to explain how the telephone wiring is done.  There are outlets in all three bedrooms, yet only the master works – huh???  And – to top it all off there is only one outlet on the main floor – and it’s on the wall in the kitchen.

Here is a shot of the closet closed in with the gyprock removed from the closet – YES – it was that colour INSIDE the closet???  And you can see the old interior door that we will replace.

New closet framed in and mudded – nice and large!

View from the hall into the room – wall is the side of the closet.

The colours I chose for the room are:

 

Benjamin Moore’s Silver Marlin for the walls (which reads a lot more blue green than on this screen).  In fact it reads very different on the walls at different times of the day – light blue, turquoise and sometimes lavender.  I LOVE it!!!

 

And Benjamin Moore’s Snow Fall White for the trim and doors.

I’d love to show you what the room looks like – but right now it’s a bit  messy.  That’s because it’s being used to store the tools while we complete the flip side of this reno (isn’t there always a flip side of your reno?) which is doubling the closet space in the master bedroom!  WOO HOO!!!  Now every woman wants more closet space right?  Uh-huh!  Right now, I’ve got my clothes in one and 3/4 closets, while hubby’s got the other 1/4 (hehehe) and has resorted to keeping his dress shirts in the basement, so they stay pressed and aren’t squeezed together is his 1/4 closet.  Not to mention the fact that these are closets from the 1960’s with the an old single hung  door making it hard to get to the ends of the closet.  I could go on, but I’ve complained enough – let’s get onto the good stuff.

Here’s a shot of the tear down You can see the red-brown of the closet interior – yikes – I hope the spare room wasn’t entirely that colour at some point – that would have been depressing!  If you look closely on the floor level you see where the wall was removed (the pillow is where one of our puppies sleeps at night :)) and how the furnace duct is partially covered by the wall (???) which we really can’t do very much about, but it will be better exposed with the new closet.

To keep it uniform, hubby has cut away the rest of the hardwood  to the other wall and will install a diagonal strip of oak as the threshold between the room and closet. 

Now for the new closet doors … I was thinking of a three panel colonial slider door for the closet, with the middle panel a mirror, but I’m wondering if a bi-fold may be a better option – or  maybe something like this – I found this Sarah Richardson room over on Design Ties.

And once we decide on the doors, we’ll have to pick a new room colour – something a little brighter than the olive green that’s there now.  I’m loving the blue grays (as you can tell from the guest room colour), but will be looking at ALL palettes, which  may pose more of a problem because it’ll take me much longer to decide :(.

The work continues on the master closet … but today it was too nice and we got outside to do some much needed backyard cleanup.  I snapped a few pics (OK more than a few) while I was out there of my beautiful magnolia, who is having one banner year of blooms!!!

        

Hope you are enjoying your weekend as much as I am!

Odds & Ends

I’m far too mature to make excuses (well most of the time) and who am I kidding?  By the time anyone reaches “this age”, they pretty well know themselves and should be honest enough to admit it right.  So, here’s my big confession, although I think you’ve already figured this out – you are pretty bright people … :)

It takes me F-O-R-E-V-E-R to finish projects!

And that is for one reason only – I procrastinate – as I’ve confessed in my post about my dining room table.  Since starting this blog I’ve mentioned the following projects to you:

• dining room redo
• guest room redo
• furniture piece redo
• new 46” LCD TV placement
• hanging of my Matt Leblanc original won on Design Ties
• placement of my giveaway prize from Low Tide High Style

And you’ve all been very patient, waiting for news about them and occasionally reminding me about them (thanks for that :)).  Granted some of these projects are a long time in the making, but even so, I should just get my butt off this chair and show you the progress at least right?

So - let’s start with my dining room re-do. Unfortunately, there’s not too much to report on this as it will most likely be part of a much bigger reno – the kitchen.  Right now the kitchen and dining room are separated by a wall with a french door (which is never closed).  Here’s a floor plan view:

 

And this is what I want:

Based on these inspiration photos:

  (from local Ottawa Interior Designer Ulya Jensen from HGTV fame!)

And this – my original inspiration:

(from Interior Designer Phoebe Howard)

Needless to say – this is a BIG project and although it is on the list, it’s one that will require a wee bit of capital, so you probably won’t be seeing or hearing much about it soon :)!

Stay tuned and I’ll update you on my other projects – I promise :)!

A one armed paper hanger – huh?

The other day I was responding to an email from my friend Joan and this expression came to my fingers out of the blue while describing how busy I have been lately.  “I’m as busy as a one armed paper hanger” was the phrase I used.  My hubby would be proud of me – he is the undisputed KING of clichés and one liners.

As soon as it flew from my fingers I started to wonder from whence it came.  So, off I go to my handy-dandy personal encyclopaedia and dictionary – my pal Google: 

“As you may have gleaned from reading between the lines of that little rant, a "paper hanger" is a contactor, one who specializes in the art of installing wallpaper. "Hanging" wallpaper is a tricky business under the best of circumstances, requiring, at a minimum, steady nerves and both arms, so the vision of a "one-armed paper hanger" is one of frenzied desperation as the "hanger" frantically attempts to slap paste on the wall, apply and align the paper, and smooth out the whole shebang. "Impossible" doesn't begin to cover it.

Of course, wallpaper hanging isn't the only task that becomes infinitely more difficult with only one arm, and "one-armed" has been used to mean "not fully effective" since the 19th century. The earliest use in print of the "one-armed paper hanger" image occurs in the 1908 O. Henry (William Sydney Porter) short story "The Gentle Grafter": "And then I got as busy as a one-armed man with the nettle-rash pasting on wall-paper." That "nettle-rash" is a nice detail, conveying, on top of the poor sap's other problems, an urgent need to scratch a terrible itch.”

from http://www.word-detective.com/080805.html

Well, now you’ve learned something – let’s have a peek at some great wallpapers that need better than a one-armed paper hanger :)

       

I’m loving all these papers, and am now rethinking  my plans for some of the rooms in my home :) – but isn’t that true for any research we do for blog posts?  It’s so very inspirational!