Thursday, January 25, 2018

Room Makeover #2

Hello! In my last post I showed before-and-after pics of our daughter's old bedroom, now forever rid of a less-than-stellar color scheme. Today's post will give a peek into how this room's usage has been transformed: it's now a combination small bedroom for a guest, and a studio for me! Both are a work in progress, but so far, so good with the transformation. 


In the bedroom section, white curtains, a vintage plant stand used as a side table, a small bedside lamp, a twin bed, a framed print over the bed and a vintage, unframed oil painting waiting to be hung up. 


Another view of the bed and the other window. 


Near the doorway, a small wire rack. Our daughter slept here during her recent Christmas break, and so I'd put a small, decorated artificial Christmas tree on that rack. 

I "shopped" from our house to furnish most of the room. The only thing I bought was a new set of curtains and a thrifted twin-size comforter. The decor will do for now, but I'd like to find a nicer-looking bedside lamp and a replacement for the beat-up quilt at the foot of the bed. 

I was glad to set up this small bedroom area, but it was really the studio that I was looking forward to putting into place! We moved into this house in 2002, and since then my studio had been in the basement. I know it's common to set up studios in that part of a house, and while house-hunting we looked at houses whose basements would have been fine for my studio. But for various reasons, we bought our current house. 

Our basement is a full one and so there was plenty of room for my studio. And to help organize my arts/crafts supplies, a number of metal storage racks were already in place, left behind by a previous owner. There was even an unopened box containing the components of another metal storage rack, which I put together in due time.

But I hated working down in that basement, which was dark and was chilly-to-cold much of the year. The addition of several lights barely helped dispel the darkness, although a space heater did make things toastier for me by my worktable. 

Actually, it was much nicer working down in the basement studio in the summer; then it was comfortably cool. But the problem that time of year was the trend toward unwanted visitors at night: I'd be happily immersed in collage work or a sewing project, only to suddenly be unnerved by a bat flying by. Yikes! That would send me scurrying up the stairs! We were never sure how the bats got down there; perhaps from the weird outside entrance to the basement. They always seemed to find their way out, and without messing things up, but I still didn't like the possibility of their surprise appearances!

Then, too, there was the general dustiness and mustiness of our old-house basement. I have a dust allergy and so it wasn't healthy for me to work down in the basement for any real length of time. 

And so eventually my most-used arts and crafts supplies migrated to several rooms on the 1st floor. And supplies what stayed down - or, in the case of "new" supplies from thrift stores, what went down - to the basement tended to pile up into barely-organized heaps. Needless to say, it was often frustrating to locate a particular craft book or piece of fabric. 

But that was then, this is now! I began my studio set-up by putting two work tables into place, one for sewing and one for paper crafting. I was thinking of putting another table in the room for painting, but I'm not sure if I'll have the space, so I'll wait and see on that. 

The worktable here is an old metal folding table that had belonged to my in-laws. My sewing machine is a mid-80's Singer. It needs a tune-up now and then, but basically still runs fine. Various containers behind the machine hold patterns, sewing scissors, rulers and other supplies. 

For decoration, I propped up this vintage sewing kit box on the window frame behind the sewing machine. The box had been in my mother-in-law's sewing basket, which was given to me after she died. 


Adjacent to the sewing table is the papercrafting work area. The table, which had been left behind by a previous owner, has a wood top and metal legs. Certainly not a top-of-the-line piece, but it's perfect for this space! To the right are several small plastic storage units with drawers for small art paper pieces, and to the left are a couple of storage units for storing rubber stamps and stamp pads. More rubber stamps are in a storage container underneath the table, and more stamp pads are in a basket on the table. 


Getting ready for doing a spread in my current scrappy journal: the journal itself, a bird I'd made from art paper scraps, small scissors for detail cutting, a glue stick and a stamp pad. The large paper you see underneath these objects keeps the desk surface clean. Over time a paper used as such collects paints, stray rubber stamp images, markers tested to see if they're dry and so on. When the paper gets filled up, another one is put down - and I then have another "art paper" to cut up and use. On the windowsill is a brayer (I use it to press down glued items in my collages)and several small storage containers.

I took these photos last week, when I was in the beginning stages of setting up the studio. Since then I've hauled up what seems to be a never-ending amount of fabrics, crafting books and magazines, ribbons, more art paper pieces, stenciling materials, paints, glues, vintage matchbooks, vintage playing cards/flashcards, and on and on. It sometimes seems like it'll never end! The books will go in a small bookcase our daughter left behind, supplies used the most will be stored on one of those metal storage racks, and other things
are destined for the closet.

I still haven't brought up my felt collection, nor the vintage board games,vintage bingo cards, my bag of vintage rick racks, a basket crammed with vintage jewelry parts, counted cross-stitch stuff, and more.

And then there's the Christmas crafting supplies - books, magazines and vintage holiday doodads like jingle bells and adorable gift tags. Since Christmas crafting is still a ways off, I'm not in a hurry to bring up these materials up just yet.

Yes, I have a lot of stuff! Too much, really, so I'm taking the time to declutter as I go along. But I probably haven't gotten rid of as much stuff as I should. 

Oh well, Rome wasn't built in a day, and neither was my studio. In spite of the work involved in setting it up, I'm thrilled to finally get out of that dark, cold, dusty basement! 

And now if you'll excuse me, I have to go up to my studio and work on another scrappy journal page! (I have a goal of doing one page a day for the year.)


 



Wednesday, January 17, 2018

Room Makeover #1

Hello! I admit, I've come late to house redecorating (we've lived in four houses during our married life thus far). In part, this was due to years of not staying in a house long enough to get tired of the previous owner's choice of paint colors or wallpaper. (One house in particular had been tastefully done over shortly before we moved in.) And in part it was due to general laziness on my part - and a bit of fear too, I think. I had visions of upending a opened paint can or something like that and creating a huge mess all over the place. (Don't know why I thought that, probably read that somewhere.)

Well, my hand was finally forced a few years back when a burst pipe caused water damage to a few rooms in our house. Insurance paid for a painter to redo ruined walls, but this included only portions of the kitchen and dining room. And of course, the walls and trim that were freshly painted made the undamaged, unpainted sections look bad by comparison. So I had no choice but to start painting.

And like with every new task, I learned by doing and got better at it as I went along. By now I've repainted about 2/3 of our interior, but had never gotten around to doing any before-and-after photos. Until now. 

Our daughter moved out of our house for good this past summer. She'd already gone away to college, but she'd always lived in furnished rooms while there. Her bed, dresser, desk, chair and other belongings she had no room for stayed put in her bedroom here. But then came time to move on to grad school and move into an apartment. So of course her bedroom furnishings moved with her, leaving an empty room.

I had plans for that empty room, but first had to get rid of the less-than-attractive color scheme:

A weird shade of blue was on the walls, with apple-green trim. The white you see to the right of the window frame is the result of some wall patching. 

Another view of those colors. 
The door had a rough appearance, especially the upper right panel. I think someone had made a stab at removing the paint, but gave up rather quickly. 

Thankfully, those colors are now a thing of the past! Here's how this room now looks:


This is the window you see the full view of in the second photo from the top. The colors look more muted than they actually are because it was an overcast day outside. 

The wall color is the Sherwin-Williams version of Behr's "Swiss Coffee", a warm white. The Behr color was picked through a misunderstanding with the painter who came in to redo our ruined walls, but I ended up liking it fine. The paint trim is Valspar's "Ultra White" - again, due to the painter. I wanted to continue with the white trim that the dining room and kitchen had been painted with, so he picked that paint to redo the damaged trim in those rooms. I figured if it was good enough for a professional painter, it was good enough for me!

A much-improved door:


You would hardly think it was the same room! It never ceases to amaze me how much bigger a room appears when the color scheme changes from dark to light. I've seen this in other rooms in the house already: I've taken them from brown, dark red and purple/green/lemon yellow/turquoise (the latter was another unusual bedroom decorating scheme)to the same brightening tones of warm white/white (yes, I've been using the same paint colors throughout, the better to show off my eclectic decor). 

I should add that I've actually shown only half of our daughter's old bedroom above. The other half had already been painted; I just hadn't taken any "before" photos of it. I say "other half" because it's almost as if her room is two rooms in one. The other half is slightly larger because it has a closet. There's a wide doorway that leads directly to the second half, the portion of the room I just finished painting. Each section has its own door leading to the hallway; that's why I think of the entire room as two sections. 

And from now on, that's how this room will be treated. In my next post, I'll show off what I mean by that!


 

Thursday, January 11, 2018

More Holiday Travels

Hello! Meant to post more about the trips we took in the last half of December, but I guess I was too busy traveling to do so then. So, under the heading of "better late than never", here's some of what we saw and did. 

My previous post featured one highlight of a trip we took to central PA - the making of candy canes at Purity Candy near Allenwood. But there was plenty more to see as we continued south on US15 that day.

First stop: the historic town of Lewisburg.






Lewisburg is loaded with charming older buildings such as these two. As it's not a large town, the downtown area is small, but plenty of nice shops and restaurants beckoned. But I only made one purchase, a baking book at the used bookstore Mondragon Books. 

But my shopping wasn't done yet, since my husband agreed to travel a bit further down the road to Selinsgrove. I had read somewhere that supposedly the largest thrift store in the US is there, so of course I wanted to check that out. 

Indeed, the business - the Community Aid thrift store - was housed in a large building. I asked a clerk what had previously been there  and she told me a Value City store. 

Well, I can't say that bigger is always better; it wasn't in this case. Most of the items for sale were clothes. That's great if you need clothes, but if you're me, you want to zero in on kitchenware for your daughter's first apartment, vintage Christmas stuff for your holiday decor, or craft supplies to fuel your creativity. There wasn't a huge selection in these three categories, but I managed to find one vintage Christmas ornament and two sewing patterns. 

I was surprised that such a large retail space didn't have much furniture to speak of, as they certainly seemed to have the room for it. A clerk said they didn't get much furniture in, so what they put out on the floor was usually snatched up right away. 

It was interesting to see what the so-called "largest thrift store in America" looked like, but I can't say I was overwhelmed. Still, proceeds go to churches and non-profit charitable organizations, so I felt good about buying something from this business. 

After being in Pennsylvania for a few days, we began to make our way home. One stop along the way was the incomparable Jungle Jim's in Fairfield, Ohio (suburban Cincinnati). One feature I love about this grocery store is its international foods section, which is a huge section of this massive place. Each country or region of the world gets its own section of product shelving, with the more popular locales getting several shelves apiece. 

I guess German cookies are popular at Jungle Jim's, or maybe the supplier of these treats had a holiday promotion going on:

Above, a large cookie house had been constructed. The decorations are various German cookies. The signs on either side of the house say "Please Do Not Touch". I imagine it was hard for children to refrain from doing so.

A close-up:

Looks good enough to eat!

Our last stop on the trip was to pick up our daughter in West Lafayette, Indiana for her Christmas break from grad school at Purdue. With her in tow, we returned home on December 22nd - to about 8" snow in the driveway. 

The forecast for the days in between Christmas Day and New Year's Day was for yet more snow, accompanied by very cold weather. My husband proposed going out of town to get away from the snow. 

So where did we go? Chicago and Milwaukee. They were even colder - but had far less snow. I'd say there was no more than 5" snow on the ground in either city during our visit. It did snow a bit one day in Milwaukee, but the roads were in pretty good shape. There was the matter of driving through lake effect snow in southwestern Michigan and northwestern Indiana, both coming and going, but we made it through those snow bands unscathed. 

For the third year in a row, we visited the Mitchell Park Conservatory in Milwaukee, which is set up as a grouping of three domes. One dome features tropical plantings, one dome is dedicated to desert growth, and the third is reserved for various special exhibits throughout the year. 

I'll focus on that last dome, since it was sporting a holiday theme during our visit. I think the theme was "Naughty or Nice", with various scenarios of elves working on gifts and goodies to pack in Santa's sleigh. 

Close-ups of a huge, festively-decorated Christmas tree. 

The same tree, seen from a distance. 

A "bakery" building. Inside, dozens of pretend gingerbread cookies were being made in assembly-line fashion. Note the attractive rows of poinsettias and other plantings in the foreground.

The other side of the same building. 

Nary a red poinsettia in this bunch!

Alas, we didn't stay at the Domes as long as we had in previous visits. It was quite crowded; perhaps people wanted to see signs of plant life in the midst of a severe cold spell. But we still had a very nice time there. 

We had one more trip to go on, and that was to take our daughter back West Lafayette. We stayed down there for a couple of days, which included a run down to the Indianapolis area. A new Ikea had just opened in the fall in the suburbs, so I wanted to check it out. We also trooped over to the Fashion Mall, which might be the swankiest mall in the state. We all just window-shopped, as we weren't there long enough to do serious shopping. It was fund to  look though! 

It got down to -15 the last night of our stay in West Lafayette, and it was still only -2 when we left our daughter's apartment after breakfast. That's a far cry from the 56 we experienced on December 22nd there! What a difference a couple of weeks can make. 

Ran into more lake effect snow on the way back home near South Bend. Saw about 8 slide-offs, including a car that landed upside-down in the ditch. An emergency crew was just arriving on the scene as we passed that vehicle. Hopefully the driver was okay. 

Needless to say, after that we were glad to eventually arrive back at our house, safe and sound. It had been a busy period of trips, sandwiched between holiday events. Now it's life back to normal...until the next holiday or trip comes upon us!