Stripping for a cause

Amy from Maison Decor asked what was going on with the walls in Miriam's dining room. Well, now I understand the true heartache of OCD. If you've been following this, I suggested Miriam strip the paint off the corner cupboard before she painted the wood work in the dining room because the old paint was gloppy and peeling off. She just needed to get if down to a stable tight layer of old paint, so the new paint wouldn't peel off with the old paint. I know she's been working really hard on this, but today I had her email me some progress pictures, and now I know why it's been taking so long. She is stripping it completely of all paint. OY!!! THIS IS NOT NECESSARY!!!!! I want to get this room done before I die of old age.

So I suggested she wash it down with mineral spirits and steel wool, and work any glop out of crevices with a scraper or razor blade, then sand the whole thing lightly with a fine sand paper to take care of the raised grain that is NOW EXPOSED because she stripped it down to bare wood.

All this is in answer to Amy's question of when I was going to put the fabric on the walls. WELL I CAN'T UNTIL THE WOOD WORK IS PAINTED!!!!!

P.S. It is NOT necessary to strip the back wall (which is plaster) of any paint. I know, I know, when I first did DYI I didn't have a clue either, but that was SO LONG AGO, that it's hard to remember.

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Chairs for Miriam

For those of you following this blog, (which is probably all of you, otherwise, what are you doing reading this?), this is yet another installment of Miriam's Dining Room. We've been searching high and low for interesting dining chairs, meaning that we've been looking on Craig's List and ebay. Yesterday we snagged some in a local auction that we (I) are very excited about. Miriam really wanted them to all be arm chairs, because when she and Ross come to dinner at my house, she likes the way everyone lingers around the table after dinner. Well, all my dining chairs are arm chairs. They are 3 different pairs of chairs, as I like to mix things up, and they are all comfortable. But with a very small budget, she couldn't afford one's like Aunt Betsy has, so we were REALLY LUCKY to grab these.

They look GREAT in the photo. PHOTOS LIE!!!!!
They all have to be reglued (I have glue and clamps), the finish is HORRIBLE (we are going to paint them, anyway), and they are some of the most UNCOMFORTABLE chairs I have ever sat in.
BUT, I am going to reupholster the seats, and add a lot more padding and make big toss pillows for the backs to fix the way the back bar hits just in the wrong place. I couldn't believe that someone was bidding against me on these horrors, and I figured it was someone who saw them online, and hadn't seen them in real life. At this auction house people can bid over the internet, and it only takes one other person to push the price of an item up. I was hoping to get all 8 for $50.00, but we (Miriam) had to pay a little more than that. We still managed to hit her budget, and I have promised to redo these when I come back up north from Florida in the spring.

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Family room continued

Some of my favorite possessions are items that I got for clients and that they didn't like. I brought this painting to a client in Boston's back bay, thinking it would be a real plus to the look of their living room, but they couldn't see beyond the ugly frame, (I also think that they couldn't appreciate a painting unless it was an artist that they had heard of, or a very expensive piece of work. I should have put a higher price on it.)

This is my favorite painting that I own. I thought I would get a frame that was better suited to the piece, but when I took it out of the frame, I really liked it just by itself. 

Of course, I can't have a bare area on a wall, without adding plates. My father thinks they detract from the artwork, but I think it's just cozier.

The plates are from my collection of Wannopee lettuce leaf pottery.

Majolica green Lettuce Pottery was made by the New Milford Majolica Co. organized in 1887. The company changed the name to WANNOPEE in 1892. The most famous design was the "lettuce leaf" and had a series of different manufacturing marks over the years. The company was liquidated in 1904. I love this pattern so much that I have some of it on the walls of my Florida home too.

 

There are a lot of advantages to living in a condo, but one of the disadvantages is a conformity of exterior design. Of course, this is not a disadvantage when dealing with my neighbors, but is a disadvantage when I CAN'T DO WHAT I WANT TO DO!!!

The casement windows don't have muntins (what most people call mullions), you know, the wooden grills that divide the window into a grid. I don't like the look of just one big piece of glass, to me it's not cozy (there I go with that word again). So I figured NO ONE WOULD SEE THE BACK OF MY UNIT, 'cuz it's hidden by bushes and trees. Sooooooo, I bought snap in grids for the back of my house, hoping I wouldn't get caught. (I know, I know, now it's on the Internet, but don't worry, I WAS CAUGHT).

Here's the way it looked without grids.

I don't feel that this looks cozy, so I found out that Pella (the makers of my windows), and Anderson (the maker of my sliding doors) sells snap in grills. Boy was I excited. I wanted to run around my condo complex and share the good news, only I would get into trouble. I tell ya, it's hard for me to keep my mouth closed, so of course the info did leak out.

Here it what it looked like after I committed my act of rebellion.



That's all for now, I still have a lot more to say about this space. Oy, can I go on or what?

Stay tuned.

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Family room/kitchen renovation

I wanted to create a room to which I would gravitate.

before                                                                  

I wanted to create a room full of sun and air.

The room felt closed in and claustrophobic to me, but I was too close to it emotionally, so I didn't see any obvious solutions. I went into designer mode, and just did to it what I would have done if it was for a client, which is rip the @#$ out of it. Since there was no construction over it, I wondered "what in the world is ABOVE this space???? I don't see nothin'!!!! Then I'm going to rip it open!!!

I love crow bars!!! They are a designer's best friend. The room had a really nice roof line; which made a great ceiling profile. It also provided another surface to cut into for windows. So I had three skylights added.

Since the fireplace was a metal box, and not masonry, I was able to move it around (sort of). I had always wanted a fireplace with bookshelves on either side ( I grew up in a house with them). I was renovating this house just when thin TVs were coming on the market, so I was really excited about placing one in a bookshelf only 10" deep. I had the wall built forward 10", and pulled the fireplace forward, placing recessed bookshelves on either side, redesigning the look of the wall by using mat black slate as the fireplace surround and hearth and cladding the wall in V-groove paneling.

I covered the ceiling with bead board for a total country feel, becoming deadened to the increasing bills the contractor was handing me.

One of the aspects of the room that made me feel closed in was the height of the window sill. It was 34" high. I am used to a 30" high sill, it doesn't cut your site line to the outside as much, making a room feel more open. So, since the windows were old, and would have to be replaced in the near future, and I wanted to get all the construction over before I moved into my new home, while I was replacing the windows, I lengthened them by 4", to have a lower sill line. It transformed the space (for me) (and that's all that counts, since I don't see anyone else living here).

I'm going to end this here, I will try to finish tomorrow, but as you can see, I hadn't posted in a week, and I was getting yelled at (you know who you are), So I figured I better get something up before I loose the few followers I have.

Linking to:  wow us wednesdays

                  Mod Mix Monday

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Creating a new home

Seven years ago I moved from my home in Watertown Ma. to a townhouse condo in a western Massachusetts suburb. I had loved my little cape with its architectural detailing from the 1930's, and moving into a 1981 condo with 1980 crappy detailing was not something I was willing to take lying down. So I pulled out my checkbook and TOTALLY over-corrected the problem.

This was the family room/kitchen area I bought before I threw a contractor at it.
 View of the fireplace wall (duh).






View out to the terrace.

                                       This is the view into the kitchen. Do you like the black cabinets hanging down between the two rooms? This is a really good design idea if you want a room to feel like a dark cave. The kitchen has no windows, so all the light comes from the family room.

Here's the view into the family room from the kitchen. The parquet flooring was worn and cheap looking, and the cabinet arrangement was just downright bizarre, with a peninsula sticking into the room to make some kind of a snack bar.

Over the next few days, I will show the pictures of the progress of decorating in both the family room and kitchen, but I am too tired now to do it. So this is another teaser post. I realize, I am not a very nice person. I also realize I am lazy.
OK, OK, I'll post one picture.

I opened up the ceiling for a cathedral, and added sky lights. I did a lot of other stuff that I'll tell you about later. So COME BACK!!

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Table adventures (finding stuff for Miriam)!!

My niece Miriam turned me onto ebay several years ago, and created a monster. Now she's got me hooked on Craig's List. She needed a dining room table to go in her newly designed dining room that would work with the FABULOUS server I found with her. I combed the local Craig's List listings, and found the perfect table, well within her limited budget. While I was looking for a dining room table, I also found one for her kitchen, that was too wonderful to pass up. So now we are done looking for tables for food, and just need everything else in the house.

The great thing about this table, is that it has three leaves, so it can go from 66" to 102", depending on Miriam's needs. The double pedestals are nice and chunky. Miriam was thinking she wanted it painted, but I told her we needed to wait until the dining room was painted and the fabric up on the walls before we knew the direction we wanted to take with the finish. Ever since I painted the sideboard, she wants to paint everything. I may just give it a good waxing, and find some fun painted chairs to go around it.

I think the pedestals are really pretty, just need some work on the finish.

The fun thing about going to peoples houses to pick up stuff, is getting to sometimes see wonderful architecture. This table was in Gloucester MA, in a house right on the ocean. The detailing of an old beach front "cottage" is one of my favorites, and Sue the owner was nice enough to let me snap pictures to share with you guys. She and her husband are downsizing, now that the kids are grown, so she no longer needed a big table.

This is a view of the family room running along the back of the house. it used to be a porch that she enclosed. It looks out on the bay.

The view from the back is GORGEOUS!!

The butlers pantry had an arched door, I'd never seen one in a pantry before, isn't it stunning?

The railing details on the stairs were so wonderful, I snapped lots of shots to share.....

 I don't know why, but I always think of this kind of a newell post as a captains post.

Note the way the railing swoops up at the level change.

We were so successful with the dining table, I suggested that we check out this other table for the kitchen. (Another great bargain). Miriam wanted a rectangular table that could fit tight against the wall. Ross felt that a round shape worked better in the space. Soooooo.... I was able to satisfy both of them because I am a SUPER DECORATOR!!!!!

 

This table is a drop leaf that opens up to hold more leaves!! I have never seen one like this, and I have been around a loooooonnnng time.

So I figured that they could use it with one leaf down to fit against the wall, and one leaf up to curve into the room. When they had a lot of company, like at holidays with melding two families, they could add the extra leaves and have a second dining table set up in the kitchen just off the dining room. Now Miriam just needs to learn how to cook. (I hope I'm just kidding).

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Miriam's Dining Room Continued

As we resume our story of the young lovers, Miriam and Ross,  continuing their adventure in the early days of marriage, we join them in their dining room........



I have a tendency to assume I (we) can do more than I (we) are capable of accomplishing. This is a nice way of saying I wanted Ross to get in way over his head in the dining room project. This is the ONLY time Ross has been right, and I have been not right. ( I refuse to use that other word). I thought we (he) could pull off the chair rail, rework the windowsills and replace the baseboard. He knew he couldn't. So we got my buddy and savior, Nigel Mernagh, to do the wood work details in our transformative project.

He pulled off the chair rails.............

and added a new larger baseboard..........

Then started applying the wood to create the paneling details.......

You can tell he's a professional, look at the size of that level!!! Then he added the vertical pieces.............

To save some moolah, Miriam and Ross decided that they would patch the walls and paint the room themselves, but first they had to learn how to spackle, and being the computer geeks they are, they researched it on line, and kind of got it right.

I don't know why he's smiling, there is still a whole #$@ load of work to do.

The corner cupboard was thick with gloppy old paint that had been painted over older gloppy old paint, and it was all pealing and crummy looking

So I talked her into stripping it, poor baby, she had no idea what I was getting her into. This is a picture of it partially stripped. I don't know if it will ever be finished, but we are forever hopeful.

Next weekend, we will finish the painting (maybe) and then I can start putting the fabric on the walls. Tomorrow Miriam and I are going to look at a great dining table I found on Craig's list, and if it looks as good in real life as it does on my computer, we will haul it home to join the sideboard I finished waxing last week.

Remember this? It used to look like this.......

I hope you all are enjoying reading about this project as much as Miriam and I are enjoying tackeling it. Ross is being a good sport, that's all we can ask of the new hubby. Stay tuned for the ongoing  adventures of the dinamic trio in decorating!!



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