Dining Room Update

I realize that I haven't written a real update in... practically forever. So I thought I'd just jump in and let you know how things stand in the dining room.

You know I've been working on this room for a while, and its still not finished, but when we started, it looked like this.

As you recall, we added a chandelier back in October, and then just waited it out. I needed to know how I really felt about this wide pine plank "wainscoting". And here is the really terrible truth... I couldn't stand it. It was stained a dark brownish color, which prevented you from really seeing the grain. It also hid a crazy amount of mold that accumulated during last summer's endless humidity wave. Additionally, this room is on the north side of the house and is incredibly dark. I decided to just paint it all white. Well, linen white technically speaking. 

After three coats of shellac and three coats of linen white, the room was already much brighter. I felt guilty for the longest time about painting the trim because it is true to the historic character of the house, but I took solace in the fact that I could walk around the corner into our office to see more pine planks if I really wanted to. So the next step was paint selection for the walls. This was also a tough decision to make... I really liked Sherwin William's "Smoky Blue" but then I painted a swatch on the wall and felt scared... it was such a bold color and I didn't know if I could handle it. But facebook voted...

And I still wasn't sure. So I told the guy at Sherwin Williams (who knows me on a first name basis) to just pick a color. 

He went with Smoky Blue. 

Once I finally had done allllll of that painting (it was ridiculous) I decided to get rid of my table and chairs and acquire something new. As you may have guessed by now, there is something wrong with me that causes me to take on endless projects. The new table and chairs were much of the same -- endless. 

I began stripping the table first, that was the quick part. 

I really liked how the wood looked completely naked and I tried many different methods to see if I could get it to stay that way. Wax, "white wash" stain, etc. All that ended up happening with those methods is that I made more work for myself and had to strip it back down when I wasn't happy with the result... again.

This photo doesn't look that bad, but it was much more white-orange in person, like that classic 1980's look that everyone has come to hate in the 2000's. It was a fail.

The search continued as I decided I couldn't really leave it naked or light colored because the yellow hue of the oak would find a way to shine through. I experimented with different stains and finally settled on a combination of half "weathered oak" and half "classic grey".

With the stain and poly complete, it was time to tackle the chairs. Oh... the chairs. 

First, I cleaned them with a cleaner that also contained a deglosser. But I'm never one to skip the proper steps, so I sanded them down and then washed them again. By this point in the dining room overhaul process, it was May, and nice enough to set up my paint tent once again and paint gun these bad boys. 

As you can see, the chairs had other plans. These photos were taken after three, yes, three coats of primer. They just flat out rejected the paint. Not interested. Chalk this up as fail # 2. Realizing my only option was to sand these down AGAIN and then do a coat of shellac, the old fashioned way (with a brush... like some sort of Neanderthal) I groaned and moaned and whined like a baby, then finally, sucked it up and did the shellacking. 

I'm fairly certain that I will be buying an additional gun that I can use exclusively for oil-based products moving forward. The problem with old woods rejecting water-based paint is common enough that I know what to do when it happens, so odds are good I will have to do it again sometime. A gun would really streamline the process. 

After all of this, I was finally able to paint the chairs the linen white that I wanted them. So, let's talley the painting that went into the photo below.... 

3 coats of shellac on pine

3 coats of paint on shellacked pine

2 coats of Smoky Blue

2 coats of misguided stain (later stripped)

1 coat of the correct stain

3 coats of poly

3 coats of primer on chairs

1 coat of shellac on chairs

1 coat of paint on chairs

In the photo directly above you can see that I rearranged the room a bit to accommodate a very large seagrass rug generously given to me by a friend/co-worker/boss' daughter. It has a navy blue border which works perfectly . 

With the room painted, furnished and trimmed with a rug and curtains, it's looking pretty good. We're still missing out on some wall art, but I'll leave you with the sight for my source of inspiration. 

Good chat. 

Whoops and Sorry.

Hi there everyone.

Did you just get like 5,000,000,000 new posts from me in your e-mail or blog reader? Yeah, sorry about that. As far as I can tell (due to my limited understanding of technology) there was no clear way to avoid that mess.

story of my life.

The good news... now everything I have written is in one spot! I know you probably don't care, but I am pretty pumped about it because I've been talking about combining all of the blogs for a while now. So now you can peruse any of the tabs on my blog to see different "categories" of stuff such as Our Wedding, Travels, Crafty Pursuits, and most importantly The Pups.

Some stuff falls under more than one category, for example everything I wrote on my wedding blog was also crafty, so it will be on both pages.

"Yeah, but what does this mean to me Mandy?"

Well, nothing really. Just that from now on, when you get a Crafty-Pursuits post it might actually be about my travels, or my dogs. It will still arrive in your inbox or your blog reader.

(this is what you are thinking right now)

So once again, I apologize for the excessive "new" posts that aren't new at all. Hopefully you can remain a loyal reader. Well, let's face it... most of you are family or close friends and don't really have a choice.

Cheers to that.

And just so this post contains some relevant information. I thought you should know that I sold my dining set last weekend for $300 in order to make room for the "oops I did it again" chairs and the "oops, one more time" table I bought recently.

More to come!

What I've been up to...

So I promised you all that I had been accomplishing wedding tasks - and I have. A lot of them were administrative in nature: send a check to this vendor, call that vendor, find 120 place settings, you get the idea. But here are 2 things that I have been doing to show you; they highlight the fun and crafty side of DIY, and the way less glamorous, grunt work style.

Project #1 is something I have been working on for the bridesmaids. Since I anticipate roping them in to do a lot of my dirty work with me, I figure I might as well bride them first with some cool gifts they can use the day before the wedding at our welcome lunch/canoe trip (Amy - you might want to stop reading if you like surprises).

I found these bags a while ago and picked them up in 4 different colors: one for each girl. They are pretty cute, no? They are kind of like a burlap meets raffia style - very beachy.

Issac Farms

Hi there.

Just checking in to say hey, and let you know what a fun time I had in Florida the last few days. We went to the Everglades for 2 days and then spent 2 days just kinda hanging around in the sun relaxing.

As you know, I am not good at relaxing. It's just too boring.

So I took off in our rental mini-van (more on that later) to check out a nursery that we passed while driving to the Tamiami Trail on Saturday morning. We had been on our way to the Gulf Coast to do a ranger-led canoe trip in the Everglades, a drive that took almost two hours, when we kept passing these adorable (huge) nurseries selling all kinds of beautiful tropical fauna.  One in particular (Issac Farms) really caught my attention with its plethora of glazed ceramic pots for container gardening.

Check it out.

They used broken pots for mulch, very unique idea!

Soooooo many pots! Every shape and size! 

cacti

Air plants (bromileads) are so funky!

The succulent collection did not disappoint!

There were several container gardens on display, each more beautiful than the last

There were hundreds (probably thousands) of these... anyone know what they are?

These tall, skinny pots were about 4 feet tall!

These ribbed colorful containers were some of my favorite

This one container was probable about 3 feet long and 1.5 ft wide. Imagine a cacti garden that big?

So many chickens with this hen!

I was dying to take one of these bad boys home. Alas, they were far too large (6 inch pots) for my suitcase

And I had plenty of creepy friends shopping with me!

Look familiar?

What a sight for sore (snow-blind) eyes!

Basically, this place was amazing. I had a chance to speak to the owner briefly and she was a very kind woman who explained to me that one of the plants I had chosen would die in Connecticut, even if I did keep it inside. Luckily she thought my air plant that I picked up off one of the trails in the Everglades MIGHT survive, if it got plenty of sun from a window.

I did not leave empty handed of course. I promise to show off my treasures later this week... but let's just say that Dan should be real happy there is nothing quite like this place up here.