FRIDAY FINDS: IT'S ALMOST SPRING

Things are looking up, folks. Meteorological spring started this week (although it's clear that Mother Nature laughs in the face of so-called meteorological spring), the clocks go forward tomorrow night (yawn), the sun has actual warmth and I'm taking a fun little trip next week that I'm very much looking forward to telling you about. Oh, and "Gardeners' World" starts up again today (check the Youtube channel tonight or tomorrow).

Soon we'll all be running around in a fit trying to get all of our spring projects finished.

Doesn't the price of outdoor furniture blow your mind? It often costs more than indoor furniture! And that's OK if you live in a place where you can use it all the time, but we use it for about four months of the year so I'm just not comfortable investing a ton of money in it. Our outdoor dining table and chairs don't match but they are both great. I think I'm going to spray paint the chairs and buy new cushions (the cheap cushions that came with them have been shot for awhile) to freshen up the look. They sell pretty standard-size cushions in a bunch of fabrics here and here.


I always love Linda's perspective on gardening and am a great admirer of what she and her husband Mark have created. But gardens chance and time marches on and Linda now finds herself contemplating a big change. 

Grow a Good Life photo

When you're thinking about what you'll be starting from seed, don't forget herbs. Rachel at Grow a Good Life has a great article on several that you can start from seed quite easily.

I love a good, well-lit neutral space with warm touches, but I'm also a lover of color. This home (with great before shots to show the change) has an unexpected blast of color that makes it seem as though the rest of the home is designed specifically to show it off. Of course Loi always has such impeccable taste I would expect nothing less.

What do you have on tap for the weekend? Don't faint from shock, but there is a slim possibility that it might be nice enough to get back to work on the neverending garage pergola project! 

Oozing charm all over the place

After a go-go-go business trip last week, it was a go-go-go weekend here. We've been enjoying an amazing fall (which I feel we deserved after a less-than-stellar summer) but the weather is going to take a turn this week. The feeling that the time for outdoor projects is running out has created a mad dash of trying to get what needs to get done, done.

Of course nothing got finished. A lot was started and even more was continued, but as far as I can tell, not a damn thing was finished, which makes for pretty lame blogging.

I think I set a personal record, though. I bought five quarts of paint this weekend, four of them completely different colors (and one a fix of the another color). I didn't actually need them all this weekend, but I will need them soon and I figured as long as I was paint shopping I might as well get them all at once.

Speaking of paint, I spied a Maine Cottage store across from our hotel in Annapolis. I love Maine Cottage's (extremely expensive) furniture so I was eager to pop in and explore the store.

I don't think I could live in a whole house decorated with this furniture. It's all just a little too perfect and it's quite whimsical, so while I think a touch would be great, if you did an entire house in it, it could end up looking like some kind of fantasyland. What I sort of love about Maine Cottage furniture is that it's a great place to get ideas for DIY projects because basically everything is painted a fun color.

I love the Color Bar with cute little holders for swatches of all their paint colors.

This bed is so charming and such an amazing color.

This fabric isn't really my favorite but I thought this whole seating area was just so cute. I love the side table (although all their side tables seemed a little on the high side to me).

I don't know where I'd put a little loveseat like this but I'd sure put it somewhere because it is so comfy looking.

If I had a summer cottage to decorate (and lots of money to do it) you can bet this nightstand would be in it. I just love that fish.

Cottage-worthy bar cart.

They had these amazing cutting boards that are painted and I just fell in love with them. These two kind of look like lobster pot buoys. I can't think the paint would hold up to repeated washing very well, but I think these could be so cool hanging on the wall when not in use.

They also had this shape with a leather strap on the top. I'd get one just to hang on the wall.

I loved the floors. 

These round cork boards and the oval coat racks with shiny hooks are so pretty and I took a picture because this is one of those things you could definitely do yourself for a fraction of the cost. I wish someone would start selling unpainting round frames though, because I like me some round frames.

The counter at the Color Bar was so intersting. It appeared to be concrete that an old sail had been embedded into and then painted. 

 So what do you think? Is this kind of cottage charm up your alley or better used for a bit of DIY inspiration? Or maybe it's just not your cup of tea at all ....

Looking for a little help from my friends

It's Garden Bloggers Bloom Day and I'll be back later with a few photos to actually participate (for the first time in months) but first I need a little help on a project.

Please note, that's a picture from the store, not one showing my growing silk clematis collection.

This is one that has been a long time coming. I picked up this dresser at the thrift store for $35 about two years ago. I bought it because I couldn't leave it there. I don't (and didn't then) have a place to put it right now, but I like it, so it will get used. Like the buffet that lived in the garage for a long time, this dresser has been languishing in our unheated, gross garage for a long time. And I've hit it with the car more than once.

The law has been laid down: I MUST start finishing some projects before I take on anything else. You can probably guess who came up with that edict, but I'm on board with it. He's right. Our house is way too small to be storing future projects. That's why I've passed up some great stuff at the thrift store (including this chair). If I can't fix it up and use it immediately, it doesn't come in the house.

Anyway, in late fall we pulled the dresser out of the garage and I got to work on sanding it. It was covered in mildew inside and stunk to high heaven. I cleaned it a bunch of times with various things including vinegar and have been letting it air out and now it's all sanded, smelling sweet and ready for the next step.

Ewww ... check out that mildew in there. People, don't leave your furniture in your garage for two years.

And that's where you come in. I want you to tell me what you think I should do with it. But this is not a no-holds-barred kind of thing. I have a general concept I'm hoping you'll help me flush out.

Because the top and sides are laminate veneer, the entire outside of it (top, sides, bottom rail, legs) is going to get painted white. If you are cringing at the thought of painting that plastic wood-type stuff, check out what I did to my desk at work. It's been well over a year and it has help up amazingly well. There's not a chip on it. But the drawers are real wood and they are sort of pretty, so I'm not going to paint those.

My inspiration to even buy this dresser started at Young House Love, where John and Sherry refinished a very similar dresser for their daughter Clara's room. They went with a dark stain and only painted the top.

Young House Love photo

Here's a similar finishing concept from Twenty-Six to Life.

Twenty-six to Life photo

Here's the opposite finishing from Birdhouse. The wood is sort of a medium tone, rather than dark like the examples above. Pay attention to the wood color here, not the positioning of paint vs. stain because it's not an option for me to stain the top and sides.

Birdhouse photo

Here's the reverse from Blessed Nest, again with a medium-tone stain (and amazing hardware).

Blessed Nest photo

Now we're getting slightly lighter with this one from Handmade Home.

Handmade Home photo

And even lighter on this dresser from The Lettered Cottage. Layla toned down the wood color with a little bit of gray stain, but this not too much different from the natural wood color of my dresser drawers.

The Lettered Cottage photo

And there's this one, which just gives you an idea of colors.

Contemporary Dressers Chests And Bedroom Armoires design by New York Furniture And Accessories Think Fabricate

So, what color do you think I should go with for the stain? Since I don't know where this is going, let's just assume you don't have to worry about matching it to anything else. Logically it will end up in one of the bedrooms which, as you recall, have a darker bamboo floor in them, in case that affects your decision at all. 

This is the master bedroom, just to remind you of the floors in there.

Let me know in the comments or on facebook what direction you think the dresser should go in.

Chair obsession

Thank goodness for cameras on phones, right? Since I don't always walk around with a camera but I almost always have my phone with me, it's so nice to be able to snap a shot of something great, even if people are staring at you for taking a picture of a chair.

That's what happened in the case of this chair, which was sitting in the lobby of the Hotel Iroquois restaurant on Mackinac Island. We were waiting to be seated and I saw this chair, this gorgeous mouth-watering chair, against the wall.

Click.

Part of the reason it's so amazing, I think, is because the beadboard walls are painted a light sky blue, which is picked up in the stripe on the seat, and of course orange and blue are complimentary colors so you know things are going to pop when those two are involved.

I'm definitely in a light blue and orange phase right now (and that's the plan for the new master bedroom when it comes time to worry about the pretty parts) I am now obsessed with this chair. I must find one similar to it to paint a great bright orange color and recover the seat.

What do you think? Better to leave the orange chairs to restaurants or do they have a place in a house?

From buffet to bookcase

So here's the story. About three years ago I saw a note on Freecycle about a Crate & Barrel buffet up for grabs. I hopped right on that and picked it up. It was one of those assemble yourself pieces and obviously not a lot of care had been taken in assembling it. On top of that, one of the drawer pulls was broken off, a door had fallen off and its back was separating from its front. I dragged it home and stuck it in the garage.

And that's exactly where it proceeded to live for the next three years. In fact I routinely ran into it with my car when I wasn't paying attention (don't laugh, I also once tried to back up with the garage door still closed, so anything is possible).

About a month ago we were enjoying an unseasonably beautiful day and I was sanding some furniture outside (the subject of another upcoming before and after). Things were going so well that I thought it was high time to pull out that buffet and see if it was salvageable. So I gave it a good sanding (down to the MDF), removed the one door that was still attached, and set to work recreating it as a bookcase.

It took me two tries on the color. First I used Benjamin Moore Waterfall, but it was sort of a bad baby blue, so I did the second coat (after first priming with an oil-based primer) with BM Peacock. I snagged a couple of aged copper drawer pulls from the local True Value, and now it's a nice accent in our office/den-type room, which I plan to do with accents of turquoise and orange.

My husband, who is a perfectionist when it comes to painting (and particularly varnishing), was nice enough to point out that it had a couple of "holidays" (apparently that's what drips are called because you were obviously on a "holiday" while painting, or something like that), but I think I can handle that, especially since I know have a colorful bookcase instead of a ramming board for my car.