Counting Sheep

On a budget, it's hard to afford big rugs!  So I find myself having to layer smaller rugs around my house to keep things warm and cozy, literally...our house is freezing in the winter!  I was tired of stepping out of the bed onto the cold floor in the mornings, so I picked up these sheep skins at Sams for $30 each!  I think they frame the bed nicely (I wish I had a wide angle lens to capture it!).

I love the organic shape of hides.  Bedrooms are full of squares, and so it's nice to soften things up a bit.

...and they're perfect for Bei to snuggle up on.

  

Thanks for checking in.  

Charlie and the Painting Factory

We were blessed to have found Charles the Painter, and his handy wife Marilyn!  We originally weren't even planning on hiring painters.  We just wanted someone to help Chris with the scraping and prep part of the job.  Charles gave us such a low quote that we couldn't resist and hired him for the whole job.  And I am so glad we did!
They worked so hard on our house and did everything the tried and true honest way...no shortcuts!  We've had some setbacks with the cold weather, which made it a very long process, but now their job is complete!

Charles the Painter has...
- Scraped
- Sanded
- Pressure washed
- Primed (all by brush and roller, no spraying)
- Removed all the old caulk
- Replaced rotten wood
- Helped Chris with some carpentry
- Re-caulked everything
- Replaced some cracked bricks
- Smoothed out all our wood siding with spackling to make it all smooth and look like new!
- Primed again over the new caulk (all by brush and roller, no spraying)
- And finally...painted the house!

So here are some pictures of the process....

 scraped...

 took out two bushes...

sanded...

put up some new trim...

(I thought we needed a little architectural interest to keep up with the other bungalows in our neighborhood...most of which have the cute overhanging eaves)

Primed...

railings taken down...

New columns and new gable...

Good job to Chris and his dad Bill!

While they were busy working on the structural details, I was thinking ahead to the cosmetic details...

I built our shutters with basically 0 help from any of the men!  I'm kind of proud of that.

I painted our front door to match the shade of blue/green that we discovered was original to our porch ceiling...

Chris worked hard building our railings, with some help from me and Lindsey B....

I painted our porch swing, and hung it with rope...

(Thanks to our friends, the Boneys, for the rope idea)

We took a little break for Christmas...

But Charles the painter came back from the holidays with a vengeance.  He spackled every board of siding till it looked smooth and brand new... 

He put fresh caulk everywhere and did some more priming...

I took down the black lantern on our porch and spray painted it "oil-rubbed bronze"

And painted our mailbox and address numbers with a hammered copper spray paint with a few shots of the oil-rubbed bronze hammered spray paint by Rustoleum....

And sprayed the box on our house to match...

And this cute star for a little personality...

Then the first coat of paint went up...

It looked pretty stark and brown with the stark white primed trim...scary!

Then, Charles the painter never misses a beat, he went back and did some more spackling anywhere he could find a blemish...

Finally, the trim color started going up, bringing the look together, just in time for a snow "storm"...

And after some touch-ups and two coats all around...the house looked amazing, due to Charles, Marilyn, and their trusty sidekick Bei!

And Chris and I worked pretty dang hard ourselves!

Thanks to our friends and family that helped too...Lindsey, Alex, and Bill!

Now it's time to relax and enjoy it paint our steps and porch and do some landscaping!

If you're in the Birmingham area and need a painter or general handy man, please contact me and I would love to pass along Charles the painter's info!

the Cinderella Chair

If you take this:

Subtract this:

And then your mom finds this at a garage sale:

 And you hunt down the perfect fabric that looks like this:

You add x-large buttons and chocolate brown velvet piping, remove the skirt, paint the legs chocolate brown and click your heels three times, you might end up with this:

Which looks pretty happy in a room like this:

So the moral of the story is, this nasty old chair went from this:

to this:

And I'm glad.  

Now, I just need the perfect, cheap, fabric to make a slip cover for this:

Ta-Da!

Operation Exterior, complete!  

(for now)

 The color is a little truer in this photo...

We used Kingsport Grey HC-86 as the main house color and Grant Beige HC-83 for the trim color (Thanks to my friend, Doug, over at Tracery Interiors for the trim color tip).

Next on the agenda...
Painting the concrete walkway and porch (same color as house)...then eventually replacing it with stone.
Landscaping...we want greenery that will come up as tall as the brick foundation and make the house look "tucked in".

The recap...

Before:

After:

 

I'll post more details on the whole process soon.   First, Chris and I need some R & R to enjoy our accomplishment!   

House Updates

We're just pluggin' along.  Still trying to get our house painted.  Charles the Painter and his handy wife Marilyn have been working hard, but the cold weather is slowing us down! 

We're so close!  We still need the second coat of trim paint and a few little touchups. 

I'm very ready to get everything cleaned up, beautiful, and back to normal!

Sorry for the lack of posts, but I've been spending my weekends working outside on the house (in the cold!).  I don't want to show any update pictures right now, because we're so close to being finished...I want to wait and show the final product!

Happy New Year!