Local Lighting Options

Carol's Home Interior Store, a local shop in town, had a lot of lights displayed a few weeks ago when I was there. 

These two are my favorite picks for the dining room (above) and the breakfast room...

I would love to replace the lights in those rooms with these two, but here's the one I actually couldn't leave the store without.

I've been in love with this little guy forever. I thought they had sold it, but when I saw it had just moved to the lighting area, I bought it on the spot so it didn't get away again. 

It's going to replace the light in our entrance hallway in the picture below.

Of course when Wild Bill saw it coming home with me he was less than awed. I go for anything beat up with a little industrial bend. He likes modern (excuse me while I gag) and matchy-matchy! 

We used to compromise on our furnishings until we realized that when you compromise, no one gets what they want! In the case of furniture, that meant neither of us ever liked what we had. 

Now as far as furniture, we generally do without until we happen upon something we both like, but housewares and the fluffy stuff...that's a different story. 

Thanks for dropping by!

What I'm Working On Wednesday

Here's a picture of a painted lampshade that was in a shop several years ago. The pictures I have were taken at Christmas time so please disregard the bow and such. 

 I really regret not buying this lamp. It's large, and that would be good because I tend to buy too many small things. I checked recently and it was gone. sigh.

I've heard designers say "buy what you love and you'll find a place for it" and I'm sure that would be true in this case. Like I said, I really regret passing it by.

I'm on the lookout for a similar lamp and shade at local thrift shops and garage sales so I can try to paint it like this one. The search is on!

But that's a future project, and here's my current one... Down in McKinney recently, I took some pictures of the front window at the Gray Living store.

I love the white pottery with the handles and dark aged spots in the cracks and crevices...

They looked kind of familiar. When I got home I went looking in one of my storage spots up in the top of the cabinets. See the red pottery piece up there?

I thought I might be able to paint it an aged-white color, like the ones in the Gray Living window. I decided to use One-Step paint by Amy Howard. If anything will stick to slick pottery, this stuff will. They don't pay me to use this stuff, but they should! I buy my paint at a shop in McKinney, but I heard Ace Hardware carries it too. I've even used One-Step on metal before, like when middle daughter and I painted her chandelier here.

Before I painted this piece white, I decided to paint it black first to block out the red when I distress it. I'm hoping that will work...we'll see.

 I never really liked it in red and had considered donating this piece. I stuck it up in the cabinet a few weeks back while I made a decision. Now I'm so glad I hesitated because I'm really curious to see if the paint works on it!

I let it dry for a couple hours then took some more pictures. I'm going to let it dry overnight, to ensure the paint adheres well, before I start painting it white.

I use a lot of things from around the kitchen when I paint. Pint glass jars are my favorite way to paint small projects. I just dip my brush into the jar while I'm painting and cap the jars while I'm between coats.

I buy the white plastic caps at Walmart and just use a marker to note the brand and color of the paint. If I use the metal caps they come with, I put a baggie over the jar before I cap it. This keeps the paint from sticking to the lid and makes it easier to open and close the jars. 

In addition, I also use the freezer baggies to wrap up my brush between painting with them. You don't have to freeze the brushes or anything else that you might have heard. Just put the brush in a freezer baggie and get as much of the air out as you can. I leave these for days without washing them out when I'm working on projects. It might not work for you, but it works well for me. 

 Both of these brushes have chalk paint on them. I've used them for about 4 days now without washing them out. When I take them out of the freezer baggie, I throw the messy bag away and then wrap the brush in a new one when I'm done painting. We buy the BIG packs of Ziplocks at Costco or Sams.

So that's as far as I got today on this piece. In addition, I painted my favorite victim, the rolling bookcase, again. Yep, coat 2,647! It's back to white, and now waiting for some wax to finish it off, and then it gets two hooks for each side and it'll be done (maybe) for good.

This Friday is going to be "Finish It Friday" for the five projects I've got going on. Hope you'll come back then and see how they turn out.

Thanks for dropping in!

It's A Wrap...Jaysa's Chandelier

A while back, Middle Daughter's chandelier started getting an overhaul. Jaysa wanted a Pottery Barn chandelier, and I told her she just needed to paint her's...sounds so easy, right? 

Well it was. Easy on me anyway...she did most of the work!

In early Fall, I started it for her. Did all the easy parts. Then I went home the next day and she had to climb way up and paint the chain and the cap at the ceiling. 

 She said the worst was getting a brush into the area where the spokes of the chandelier meet at the top of the light, just before the chain. 

She had wanted to take it down and spray paint it, but her not-so-brilliant mother said:

 "Why not just paint it in place with chalk paint?"

I often make an easy project into a very complicated one - It's my gift! You can read how it started last September here. This is the original Pottery Barn light that started it all.

And this is what her chandelier looked like before it got its makeover. She had taken off one ugly globe and tried an Edison light in one socket on the left there, you know...just to see.

The only thing left is to paint all the white sockets that hold the Edison bulbs. 

But since we are visiting her again right now, she and I are debating whether she could make a cover for each socket out of the center of toilet paper rolls and just paint them black and slip them on. Like I said before, it gets very complicated in my world!

The room is a work-in-progress right now, and it's hard to get a good picture with the way the light from the window works. 

When the room is done, I'll post it. Meanwhile, Middle Daughter is painting her woodwork white (see top orange wood trim), working on a chalkboard she made but had a 'fail' on the stained wood frame of it (see above picture) and adding more trim to the baseboards, etc. 

Thanks for dropping by and...

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!