Shopping The Garage: The Flour Bin

In the "olden" days, flour was kept in a bin like this one. No, I wasn't alive back then, just learned this from talking to people who were.

This flour bin has been beat up and banged up through years of use, not "creatively" distressed like most furniture re-do's are done today.

I unpacked a box in the garage and was glad to find the bin nestled among other treasures. I don't keep flour in it as there are better alternatives to use in this day and age. No, this flour bin will sit on the kitchen counter in the corner and hold all my dish cloths within easy reach when needed.

Making Your Own Chalky Paint

This dish towel hanger duck was painted with pure gesso. It changes cheap glazed objects into a richer looking product. Here's a before of the duck so you can see the difference.



I have been thinking of doing a post on making your own chalk paint, but another blogger did that a few days ago, so I don't have to.

Making your own chalk paint is so much cheaper than the $40 per quart (yes, quart) the popular stuff costs. I have been experimenting by adding gesso to left over paint I have on hand, using 1/3 gesso and 2/3's leftover paint. I got the idea to paint with gesso from Villa Barnes -- who I think is the most creative blogger out there when it comes to furniture.

Anyway, No Minimalist Here (another highly skilled and entertaining blogger) gives a variety of ideas on how to make the chalk paint, but missed the gesso combination.

Gesso is available at Michael's and Hobby Lobby, etc. Michael's is the cheapest I've found. I have been painting a variety of stuff with it since I learned about it by reading Villa Barnes' blog. You can use it by itself or mixed with paint. Love the stuff. I'm becoming possessed and I have a house full of projects in various stages to prove it.

Check out information on painting with gesso and making your own chalk paint at the blogs below. They probably won't link so you may have to type it in yourself:

http://villabarnes.blogspot.com
http://nominimalisthere.blogspot.com

It's Complicated...And Could Only Happen To Me

I got a knock on my front door and had to get a shirt to cover my pj's before I answered. When I got back to the door, no one was there.

Oh, well. I sat down to watch TV and, a few seconds later, wham. All my electric shut off.

I ran out into the garage and hit the garage door opener, but, when there's no power--no garage door opener. I banged on the garage door and yelled, but no response.

I ran back into the house and to the front door...sprinted across the lawn and around the corner of the house and chased down the Oncor truck (the electric provider) leaving the scene...and asked him what was going on?

He said a close out order had been ordered by the home owner...??? (that's me)

I told him we sold a house on Monday and the close out order was for that house in a town 200 miles away! He VERY reluctantly got out of his truck and turned my electric back on and gave me a lecture and only 1 hour to reverse the order or he would come back and shut it off! One hour, very firm.

Now, if you haven't moved in a while, you may not know that there are now a lot of small energy companies that broker energy for the providing companies. They sell energy at far cheaper rates, but you have to go through them to start and stop your account.

We have 3 different addresses with one energy broker; the old house, the new house, and an apartment Wild Bill lives in when down in Temple. The broker was supposed to close out the house we sold, but instead closed out the house we live in!

After laughing hysterically for a good 5 mins, and many phone calls and a few tears later...I am no longer in fear of that guy coming back to turn off my electric. But a few lessons learned: (1) when someone knocks and disappears, go check around the corner of your house to see if they're parked around the side of the house, and (2) make sure when you contact your energy broker that you give him the account number in addition to the address of the property to want shut off.

Sure hope Wild Bill has electric when he gets home to his apartment tonight...you get the picture? ;-)

It Really Was A Lovely Sunset In Texas...Honest

I must get a better camera. The sunset tonight was lovely as I looked at it from the window at Starbucks in town. Wild Bill commented that he'd love a picture of it, so I whipped out my little automatic and told him to hustle and he might make it before the sun set behind the hill.

As you can see, hustle isn't in his vocabulary. He got more of the sign for Austin than the sunset, but he gets an A for effort.

Completed Projects: No. 2 and No. 3

Projects 2 and 3 were legs for a table I got from Craigslist last year and a little wooden box from Hobby Lobby.
The table legs got Old White Annie Sloan Chalk Paint. I want to age and distress the legs, but not until I have the whole table done.
The rest of the table is still buried in the garage, so the aging will have to wait until I get down to the top.
It seems everything I've had for a while is that ugly orangish brown wood. I think adding any color of paint improves furniture and cabinets right away.
Here's a final shot of the finished table legs. I love the shape of them and like that they're nice and sturdy. I got this table and six matching chairs for a total of $75.00. I think the next project will be the table top and the chairs. First it will complete the dining set, and second, it will greatly reduce the pile in the garage.
The little orange box was dirt cheap at Hobby Lobby a few months ago. It had some dings and, even at Halloween time, that orange would be out of place.
I taped it before I painted, but if I had it to do again I would skip the taping and just paint the box inside and out. The distressing on the box makes it look like it hasn't been painted in spots, but it's just the distressing.

The Annie Sloan French Gray Chalk Paint looks almost blue in person. I think I'll mix up my own combination to make it grayer and less blue in the future.

Once again, my raw sugar packets came in handy to dress up the box. I love it next to the pumpkin. Like everyone else, I love the Fall season best of all.

Completed Projects: No. 1 of 3

I haven't posted the finished projects from my first "shopping trip" in the garage. I actually did finish all three of them, but didn't get to stage them in the house because I'm in the process of painting and rearranging everything. Here's the before and after of the welcome sign.

I had to resort to my painting stands (canned goods) to get the scrolled letters painted.

I plan to add distressing and aging to the sign eventually, but for now she's hanging here by the garage entrance door and will hold keys and cell phones. Later on, I plan to remove the little knobs and attach a board below the sign which will have bigger hooks for coats and such. But, for now, at least there's one thing on the walls.

Something To Wake You Up

Over on Toodie's blog -- Babblelot -- she wrote about how she got zapped when she moved her hubby's bug zapper in a closet. Well, that gave me a chuckle and reminded me of an 'incident' from my past...

Back in 1976, my ex was getting ready for work early one morning on a cold Chicago day. Either he was a little sleepy or a little dimmer than he thought he was, because his plug-in electric shaver's connection was a little loose and the electric cord kept falling out, soooooo...he bit the cord's prongs to tighten them! Go ahead, you can laugh. He lived through it.

BUT... when the electricity flowing through the cord met his wet lips...well, it lifted him up and, when he came to, he found himself in the bathtub across the room.

ohhhh...I gotta go. Even after all these years I'm almost peeing my pants!

From The Garage: No. 4 Garlic Bowl

The saga of my pursuit of a clean garage continues despite the heat. I unboxed this little bowl that I bought sometime back at a Salvation Army thrift store. I hated the color, but liked the shape. The glaze is a shiny grayish white, which had no correlation to the dull terra-cotta finish on the garlic bulbs and on the bottom.

I coated the whole thing with white and, since I prefer jarred garlic due to the heat, I didn't have garlic bulbs on hand so I put my raw sugar packets in to give it a purpose.

I will admit I tried several different touches, such as dry brushing with some french gray chalk paint and lightly buffing on some dark Annie Sloan wax. I'm sure others could have pulled it off, but the effect I made just looked like crap, so I covered it up with the white again and called it good enuf for now. I have a feeling I'm going to end up with a lot of white finishes around here by the time that garage is cleaned out.

From The Garage: 1, 2, 3

I've made some progress on the garage mess. While I was out in the garage on Sunday thinking I might die from heat stroke, my neighbors came over and asked if I needed some help lifting. When they saw my garage up close, they asked if I was going to have a garage sale. I was a little embarassed to tell them these were just my "projects" waiting to get done ;-)

I decided to take whatever comes instead of making choices. That's why these items may seem a little random. I was able to reach 4 table legs. The top is further back and will have to wait a little bit.



Next is an orange box from Hobby Lobby that I got on sale for $1.29 months ago. I'm not sure why I bought it because I don't like the color orange...at all!

A welcome sign I bought at a garage sale about 5 years ago. It's edges are a little frayed from a few falls it took. I'm going to paint it a lighter color.

I'll be back soon with the "afters". I hear by the end of the week we're going to be down to 99 degress as our high.

Shopping My Own Garage

I don't believe I'm actually showing you this mess, but it's for a purpose.

Each week, when Friday comes around, I get the itch to go garage-sale-ing or thrift store trolling. But, when I go, I have to go through my garage to get to the car outside (the car that can't fit in a 2-car garage due to crap I have stored in here.)

At this point, I start thinking; "...maybe it's time to get this stuff un-boxed and all those projects finished or abandon them forever?"

I mean...really...do I need any more stuff when all this is waiting for me to get 'round tu-it? (Honestly, I can actually hear my three minimalist daughters muttering under their breath right now, even though all three are in different states from me!)

There's the pale wood bed frame that needs a color change... well, at least part of the bed frame. The footboard is here, but the headboard is down at the old house. There's also a pile of pictures, rolling bins of knick-knacks, bags and tubs of out of season clothes...you name it, I've got it.

So, I guess it's time to get 'er done! I'll be posting each time I shop the garage. I've decided to do the following:

• take a picture of each item I 'shop' from my garage, then...



• make a decision on whether it stays, goes to a relative, or gets donated to charity...



• if it stays, I'm planning to complete the project by doing whatever is needed to make it over before I go "shopping" in my garage again
  
  
  All this is left even though I've already taken two pickup truck loads to my mother-in-law this week. Some of her stuff was mixed in with mine since we were storing some of her stuff while she got settled in too.
  

I'm vowing, here and now, to get my act together and get this stuff fixed up and painted...or get rid of them permanently. Just a few simple decisions and we'll have our garage back! I'm simply tired of moving this stuff from one side of the garage to the other.

Ya'll come back soon and check my progress. Hopefully, there will be progress. Otherwise it's all going to charity. I promise.

How Cute Is This? Thank You Toodie!

One thing blogging brings you are friends you've never met from places you've never been. Sometimes these bloggy friends turn out to be, as Anne (with an e) of Green Gables would say, "...a kindred spirit!"

One bloggy friend I check on every day via the blogaspere is Toodie of Babbelot. She lifts my spirits most days with her trials and tribulations of living in the hollars of Missouri. If you haven't met Toodie, click on her Babbelot link in my 'blogs I follow' section at the right.

Toodie is super talented, does a multitude of crafts, and runs a small business in her spare time when she's not chasing chickens, baking bread or cooking up great dishes and desserts for her hubby.

Imagine how thrilled I was to receive this sign today with my blog name scrolled in wood!

I'm at a loss for words to show my appreciation, so I'll just close with thank you Toodie. I will treasure this always, almost as much as I treasure our bloggy friendship.

The Stylist

While visiting with Lily and her mama last Spring, I was surprised by how adept little Lily was at hairstyling. She often disapproved of her mother's ability to do her own hair and felt she had to take matters into her own hands to get her mother's hair in shape.

Lily may have been a little too heavy handed with the brush, as her mama wiped more than a few tears away while gritting her teeth to endure a styling session.

And, when her mama did not hold as still as her little stylist thought she should, a little scolding by Lily went a long way into getting her "client" to hold still.

But, mostly there were big smiles and, of course, the happiness that came with the ending of each styling session.

Patio Day 3: Drying Out

Here's some pictures of the completed patio. It will take several days for it to dry out so the guys can come back and wash off the haze of grout and then put a sealer on it. The sealer works much like the one you put on furniture to protect and add color.

The pink flags are where the irrigation specialist thinks we need to add more sprinkler heads...there are 15 flags in the two flower beds and around the house. You'd be surprised what that will cost, and it isn't a pleasant surprise!

Here is a close up of some of the colors in the flagstone. Each stone has multiple colors in pink, gray, brown, and a little yellow mustard. The grout is gray. We choose these colors to toughen up the house as it is red brick with white paint to age it down, but from a distance looks pink! To irritate Wild Bill, I refer to it as the Pink House On The Corner when giving people directions.

The grout will lighten up a lot as it dries. You can see the pinkness of the house in the picture below:

Here's a drain they put in the walkway to help move the water away from the house. The patio is tilted away from the house and the theory is any water will drain away.

There is still much to do. This is just the first part of our 2-year plan to turn this new lot into a shady spot to enjoy. This patio is on the East side of the house and gets morning sun and afternoon shade. It's obvious we will need to continue the walkway around the other side of the entryway, but that will wait it's turn due to $$ (as in, lack there of!)

Here's inside the entryway and the poor little rose bush I put in this container trying to save it.

When you look out the window on the right side, you get a view of the patio:

Notice how the grout dust dulls down the stone. I'm hoping it will look much better when this is cleaned off after the grout dries. Here's what you see looking out the left window. Someday, you will see the walkway continue around this side too.

Thanks for coming back to see the progress, although right now it's like a new mattress without any bedding. I can't wait to put some planters and furniture on it once it dries. It's all about decorating, right???

Now we have to decide what to plant in the two areas here. I'm thinking a white crepe myrtle in the right side one, to give some shade to the patio, add some color, and provide a little privacy for a late afternoon drink...ice tea of course! ;-) You get the picture.