A Place To Relax

I thought I would show you the rest of our little "nook" of a porch that I had promised you some time back.

My house is quite out of sorts right now due to the demo work we are doing on the kitchen/great room so this makes for a nice place to come out and sit with my glass of wine and decorating magazines.

I know most people wouldn't be worrying about making one space cute when another part of their house looks like ours does at the moment, but I can't help it, that is just how my mind works.

As with any space I tried to create as much cute storage as I could out here. The old kitchen cupboard with the enamelware top is yet another hand me down piece from my mom. I painted it "Sisal" by Martha Stewart. I love it especially because the metal bread drawer is where I keep my birdseed and the chipmunks can't get into it. They are cute but they get into everything around here!

Neal built me the upper cupboard and it is great for things like candles and bug spray.

The old seltzer bottles are one of my greatest finds from this past weekend. They even say "Brooklyn, NY" on them, I thought that was neat since that is where my husband is from. And speaking of Brooklyn I was lucky enough to visit the Brooklyn Flea on our last visit there and I got the egg basket with the fire wood in it for a steal. I was shocked to find that there were quite a few good deals there, some of the stuff is greatly overpriced but if you know your prices you are sure to find some great things. 

The chicken feeder on the bench was free at my local flea market and I thought it would be great for candles. 

The quilt is also from my local flea market, I have never seen quilts there and when I spotted this one on a table I couldn't get to it fast enough. It was one of those slow motion moments and I thought for sure I wouldn't have enough money in my wallet for it. I asked the price and the nice woman said "We wanted $10 for that dear", like she almost felt guilty asking so much. Needless to say I had enough money in my wallet and skipped away with the hand made beauty. 

A Marshalls $3 reproduction firkin is close enough to the real thing for me. And I found the pillow cover in the "As Is" room at Ikea (one of my favorite places for deals) for $6 and there is not a thing wrong with it. I was excited because I really wanted to buy one when I saw it walking through the store but was trying to be good and just buy the duvet cover that I went in for. Gotta love Ikea. 

We have been working hard on the great room renovation and have made some great progress. This past weekend we took the existing studs down and put the header up between the two rooms. Putting the header up was definitely one of the hardest things my husband and I have ever done, but we are very excited because we are one step closer to our dream great room! 

Okay it's back to work for me! 

Progress

Happy Fourth of July!

We are making great progress on our demo, even with breaks to go to Brooklyn and Buffalo. We have all of the plaster and lathe removed and opened up the wall that connected the two rooms.

Before 

After

Next to do is reinforce the weight on this wall with jack studs and a header across the top and then remove existing studs. Can't wait. 

And look at the hand hewn beams we uncovered...

Yes we will be keeping those exposed:) Stay tuned. 

Flea Market Goodies And A Reno Start

I picked up some really great items at the flea market on Sunday that I couldn't wait to share with you. One of them is this beautiful hand made linen purse that was only $5!

 It is absolutely beautiful and so well made, I told the woman she should go into business!

Some other things I bought are a book of old songs and a small ironstone dish for a dollar each from a guy that had some really neat things.

But my favorite thing that I got was this old cutting board....it wasn't priced and when I asked the seller how much he wanted he said "offer me something fair". So I offered $3 and then bit my lip, and he said "that's more than fair"! Then he said "what are you going to paint on it?", in reply I said "Oh I would never paint this!". Can you imagine?! I mean look at the thickness on this beauty!

 And I am more than delighted to say that we started the demolition of the back part of our house (the room off our kitchen)! We spent the weekend taking off the cursed aluminum siding and the dumpster comes today so that we can start gutting the inside of the room. We will eventually be taking down the wall in our kitchen that currently has the stepback cupboard on it. We will be adding lots of windows and  a wood burner to the space. I LOVE demo work and I have been planning this space for 3 years now so I am really excited to get started.

We unearthed the original siding and are going to remove it very carefully so as to be able to reuse as much of it as possible. Why on earth you would ever cover it up in the first place is beyond me.

I will try to show our progress as much as possible, time permitting:)

Guest Bedroom Reveal

This is our upstairs guest bedroom, it is actually an in-law suite with an attached kitchen (don't worry I plan to show that too).

We moved the antique bed frame from downstairs up to here last week because when my parents stay over they always sleep in the downstairs guest bedroom and my dad is so tall that his legs hit the bed posts when he sleeps.

Up until now this room was sort of just a miss-mash of furniture and very embarrassingly a storage place for the empty boxes that I use to ship my Etsy items. For years I thought about how I wanted this room to look and just recently finally had the time to get to it.

I started by painting the walls "Antique White" by Glidden, to me it is the perfect soft white.

From there I sort of just happened upon the perfect things. Like the bench at the foot of the bed for example.
I found it at the flea market a few weeks ago for $10. I have extra quilts on it for those chilly nights, but it would also be a great place for our guests to set their bags.

The stools are also flea market finds, they were a $1 actually if you can believe that. I thought they would be perfect because I didn't want large nightstands that would block the beauty of the windows. I painted them "Chinchilla" by Martha Stewart and then distressed them some.

The shelf was a thrift store find that I painted my favorite "Whispering Wheat" by Glidden.

 It took me awhile to find the right bedding. I am not the kind of person that just goes and buys bedding when I need bedding because honestly I just don't like most of what is out there. I take my time and wait till I find just the right thing. I usually end up finding the perfect things at a super great price. Most of the time I just don't see items that are my style in stores, but I love scouring different thrift shops or discount stores to put together a style that is totally me.  For example I just found an absolutely beautiful linen bed skirt at the thrift store for a $1, if I went to a store and bought one it would have been $20 or $30 and I probably wouldn't have loved it so much.

I like very simple plain bedding and you just don't see much of  that out there. I frequently drop in TJMaxx in the hopes that there will be something that is my style on clearance. One of the last couple times I was in there they did happen to have just plain white quilts, I was so excited. Why are plain white quilts so hard to find?! They also had the quilt that I have folded at the end of the bed on clearance, I knew it would be the perfect camel color that I try to add pops of to all my rooms. I then layered an antique french monogrammed sheet over the quilt. 

The small pillow incorporates the gray and camel colors yet is still simple enough for me. The larger pillow behind it is a Vera Wang sham that I picked up on clearance for $10. And I found the pillow cases for $3 a pair at Gabriels, they too are the perfect camel color.

I think it was worth the wait because I feel like the bed came together just right, actually as I was taking these pictures I wanted to curl up in the bed:)

I know I sound like a broken record but the dresser, the mirror and the shelf are all from the thrift store and cost less than $30 total. I painted the dresser "Whispering Wheat". Then topped it with some recent flea market finds.

Hand made boxes are one of my favorite things to collect and I am smitten with my newest one.

I hope I answered all of your questions, if not let me know! I still have the whole other side of the room to show so stay tuned.

Bedroom Sneak Peek

I don't have the time to do a full post of the guest bedroom because I am headed out for a last minute camping trip but I just had to give you a sneak peek!

Be back in a couple of days!

Peonies In The Dining Room

The rest of our peonies opened up this weekend, these ones are a dark magenta color and oh so pretty.

 I put some on our dining room table along with some ironstone I just recently added to my collection. I bought the covered tureen at the flea market for $2 and the plate and the bowl were 50 cents for both pieces at a garage sale! Can't beat those prices!

Here is a peak at my scoop collection, my mom recently bought me some really great ones.

I am trying hard to get the upstairs guest room finished so that I can show you the big reveal. We had family in all weekend and I am in the middle of multiple projects so I fell a little behind schedule in finishing it. Plus it is finally nice out and my yard is in need of some attention. I hope to show the guest room this week though...stay tuned!