Red Stripe Linens

Okay, I know I said I would start showing other rooms again but I just had to share my latest finds! I definitely had my treasure hunting fix satisfied today! I stopped at the local charity rummage sale that I always go to and when I first walked in I spotted this antique water bucket!!

 I was beyond excited and continued to make my way through the shop, I always go to specific areas first and the linens were next in my hunt. The linens are in big baskets and you have to pick through them. At first I didn't see anything good but then I spotted a red stripe....

and then I saw that it was this table runner, hand embroidered with red letters!!! I couldn't believe my eyes! I mean I have found some great things at this shop but never anything like this! And so I kept digging and I found another one with red stripes! I couldn't believe it!

I have been looking at red stripe linens on Etsy and Ebay a lot lately but just can't justify the expensive cost of them, not with all that we need to be saving for anyways. But I guess being good paid off because these were 25 cents a piece!

I found a couple more great linen pieces like the one in the bucket pictured below, 100% homespun antique linen, for  25 cents, it doesn't get any better than that for me!

Another thing I was excited to find was this wooden handled bread knife. I have never seen one like this and love its rustic look. I will be listing it along with a bread board in my Etsy shop today or tomorrow.

Earlier in the day I had thought I might take a ride to one of our local antique shops but with all I found at the rummage sale I had no need, I wasn't going to find anything better than I already had:)

Family Room Part Three

Well the stars finally aligned... I was home, it was sunny, and there weren't Lego's on every surface so I was able to take some more pictures of our family room and kitchen.

We ended up putting the doors back on the big Welsh dresser because I needed it for storage of some not so attractive things. We put our television on the left side and I had Neal make some folding doors to hide it when need be.

I hung an old mirrored cabinet that I picked up at a local antique store for $10 on the wall in the small space between the rooms.

I absolutely love our new family room and I especially love the fact that when I am in the kitchen, which is a lot of the time, my son is right there in the family room playing. I used to have run back and forth to check on him while I was making dinner but not anymore.

I haven't really made any changes in the kitchen but I thought I would take some pictures anyways. I have a new bowl that I am quite smitten with, I got it from Vintage Abbey Road on Etsy, it's one of my favorite shops. 

I repainted our kitchen cupboards last week, they were in desperate need of a fresh coat of white paint. I painted them the same "Swan White" in semi-gloss by Glidden that I painted the trim and ceiling. I changed the drawer pulls while I was at it, I bought the same ones I have on the other cabinets by the sink, they are from Lowes. 

Don't you just love the pig cutting board, I bought him at a thrift store for $1.00 years ago. That was the best thrift store ever, always full of antiques but it since closed down sadly. Everything I bought for our first house and lots of stuff in this house too came from that thrift store. 

Some new things in my cupboard are the cow painting I found at the thrift store and a cute little clock from Target. I don't know about you guys but I am dying for flea market/yard sale season to start, my mental "want to find" list is growing by the day! I know I said the same thing last Spring but this always happens to me this time of year, I start to go through withdrawal:) 

Okay I promise to start showing pictures of other rooms again:) Our next renovation project is the small bathroom off of the kitchen but that won't begin until late Spring early Summer. Neal is a lacrosse official and the season has officially started so he will basically just sleep here for the next two months. So any house improvements happening for awhile will be things that I can do all on my own. People Neal works with always say to him "doesn't your wife just hate lacrosse season"? The truth is I love it because it's the time of year that I can get the most done in a day! 

Speaking of getting things done I need to do about a million things today that I better get to...happy Friday! 

Family Room Part Two

Finally....more pictures of the family room!!!

We have the ceiling completely finished. I stained the original beams Minwax's "Dark Walnut" to make them stand out a little more. Then we under-laid them with heavy bead board that interlocks, letting the bottom show (you can see more about it here). I painted the boards Glidden's "Swan White" in a high- gloss so that the sun light would reflect off of the ceiling.

Both the overhead light and the sconces are from Lowes. I was determined to find sconces that looked like old fashioned oil lamps and I was so excited to find these ones on the Lowes website.

When I first started to envision this room years ago I knew I wanted to find a salvaged mantel piece that was in shabby condition with its original white paint. I thought it would take me years to find it and that when I did find one it would be out of my budget.

I was wrong thankfully! This past summer my mom and I drove a whole bunch of cans of paint that we didn't want to a lady in Volant, PA that has an antique shop. As I was walking around the outside of her shop I saw this mantel leaning on the side the house. I knew as soon as I saw it that it was the one! Shabby...check, original paint....check...., the right size...check...., simple enough...check! I quickly hurried inside and told the owner I might be interested in the mantel she had outside and asked the price (I was panicking inside that it would be out of my budget). She said that since it was so kind of me to bring all that paint that I could have the mantel for $90!

Hurrah, I could afford it! I mean it seems like a lot of money compared to the $25 I spent on the mantel in the living room but I have been to the Country Living Fair and I know what people pay for these sometimes. And it looks like it was always meant to be in the room. My mom and I taking the ride to Volant that day was a spontaneous trip and I always think to myself if we hadn't gone there that day I wouldn't have this beauty. I actually ended up getting a bunch of really great stuff that day that I will show over time. The ironstone bowl on the ottoman was one of those things costing me a whole quarter.

The wicker chair is also a lucky find, I was beyond excited to find it at the Goodwill for $20. It was already white and a cushion I had bought for $5 fits on the seat perfectly.

We plan on having a real fireplace put in as soon we can afford it but for now I put a basket I picked up for $5 at the flea market inside the mantel.

I love the way the floor came out. To recap this is the original floor that we ripped up and then layed back down once this part of the house was leveled. It had about 4 layers of paint on it and about 150 years worth of grime and dirt.

This is the room during the reno, when I took this picture we had already taken the dropped ceiling down.

During renovation, floor taken out.

Neal spent days and days running the hard wood flooring through the planer. He left some of the blue paint showing on some of the boards for a weathered look. Then he laid it back down, staggering the seams as much as possible. We ran out of the original floor once we got back to the last couple rows, we bought poplar boards to finish because they took the stain the way the rest of the floor did. Now that the room is done you can't even tell they aren't the same.

This is the floor after it was laid back down but before I stained it. 

 I used the same stain I used on the beams on the floor, I then put 2 coats of semi-gloss polyurethane over it. I use old t-shirts for the staining part and a brush for the polyurethane, going down the room left to right board by board. It made for lots of long nights but worth it in the end. This was the first time I tried using the fast drying polyurethane and I was very pleased with the results.

I can't wait to sit in my kitchen and have a crackling fire going in there (Neal is SOOO sick of hearing me say that).

I bought these antique railroad stakes at a thrift store, not sure what the story behind "Lakeside Lover" being written on them is but I think its neat.

More pictures of the room to come! And let me know if there is anything about this room that I didn't cover that you would like to know about!