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!

A New Cupboard With An Old Window

Okay so don't be mad, I know I said that my next post would show our new family room but the ceiling part is taking us longer than expected and I don't want to show it until it is completely finished. In the meantime I have done some other things that I wanted to show you like my new cupboard.

Over the summer Neal built me this cupboard using the old window that I always placed on my mantel. Originally I thought about hanging it the new family room but I put a different one in there. I also wanted to use it to display some of my blue and white dishes that I had to box up when we took the wall down in the kitchen. It made sense to put it in the living room since I have touches of blue in there already. The corner between the window and the door seemed like the perfect place.

I put a table that my mom gave me that I had always loved in her house under it. And then under the table I put some of my old crocks. The larger crock is original to the house actually, my neighbor grew up in our house and the crock went with his family when they moved out, he brought it over to me one day and said "my kids don't like old things, thought maybe you would want it". I was tickled, not only do I love old crocks, but it was back in the place it belonged. The other one was a $7 thrift store find. And speaking of finds...I just found the little pillow on the arm chair brand new for $3 at my Goodwill, it is "Threshold" from Target and is at my Target right now for $25!

I painted the cupboard Glidden's "Whispering Wheat" because I love it with the blue, and because I just love the color. I figure I will change what I put in here a million times over and this soft wheat color goes with all of my collections.

I left the door unpainted and added an old rustic handle.

The feather edge platter was one of my very first "I can't believe I found this" flea market finds. I got it about 8 years ago at the Leeper, PA flea market for $10 and I absolutely love it. That is a good flea market if you happen to camp at Cook Forest State Park like we do.

A new place for my blue and white quilts...for now:)

Some other things that had to be boxed up when we started the kitchen demo were my cows. I found them a new home in the living room next to the step back.

They are in new frames that I picked up at the flea market for $2, the blue gray color of the frame compliments the colors in the cow pictures perfectly. Plus their size and weight holds up next to the very large cupboard.

I was excited to find a blue stripe grain sack (on the couch) on Ebay that I could actually afford, it was cheaper because it has some stains but that is okay by me because inevitably my son is going to wipe his Dorito covered hands on it. Which reminds me, some readers had asked me about the coverlet on my couch. That is also there because of the Dorito hands, it is much easier to wash once a week than the entire cushion slipcover, and because you know how I love layering. It is from Ikea and washes beautifully, I have had it about 10 years, but they still make them. Gotta love Ikea, one of the only places you can find simple staple pieces like that.

So here is what we are currently working on, this is the ceiling of the family room (that is what we have decided to call it officially).

We have it about half finished. I wanted it to be plank boards or shiplap so Neal was going to just cut down pine boards but then he found this heavy bead board at Home Depot that when turned over looks just like shiplap. It interlocks and cost us about $300 dollars less than just plank boards would have. Below is a picture of the bead board side.

And below is them flipped over,  I paint them (my dining room table has been covered with a rotating supply of these boards for two weeks now) and then Neal slides them into place. Hopefully we will have it all finished sometime soon and I will show the room in total, hang tight:)

Welcome to all my new followers and thank you to all of my followers that let me know they love what I am doing. Reading what you guys think often turns a "Serious Day" as my son calls it, into a great one:)

Stained Beams and Engagement Party Ideas

I have spent the last 4 days staining the beams in our great room, you can see the before and after below. I used Minwax "Dark Walnut", it really brought out the true beauty of these 150 year old beams. 

We are going to lay plank boards on the top of the beams,  I am going to paint the planks white, I wanted a big contrast between the dark beams and the white planks. Sort of like in the picture below from 1900farmhouse.blogspot.com, except I think our planks will be a bit wider. 

Image from 1900farmhouse.blogspot.com

Neal finished up all the electrical on Saturday and we started hanging the drywall last night. As my son and husband hear me say quite often when we are making progress, I feel like "we are getting somewhere"!


I also wanted to show you some pictures of my sister's house. She put on an absolutely beautiful engagement party for my niece two weekends ago and I ran around with my camera snapping some shots before everyone arrived.

She lives in a turn of the century Victorian that she has impecably restored. I love the banner that she made and told her I wanted one ASAP:)

She had so many cute ideas for the party, and like I said I only had a minute to take some pictures so these are just some of them.

My sister is super duper talented, she had hand made signs and banners everywhere you looked.

The room she had the party in is absolutely beautiful and I plan to show you the whole thing one day. We clearly have different decorating styles, I don't know if there is a single white piece of furniture in her house actually. But we are both unceasingly obsessed with decorating and love seeing what the other one is currently working on and bouncing ideas off of each other.

Okay well it is back to staining for me, as I was typing this I noticed how lovely my hands look....they are black from the stain, not a good look:)