Updating that Chapter About the Screen Porch

There's a better picture at the end of this chapter!

It's June! Screen porch weather here in the Midwest. Which brings me right back to the last time I was blogging semi-regularly, in October, about what evolved into a multi-month repair job on....the screen porch. 

I've imagined the story of my porch's construction before, and I will share it again because I believe it to be true: two guys got drunk on a couple of cases of Natty Light and decided to build a screen porch out of whatever shit they could find laying around. 

That was maybe 20 years or so ago. Add the insult of many years of bad patchy roofing repairs, a leaky or non-existent gutter, and the natural processes of sun and rain, it was something of a miracle (or just plain habit) it was still standing. 

Going back a bit, I've written about how we (we being me and Tom, but let's be honest: it was mostly Tom) spent most of August and September of last year, HERE, and HERE, tearing into the rot and getting the place sound again. Going even further back, we have my superficial attempts at coping with the ugly HERE.

I'm still having some technical difficulties blogging in anything resembling an organized fashion, because in May I had no less than FOUR college students' worth of stuff show up from two colleges, and one of those students (my oldest, Grant) commenced from his university. So he was moving out of his apartment digs in a serious and permanent fashion. Where does one land? Mom's place. More specifically, her basement, her guest room, her garage. AND her screen porch. I've been waiting to get some photos decent enough to write around, and I'm still finding it necessary to do it in weird stages because of stacked boxes, trailers of kayaks (don't ask) and the flotsam and jetsam of daily life.

A sneak peak at the new ceiling: 

So what you're getting here is interior shots. But only part of it. Once the transitional nonsense of my spring is over, I'll blog the rest. It's not that I intended this to turn into "screen porch, strip-tease edition", emphasis on the tease, but it's just been that crazy around here. If I waited until my life was sane, you'd never read about it here again. 

Here's some honesty about "I-don't-give-a-crap-any-more-what-it-looks-like-I-just-want-it-done" renovation choices: the screen porch floor. The porch was built on slab, which was probably the only thing the original builders got right. But then they glued down lavender-mauve carpet that was not intended for exterior applications and all the fun you can imagine happened. It rained, the carpet got wet around the edges of the porch. It got hot, the humidity made the carpet rank and smelly. It had to go. And it went, more easily than I thought, considering how many home improvement horror stories that I've read about glued carpet that seemed more or less permanent up to and including the Apocalypse. 

It had baked in the sun to a brittle crisp, and the carpet peeled up fairly well enough. But. (There's always one more 'but' in these stories, isn't there?) while it made the carpet easy to get up, it also meant that the glue that had hardened to the floor was really ON there. That glue was stuck to the floor like, well, glue. 

So I sanded. And when I sanded, some of it came up, but some of it got hot with the friction and remelted into a sticky substance (like glue, maybe, mmmmm?) and gummed up the sand paper. Then I sanded with a wheel sander with a metal brush, and it heated up the old glue if I went over one patch too many times, and also threw sparks around, which made me super nervous. The idea of spreading chemicals around to dissolve it made me nervous too. 

Tired, nervous, impatient, and failing is not a good combination for doing a thorough job. I reasoned that if we left the glue alone, it was mostly in the corners, it was hard like an enamel or varnish coating. Let's just paint the damn thing, glue and all, and be done with it. Please. 

So that's what I did. Brown concrete patio paint, two thick coats. That brought the entire interior project to this: re-paneled walls and ceiling, repainted and rewired, windows reframed (but not replaced), new sills, and a finally finished (one way or the other) floor. 

The floor is not perfect. Then again, it's a concrete patio floor. I can't say I've cared two cents about its imperfection since we moved the furniture back in. And I so wanted to move in I started playing before I was even finished, like this: 

You can see the concrete-and-carpet-glue floor before sanding in the above shot. And the ceramic planters. Because that was really what all this work was really about-- getting those out of storage, finally. 

Everything you see is stuff I already had--8-year-old (with the original cushions, a little faded) Target all-weather wicker arm chairs, the weird little table I dragged all the way home from Kudzu Antiques in Decatur, Georgia. The hanging lamp, wire shelf (in the window) and ceramic planters I'd picked up over time and squirreled away for the right place. The little cactuses in terra cotta belong to my son Grant; I'm babysitting them while he's in between apartments. 

The area rug is a bit on the small side, but it was one I'd ordered from Overstock a couple of years ago for the front foyer. It was too thick to clear the swing of the front door and I was too cheap and lazy to ship it back. I stored it, figuring it would find a place when I needed a rug. And it did. 

I'm not a big fan of design folks talking about "use what you have" decorating like it's some gloriously free thing, because it isn't really. I mean, at one time or another you paid for it, whether you got it new or whether you got it second-hand. So while, yes, all these were pieces I already had, that does represent some years of acquiring and accumulating. It also represents the patience it took to wait until they had the right space to move into. Tom's carpentry skills (mostly) and my painting/staining/cleaning made all of the pieces fit together, and seem like home. 

In the coming weeks, I ought to be more organized (here's hoping), and will share more of the finished project, including exterior views and some new developments on the outdoor patio. Until next time!

I Surprise Myself When I Buy Furniture

Apparently, I am incapable of knowing my own mind when it comes to furniture. Because I often end a long period of careful research and total agony by purchasing items that are the exact opposite of what I thought I wanted.

When I recently bought dressers for my bedroom, I had planned for close to a year to buy new, dark, modern-style dressers from Ikea.

I ended up with vintage mid-century blonde wood dressers. And I love them.

By the time I'd decided that this sentimental but ugly little piece was not returning to my living room (which I wrote about here), I'd already done some considerable thinking about what I'd want in an armchair.

My house was built in 1939, I like mid-century style furniture, and I like a lot of retro-style home decor in general; but I'm not slavishly attached to any one era, nor do I want everything to be all one style. You may politely call this eclectic or more accurately call this confused, but as far as decor styles go, I have big commitment problems.

I know that I am not afraid of color. Builder's beige and white walls has never been my thing. I want it to look like I, personally, live in my house.

This was sort of a big deal. The chair was going to be a new furniture purchase, in fact the first significant one since I bought this house four years ago. A lot of that was driven by budget and some by taste, but either way, I wanted to make sure it was the right thing. Buyer's regret on furniture can be a lot like a Vegas marriage. It seemed like a good idea at the time, but now you're stuck living with something that only looked good under the showy lights.

I took a good long look at a lot of chairs like this one from Thrive. I heart this chair pretty hard:

Image Source: Thrive

That suits a more 1950s through 1960s vibe, and I like the simple lines. Since my house touches on the 1930s Colonial Revival period, I also considered something along the lines of a more traditional channel-back armchair, like this one featured on Houzz:

Image source: Houzz

I felt very "meh" about the channel-back armchair direction. "Meh" isn't a good enough justification to spend money. And several months looking and thinking online didn't get me to pull the trigger mail-ordering a chair from Thrive. If you're going to invite a piece of furniture to stay in your living room for the better part of a decade or more, you sorta want to meet it at least once before it comes home with you.

I'm glad I did. When I went shopping, I was surprised by the mid-century style chairs. That big boxy mod style is quite popular right now, finally making it a buyer's paradise for people who've loved it all along. But they are deep, front to back. Really deep. Really, REALLY deep. I'm a taller woman, 5'8", and my feet didn't touch the floor when my lower back was comfortably against the back cushions. It felt weird, and I found myself butt-scooting all over the chair, trying to find a comfortable place. They are also very wide. Very, very wide. Which in my narrow living room was going to be a problem.

That can be a problem, though, with almost all styles of chairs. Modern furniture is often too massive and out-of-scale in older, smaller homes.

I looked at a lot of vibrantly colored chairs. My sofa is deep brown, so I knew I wanted a counter-point to all that darkness. But each one seemed a little too....too. Too graphic. Too loud. Too trendy. Too not-the-quite-right-shade of whatever. It was getting pretty Goldilocks up in that furniture store.

This oatmeal tweed chair was my final choice. I am happy with it, but I am surprised, as usual, that I am. Because it totally was not what I thought I wanted.

Initially, I was worried that I was buying the arm chair equivalent of a boob light. Bland. Builder's grade. Typical. Beige. Unremarkable.

But I like the simple lines. I like the toasty, tweedy, almost sweater-like look to it. It fits the space. I like that it plays the low-key tailored gentleman to my much-loved strong greens and wilder rug, and yet still is a good contrast to my dark, dark sofa.

I'm okay with it being a safer choice. Considering the investment and the amount of time I'll have it, I can take bigger risks with paint, drapes, pillows, and other less expensive items.

It partners well with my vintage ottoman, which is a just-right size for my living room.

And though it's not something you can see in photos, it's a comfy yet rather firm chair. My sofa is a little squishy, and I like having a mix of seating in one room. That way everyone can be comfortable.

Here is the entire east end of the living room. I'm looking forward now to painting and getting some drapes on the windows.

Have you ever suprised yourself with your home decor decisions? Did you regret it, or did you love it?

New Year, New Changes

I'm not a New Year partier even in the best years, but this year I spent the evening on the couch with a cold. It was sort of a bummer, but I wasn't going to be out on the town in high heels and a swanky dress anyway, so it's not like I missed anything.

It did, however, ratchet up my cranky a couple of notches putting the Christmas tree away. Come January I always want to get things back to normal as quickly as possible.

One thing, however, didn't come back. It was the little orange rocker:

It gets temporarily moved out every year so the Christmas tree can stand in the front window. I decided this year it was not returning.

It was a nostalgia piece from my growing-up years that, despite my affection for it and my love of vintage, wasn't working. It's too small and out of scale in relation to the rest of the living room furniture, for one thing. Secondly it's so small and light that the children tend to scoot it all over the floor, and I'm tired of it meandering everywhere while scratching the hardwood.

And for a third---well, lets just be honest here. My love ain't blind. This chair is ugly. And that's coming from a woman who loves her some crazy 70s stuff.

For now, a bench is acting as a placeholder until something better comes along.

No, it's not perfect either, but it's at least not, you know-- so orange.

It does look a little like I'm running a Shaker church by way of a Target store with the bench plus ottoman like that. But at least the colors work and the space is filled until something else happens. Most likely an arm chair, but I haven't decided exactly what kind/color/style yet.

My living spaces overall have been mostly serviceable, but I'm to the point I'd like to get them a little more finished up-- paint, curtains, things hung on the walls-- and deciding that the little chair had to go was the first step in that.

It is not gone forever. I'm not getting rid of it, and I'm not going to forsake a piece of childhood nostalgia so cruelly. It's going to return elsewhere in a different incarnation of itself; I'll get to that part later.

In the meantime, this was a good way to start off the new year, homewise-- a small step on the way to where I'd like to go.

Mid-century Modern Dressers Poorly Timed (but still awesome)

I had it all in my head how it was going to work out. And then these dressers happened.

In 2014, my bedroom was supposed to be one of my remodeling goals for this house. But it's ended up being the unloved step-child of the entire year, with work in this room ending up last on the list of everything else going on.

Not because I don't want a nice grown-up lady refuge from the rest of the world, and there HAS been some progress I haven't blogged about yet. But that's where I need to sleep, there are often socks and running pants piled on the floor, and the lighting is bad for pictures.....

How it looked at the beginning of the year:

And the alcove now stenciled: 

In the meantime, I'd been living out of these two dressers, one from my mother's childhood bedroom, and the small one a curb find from a few years ago:

This was not ideal, and in real not-pretty non-blog life I was frequently piling stacks of folded clothing on top of both of them, or in laundry baskets strewn about the room. To say it tended to exacerbate my already slob-like tendencies about laundry is an understatement. 

But I had an order-of-work plan that didn't include buying new dressers until the room itself was further along-- that last wall drywalled, the plaster work finished, the rest of the floor painted and stenciled. That was the point at which it would seem the right time to get new and better furniture up there. 

I even had some picked out. On the budget plan, I'd decided to get some combination of Ikea Malm dressers: 

Ikea Malm Dresser (Source)

It seemed perfect for the dark woods and reds/grays/metallics I'd been using or plan to use in this room, and with good looks for a reasonable price. But I was waiting to purchase them when the room was ready, and when I'd have the time to not only make the trip to Ikea (there isn't a store in Iowa, which means driving to Kansas City or Minneapolis), but also to put them together once I got them home. 

Then I saw something in a furniture consignment store in the complete and opposite direction, and it changed everything. Including my so-called order-of-work plan. 

It was a second-hand dresser and chest of drawers, blonde wood, mid-century modern, and not what I was thinking of at all. It was exactly what I didn't know I was looking for. AND less expensive than the Ikea option. And better quality. And completely at the wrong time. Not only for the fact that I wasn't where I wanted to be on the room, but also because it was Thanksgiving week, and I had a house full of guests. 

I bought them anyway. Because duh. 

The chest of drawers features a shallow "handkerchief" drawer at the top, and the next one down is a divided drawer in three parts. My undies, hosiery, and bras have never felt so...orderly. 

The dresser has six gloriously just-the-right size drawers. 

The hardware, though a little worn, is still original. I had to vacuum glitter out of the bottom drawers, and eradicate some "old lady smell" with Murphy's Oil Soap. But that. was. all. That's been the glory of this situation in many ways-- not having to do an extensive rehab on an inexpensive but neglected second-hand piece, or getting the Ikea-induced migraine of assemble-it-yourself new furniture. 

I didn't realize how badly I needed more clothing storage until these two babes came into my life. Now I've moved on from my shuffling parade of laundry baskets. The largest of the two old dressers went into my twins' closet as off-season clothing storage, another badly needed improvement. The smaller chest may be re-purposed for another use, but I haven't decided yet. 

Of course, the the two new dressers will have to slum in their new environment for awhile, but their appearance motivates me to put the bedroom back at the top of the list in priorities for the new year. Sometimes poor timing is actually the shake-up one needs, and I'm going to take these pieces of furniture as just that. 

Old Nightstand Rehab

Remember this nightstand from the flea market in May? I picked it up for $18, and it had seen better days.

While I have some large objections (which is a whole other blog post that I've avoided writing because, well, I'd probably offend some people) to the recent trend in painting old furniture, I was looking in the direction of doing that just that, because of the top:

My mother, however, who is a bit of a magician with the furniture refinishing, took a look at it, ran her hand over it a few times, and said "let me take that home with me for awhile." 

It came back looking like this: 

And the top of it looked so much better:

The Art Deco lines are even more beautiful now that it's seen a little love. I'm grateful to my mom that she was able to rescue this for me. (Note: I also know that I've photographed this in front of a vintage buffet that is, indeed, painted. I'm conflicted on the painting furniture issue. Can you tell?)

I am looking for two nightstands that are small in scale. When my bed moves to the alcove in my bedroom, I'll need smaller scale furniture, and this one will do the trick. I'm still on the search for the second one. I'm not married to the idea of matchy-matchy for nightstands, so anything could happen, just like with this flea market find.

We've got a bunch of little projects going all over the place right now. It's pretty much what August looks like every year, I've noticed. More soon!

Sliding into the New Year (With a Little Rearranging)

We had a quiet and uneventful Christmas holiday, thanks for asking. It was just what we always wanted. And while I've got a few stray boxes yet to be packed in storage, most of the holiday riff-raff has been put away until next December. 

I wish I could say I'm prepared for 2014's launch, but I'm sitting here in pajamas at 11 a.m. on a Friday morning, I appear to be so behind on laundry that I can't find a clean pair of pants, and I really NEED pants today because it was -5 degrees Fahrenheit at dawn this morning. This is not cute skirt weather, even with cute sweater leggings and cute boots, all of which I have. 

What I'm saying is that readers are getting a blog post because I'm waiting on the washer and dryer, and clean pants. Clearly I have very high performance standards. 

I'll be following up soon with a New Year's/New goals/Famous last words type post in a bit, but in the meantime, here's something I did while I was waiting for my cookies to bake and my holiday plans to gel: I rearranged the dishes in my dining room built-ins. 

I get in this attitude that if a room is in transition, why bother with the niceties? And my dining room has been in that place for a long time-- fleshy beiges, tacky 80s vinyl wallpaper, furniture I no longer like. There was one other picture I was going to share, but decided showing blog readers a photo of a dining room with an ironing board in it looked too much like a stage set from the old television show Hee-Haw. But this is where I am with this space: 

I'm beginning to change my feeling about this. Even with wallpaper half-peeled, doesn't shambling disorder make the situation even worse? Why would I completely ignore this room if I walk through it every day going from the living room to the kitchen?

This is the east built-in cabinet, with stacks of various dishes, paint chips, and some odds and ends I didn't want to lose track of: 

And this is the west built-in, which looks even sadder to me, somehow. 

It's the land of Misfit Tableware, orphaned gravy boats and all. 

It was bugging me as I was doing my annual holiday foofing and baking, so I took half an hour to clean everything out of there, put away, and rearrange. 

Here are my afters. First, the east built-in: 

And here is the west built-in: 

These corner cabinets were about 15 percent of my decision to buy this house. Call me superficial, but it was love at first sight. Even so, they need a fresh coat of paint, and that wallpaper insert taken off the lower door panel. I'd like to do something with color/wallpaper/shelf-liner in the inside, but have no ideas yet. 

Still, just tidying up in both made the room feel just a little better. Incremental improvements are a way of making me feel like there's progress until I find the time, energy, and money for the big bang efforts. 

Here's hoping there are a few of those big bang efforts in 2014. Oh, and clean pants. 

A Second Try on Nightstands

The twins' room was one of the first we tackled in the house, and after a massive clean-up effort, turned out to be a great play-and-bedroom place for my two nine-year-old boys.

One thing it lacked in the way of furniture was something to function as a bedside table or night stand between the boy's beds. And they were asking for one.

So at an annual "junk jamboree" last fall, I found this bookcase:

It was small and in colors that worked with the bedroom's existing scheme, even though the paint was a little too distressed.

But it didn't quite work out the way I pictured it:

There was too much space between the two beds for one piece of furniture to conveniently serve both. And really? The boys were disappointed. Not that they talked about convenience so much, but ownership. "I wanted something that's just mine. I don't want to have to share!" This is pretty typical of twins who have to by necessity share a room, and I did one of those big forehead smacks for not taking that into consideration.

Also, the red and blue paint actually clashed in a gross sort of way with the brown vinyl composition tile, making it seem weirdly purple:

No one was loving it. Also that picture above is in its tidied up state; most of the time it was knocked crooked, dragged to one side of the room or the other, and filled with the random miscellanea of two nine-year-old boys.

I've entirely furnished this house with pieces I'd already owned and with second-hand, curb-side, and garage sale finds, so I decided that it was okay for me to open my wallet and let the moths fly out this one time.

There are a lot of really great "IKEA hacks" out there, but really, I wanted exactly this. Something simple, sturdy, and with natural wood tones. And since I'm still obsessing over an exterior paint job, I didn't have time to go all nuts with a furniture painting project.

The only downside of this purchase is that it was bare, unfinished wood, and I wanted something between the wood and the grubby little fingers of my young boys.

So I ended up turning my screen porch into a spray booth:

And unholstered some spray polycrylic:

I'd never used it before. Application was trouble free on the actual items, but it was super stinky and I ended up with poly on my feet, my shorts, and somehow in my hair before it was over. However, I swore less overall than any time I've ever used spray adhesive, so I'll consider that a win.

Here it is after the first coat. This news just in: clear satin polycrylic is really.....clear.

It was a warm dry day, so everything dried very quickly. Then it was just a matter of a couple hours for assembly:

While I used my cordless drill on some of the assembly, I found it a bit easier (though slower) going with a screwdriver. I suspect that it's because neither the hardware or the wood is of highest quality.

Here they are in their new habitat:

They are maybe a tad taller in proportion to the bed than they should be, but I think that will become less noticeable if I find a pair of headboards for the beds. Also, the curtains need to be hemmed, in my opinion. But this? Much better than the bookcase. And Ben and Joe are thrilled to have some territory in a shared bedroom that is theirs alone.

Here is one with some stylin'. Would you join us for some Frog and Toad?

The  bookcase is going to still be a nightstand, only in my 13-year-old's room, and after a sanding and paint job. So the purchase wasn't a total mistake; it just took more than one attempt to find a good home for it. That's what happens when you thrift and junk shop. The first idea might not work out, but maybe another one will.