From our family to yours….
Merry Christmas!
Hope your home is filled with love and laughter this day, and always!
Wednesday, December 25, 2013
Friday, December 6, 2013
Christmas Mantel…for now!
Yesterday I finished up my most recent batch of Christmas signs, and I wondered what to do with them—other than stacking them against the wall! I’ve been trying to do a little decorating, but my mantel is giving me a little trouble. It’s my first year having one, and I didn’t seem to have much in my “stash” that felt right for me…and I have no desire to go out and spend a bunch of money on something new right now.
So…I played with the signs!
You know what? I kind of like it! A mantel full of good wishes for the season!
What do you think?
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Still accepting custom orders until 12/15. E-mail me at redhenhome@gmail.com.
Thursday, December 5, 2013
Grand Rustic X Buffet
The weeks leading up to Thanksgiving were SO busy….
I was working on three huge building projects.
Finishing up another table (pictures to come)….
Building another woven-back bench (this time out of cedar…it smelled SO good)…
and working on this buffet for the new owners of the Grand Truss Table.
I kept thinking that when we got back from our Thanksgiving trip, I would have a day or two to just DO NOTHING.
Who was I kidding??
When I got back from Thanksgiving, it really hit me….there’s only THREE WEEKS UNTIL CHRISTMAS!
I’m seeing all these homes beautifully decorated for Christmas and all these holiday projects, and my house was still stuck in fall mode!
So I started hauling out the Christmas boxes, and at least for one day…I “Christmas-ified” one little corner of the home….
This buffet is a modification of Ana White’s Rustic X Buffet. I used 4x4’s for the legs to match the chunky style of the Grand Truss table, which is why I’m calling it a “Grand” Rustic X Buffet! The horizontal cross-pieces are made from 2x4’s to match the extra thickness of the legs, and the top used one extra 2x6. I also changed the measurements to make this buffet 72” wide.
The finish is two thick coats of Minwax Special Walnut stain, followed by an over-glaze of black for some extra depth. The visible hardware is all decorative.
This will go to its new home this weekend…hopefully I can get some of the rest of my house decorated by then!
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Monday, November 25, 2013
Checking In / Christmas Signs
I received an e-mail from a sweet blogging friend last week wondering where I was! I know I have been a little MIA this last week. I had some self-imposed deadlines on some building projects, and I’ve been spending every minute in my garage!
I thought I’d share a few of the new Christmas Signs I have been working on. Another symptom of how busy I’ve been is that none of these have been listed in my etsy shop (ugh!)…but then, these are BIG, HEAVY signs, and I worry that no one would want to pay the accompanying shipping charges! However, if you’re local, all of these signs went either to Ruffles & Rust in Snohomish, or to Seaworthy Home in Pacific Beach, WA.
“It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year” is a Pottery Barn knock-off, and it seems to be the favorite with people on my Facebook page!
The big signs are REALLY big—almost 2 feet square. It was fun to learn a new skill in framing them in.
I made some smaller signs with my scraps….
This “Let it Snow” sign is my favorite of the smaller signs.
You can see the difference in sizes in the “Have Yourself a Merry little Christmas” signs. The white one was by far the more popular one.
This one was super fun to make…it’s my version of this pinned sign. Mine’s a little more rustic looking, I think.
I already have a “special order” for one of these signs for my sister, and I’m trying to decide which one I might need for myself! Which one would you choose?
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Thursday, November 14, 2013
Vanity & Dresser Refinish
Thank you for all the kind comments about my daughter’s bedroom makeover, both here and on Facebook! It was so fun to get to work on this with her. She is always my sounding board for the various crazy ideas I have, but this time she was truly invested in the project!
One of our first steps in her room remodel was finding some new furniture for her to use. The $100 junky particle board set I bought four years ago (at her request, make no mistake about that!) was promptly sold—for the same price I paid for it! There’s just no accounting for tastes, is there??
We scoured Craigslist for a vanity/dresser set, and finally came home with these for $150:
Only $50 more, and this time it was actually decent furniture!
Well, you can see the finish on the top was in REALLY rough shape. But structurally everything was sound, and the veneer was in very good condition…a couple of chips here and there, but nothing major.
The “to-paint-or-not-to-paint” question was discussed at length, but Naomi eventually decided on “not.”
Since she wanted a darker stain, I decided to use my favorite miracle product, General Finishes Gel Stain (no, unfortunately they don’t pay me to say that) in Antique Walnut.
You can see how I used it in my card catalog refinish here and a bedroom set here.
The great thing about this gel stain is that you DON’T have to completely remove the old finish. Rough it up, yes—but if you’re going darker, you don’t have to go down to bare wood. You can see how I lightly sanded the bottom half of the side of the dresser below.
I did have to do some more serious sanding on the top of the vanity. Where the poly finish had worn away over time the colors were very splotchy—so I had to do a little more work to get everything back to the same tone.
But oh, look at what a difference ONE coat of gel stain made!
I ended up using two coats on everything, followed by two coats of General Finishes Polyurethane.
And oh, I think it was worth it!
The handles are original, I just cleaned them up a bit a lot!
And I recovered the vanity bench in a fun yellow and white chevron.
Have you ever used gel stain before? What did you think of it?
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Tuesday, November 12, 2013
Vintage Aqua Bedroom
I have the hardest time gearing up to show projects that I complete within my own home. I don’t have a really good reason for that…except that I never feel the pictures really capture the feeling of the place I call “home.”
And that may be the only explanation you get for why I am showing my daughter’s mostly-completed room makeover a mere 5 months after it was completed!
Here it is today….
And here’s what we started with!
OK, so the pictures above are already a bit of a work-in-progress
But her room really was almost always that messy! (sorry, dear)
Everything in the room was boring beige, and that was a hard thing for my dear daughter to bear…especially considering that this is what her room looked like in our previous home!
Bright, huh? She picked out that IKEA-look-alike furniture all by herself. I never was that crazy about it, but hey, it was cheap.
She was dying to do something with her room in our new home, but she kept pitching ideas to me that included words like “red & yellow,” “retro,” and “bubble chair.”
Ugh.
When she finally adjusted her vision to something that included “vintage,” “aqua,” and “white,” then she found I moved a lot faster. My children eventually learn that I get a lot more motivated to work on their projects if they’re what I want to do anyway!
If we’re all very lucky, I’ll come back and revisit the individual projects that went in to her room. But for today…just pretty pictures…with the understanding that there are still a few things to do in here…like get more pictures up on the walls!
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Tuesday, November 5, 2013
I Love Washington table
Today is the one-year anniversary of the day my husband started his new job in Seattle, Washington. Although the children and I didn’t join him here until just before Christmas, I’ve been doing a lot of reflecting on the changes we have gone through in the past year.
I’m happy to say that we are pretty well adjusted to life in our new home in a new state! We lived in Utah for 17 out of 19 years of our married life, and we were in our last home for almost 10 years…so it was a big change! But we have found Washington to be a lovely place to live (although there are a LOT more people…and traffic…here than I could wish), and we’re grateful for this new phase of our life.
That said, today seemed to be a food day to show off this little table I made over
It was just a simple little pine table I picked up at a thrift store. The lines were so simple that it needed a little embellishment to make it special.
After painting the table yellow with some diy chalk paint, I cut a stencil of the shape of Washington out with my Silhouette machine and painted it on. A little red heart marks the approximate location where we live.
This little table was purchased by a woman who intends to use it as an end-of-year teacher gift! I pretty sure it will be a one-of-a-kind offering!
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Monday, October 28, 2013
Grand Truss Table & Benches
This could be the one.
Really.
The number of tables that have come and gone in my dining room since the beginning of the year has become a little bit of a joke.
I think this makes seven.
And the funny part is…this one won’t be staying either!
I built this as a custom order for a woman I met at the October Market, but I’m not sure I want to let it go!
This thing is huge—8 feet long! (That’s why it’s “Grand.”)
The benches are 80” each, and it easily seats 10 people with chairs at the ends—you could squeeze 12 in if they’re friendly! The benches are an adaptation of Ana White’s Providence bench.
The table…well, it was a bit of an adventure. I started out looking at the Providence Table plans, but I knew I wanted a chunkier base…and the plan page directed me to Design Confidential plans. Unfortunately, the plans from Design Confidential are not as well-written as Ana’s plans, plus some of the measurements are just plain…wrong. I had to do a little “winging” of things as I went along.
After my table was done, I found that Ana White does have her own 4x4 truss table plans here. Oh, how I wish I had realized that at the beginning; it would have saved me a grand headache! But I guess I can say that mine is an “original!”
The other big change for this table is the color. I have been playing with light, old, weathered looks for all the others, and I loved them….
….but I think my heart really lies with dark. My customer wanted a very dark Pottery Barn-esque finish, I think I achieved it, with FOUR coats of Minwax Antique Walnut, mixed with a little ebony here and there (not a separate coat) for depth of color. The staining and finishing took FOR.EV.ER, but it was totally worth it in the end.
You can also get a glimpse of exposed hardware on this table. Rather than use pocket holes (which is problematic on 4x4 lumber anyway), I used 5-inch lag screws to attach the beams together. It just adds to the rustic quality, I think.
The only way I can reconcile myself to giving up this table is knowing that I can build another one…for me! Plus, 8-feet is really too big for my dining room, darn it.
I’ll just enjoy looking at it until it goes to its new home!
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