Make a home that I love out of my house.

DH had the dryer out today and cleaned under/around it before he put it back. I cleaned the back and what I could get to inside.

Then we couldn’t find the cricket. The cricket is on the lid of a charming pot I bought last weekend for my tea. (I get tea for an after dinner treat every now and then.) Anyway, I found him appealing and bought him. I put the washed pot away this evening, but he was no where to be found.

This lead me to question if I really was “crazy” or self-destructive enough to have thrown out/hidden the piece that took the piece from something I liked a lot to something I loved? After we found him, that idea made me cry. I’ve always had this “gotcha” of “Maybe I am crazy?” and with all the work and growth and change, that, unfortunately, seems to still be there.

Sigh.

But I took pictures, you’ll be able to see, soon!

DH is just sending me the image of my frog friend in the trellis, when I get it; I’ll change my avatar.

jkd

slowly, so sloooowly!

jkd

8/2-8/3 YARD SALE 9-6 BOOKS

HSEWARES ### STREE TOWNTOWNTO

TOOLS rain dte 8/9 PHOTO

LOTS OF STUFF no early birds

YEAH! Less stuff!

jkd

DH and I have a “code phrase” which is “Blue? Blue-green? Turquoise? Teal?”

We came up with this years ago. I will discuss something to death, trying to determine if the color, say, is teal or blue-green, so I can edit what someone says to me… ok, he calls this blue-green, I call it teal, for example.

Ironically enough, when we were walking up and down the street, he was saying that he liked celeste green and I was saying that I liked celadon green…and we weren’t sure of the difference. That caused both of us to go look online for examples of the colors we were referring to. The celeste green is a bit brighter, the celadon is a bit more of a pastel. We did agree, since it bothers me, to not paint the corner boards a contrasting color.

I really dislike the fact that many New England houses are painted with “outlines” around all the features: doors, windows, corner boards. It reminds me of drawing houses when I was a kid. The house I grew up in was white, white walls, white window frames. The door was a contrasting color and so was the concrete walk up to it, but the house was white with a red tile roof, and I like it that way, non-traditional, or not. I can live with contrasting windows, if I have to, but I really don’t like contrasting corner boards!

jkd

finished putting the clapboards up on the laundry room wall that had been torn apart last year. Now the wall board needs to be replaced on the inside, then the beadboard, etc. can be put on.

We have in the house exterior windows. They added the sun room on and left them. The two windows in the front of the house, in my office are almost entirely rotted; the next step is to replace the rotting windows with the all but new windows in the wall between the sunroom and kitchen.

We walked up and down the street looking at color schemes. Since we have to paint the new laundry room wall, we’ll probably paint the exterior of the entire laundry room, and that means that we’re picking colors for the house. We discussed it and came to no firm conclusions.

jkd

One of my “screwy” ideas is that since I love used stuff more than new, and I won’t pay the price for new, but I really like things that look sort of like they actually GO together…I’d come up with a house “painting” technique for things I bring in.

I really do loathe cutesy “everything matches” houses, and I also really loathe “studied clutter.”

I like shabby chic, but usually think the stuff looks uncomfortable, too cute, or if you really sat in that chair, it’ll fold up on itself, with you stuck in the middle, struggling to get out.

Soooo. This is my problem. I buy (because I can afford it) a fair amount of things that don’t look their best, although they have lots of wear in them. (I DON’T buy flimsy looking chairs!) The stuff comes with asst. color woods, paint, stain, etc. I want a way to make it mine. My idea was to put primer on everything and then paint it one of my colors, maybe with some antiquing where it’ll get dirty anyway.

I did my first “trial” of this today. I loved the painted wooden trunks that Pottery Barn was selling last year, but at $99 for the small one, my instant reaction was, “You’ve GOT to be kidding!” I’ve been an antique dealer/thrift store shopper for too many years to pay that for a wooden box?

So, I started to keep my eye open for sturdy wooden boxes. I went to a Fire Department/library sale and there were three of them: a cash box maybe? and a couple of tool boxes, small ones. Then I went to the antique store where I’ve currently got stuff and one dealer had a great wooden box full of ice fishing gigs 1/2 off for $12, making the box and its contents $6, so I snatched that up. Then an artists’ paint box showed up at the dump, and that was free. So now I have 6 small wooden boxes, in various colors, sizes, and conditions, and I want them to all look like they’re mine.

Also, I want to come up with some way of painting furniture that comes in less than pristine so that it’s mine too.

What I did today was to put 2 coats of primer, two coats of yellow, one coat of blue, and some antiquing on the top of the “cash box.” It isn’t exactly what I hoped it’d be, but it’s not as bad as I was afraid it’d be either! Tomorrow, I’ll likely put two MORE layers of primer on it and start over….

It’s a work in progress!

jkd

What you discover that you didn’t know you had. Earlier this week I found a brand new bottle of Murphy’s Oil soap, a quart. I looked in the stew pot that I use to carry cleaning products around, and sure enough, I had another qt bottle, 1/2 full. Even in a wood house with wood walls and floor, I don’t think I need to buy Murphy’s for a year or two!

jkd

I realized one big thing and that was that we use a lot of space storing things we use once a year, or less. So, I pulled everything that wasn’t regularly used out of one base cabinet and sorted it into two piles: we use this semi-regularly, but not every day and we use this maybe once a year. I boxed up one lot of the once a year stuff.

If I do this with the rest of the stuff in the cabinets, then the kitchen will have a lot of space. I have 3 or 4 shelves full of china, serving dishes, platters, party servers, etc. that I use at the most once a year. If I had a Welsh dresser or some such for the kitchen, this stuff would all be on the top shelves or in the back, etc. which is pretty much where it is now.

DH’s really good solution was to add a closet for this stuff, because if we put it in the attic, we might as well get rid of it, as we’ll probably never use it. But I like the closet idea. I want all the stuff I use regularly to be out and accessible, but the once in a while stuff, no. The once a year or less stuff? I don’t care. Right now, my plan is to move it to the attic anyway.

Two reasons: it’ll get me working in the attic, something I really need to do AND if I date the boxes and then never touch it for an additional year or two, the justification for yardsaling it becomes real easy!

This is stuff like: the baugette baking rack, a draining grill that goes on the edge of the (who knows where?) wok, an insulated drink holder, the air pump coffee pot from the shop’s brief “coffee stand.” (I gave it up, I and the staff of the other bookstore ate too many cookies, I started to gain weight AND I was feeding all the hangers on next door.)

jkd

or tray…anyway, it has the inserts in it now that I’ve wanted for the past year that I’ve had it.

They’re made of scrap MDF, and not exactly the same size. But I bet if I bought good wood and asked DH in a month or two to make them prettier, I’d get it. Or maybe, I’ll forget it as a detail and work on my part of the rack before I do that.

The rack is filled with old mustard bottles. I’ve been acquiring bottles for years. I scrape off the paint outside and have painted the metal lids white. I haven’t (quite) hit on the right scheme for labeling them, as I want something that can be changed. The best idea I’ve had is sheet magnets (The lids are steel, I think.)

Anyway, this has been in the works literally for years! I found the “rack” last year at a junk sale and although not quite ideal, it’s really close. So getting DH to do the insert for me was a big step!

jkd

I got the last of the squashes and a neighbor gave me some cauliflower and pepper plants. Then it started to pour in the late afternoon, so they’re still out there in their 6 packs. Those will get planted tomorrow!

And I will make a major push to plant the rest of the early to mid-season seeds too. Most of them ARE planted, but not quite all!

Then I really, really need to work on the new beds or they won’t be ready until late fall,and that isn’t what I had in mind, although….

jkd