No, not a Dora lamp

I have been searching and searching for a modern version of an antler lamp for weeks to finish off our foyer table. But I knew if I just held off long enough I could flea/gw something.......

Eventually......ummm, like today! .... I did........





No, not the Dora lamp, it is for my sweet Courtney, granddaughter, who is so in love with her now.

And there's that rather ugly antler lamp laying on the right. Pic taken with them in the back of the truck just after I had bought them. Don't mind the mud.

Both lamps combined, less than $5.....can you say ....yeah!!!!!!

After a bit of spray paint, and adding one of the shades from my personal private basement collection, this is how the lamp looked......




Love it. Total cost out of pocket.....2.49.




Also found these cool glass candle holders. Human backhoe...aka, hubby....think they look like a phallic symbol......men!...whatevah!




My ultimate weakness is always silver candlesticks......here's a few more for my collection.....:)




The backdrop in the foyer is our recently stenciled walls. Love this gray/blue paint color. It's Martha Stewart eggshell in Opal from home depot. This is my favorite color at this moment in time.

Here's the new look elevated on an old pepsi crate, that was already painted black when I found it.




Sweet simple foyer for our sweetwater cottage log home.

kitchen decor compromise

We are soon to start really renovating our little log cottage kitchen. I love how the pioneer woman used one these to place in her kitchen redo a few years ago. These were also used in a hgtv dream home giveaway a few years ago. They are hand carved wood and available through urbanmaterials.com.





They are priced at $395. Not really too bad, but we have a lot of cash already committed to our little redo. Then I found this acrylic resin molded baby.....



$49 from zgallerie.com. A bit of a compromise, but should work for the overall feel of the planned kitchen. He will have a special place above the cooktop on the cabinetry mounted hood.




Here's an idea of how our kitchen hood will look, although we have hand-made pine cabinets. Our cabinets were built by my son's shop teacher at our high school. Actually our whole log cottage was built by him 20 years ago.

While checking out the deer head, found these adorable chocolate colored salad plates on sale for $1.99 each. Love the chocolate colored bunny plate, so I ordered 10.....:), as you can order individually and not as a set.



Soooooo ready to move on to our all out kitchen assault, now that the loft is done.

Tomorrow.....road trip to Stl to visit THE girls. Hoping to stop at a couple Homegoods to shop for new lamps in the entry foyer.

Log cottage loft remodel

I always hesitate in which order to post redos, remodels, etc. Do I post the final product, which makes everything look so easy and effortless? Or do I show the uglies and hard work first?

First off this has been an off and on remodel process over the last 15 months. When we bought our log cottage we knew we wanted to open up this hallway to make another living space.




But we knew we would have to sacrifice this atrocity.




An underused storage room, with absolutely no natural light. So dark and gloomy. We really do have plenty of storage in our log cottage.....bye, bye , good riddance.

Now this is a start in the right direction.....:)




Two walls gone and new load bearing header being made. Check it out on the sawhorse. Gotta love our teenage son's room Xmas decor in the background.

Header up, 2x4's gone. Really can get a feel for the space of the new loft area.




But still lots to do:
Scrape ugly swirly ceiling
Paint and stain
Built-ins under eaves
Insulation under eaves
Install hand whitewashed pine flooring
New light fixtures and wiring
Shop for decor appropriate to space, especially a long narrow sofa
Etc.

And a few months and tears later.....

Loft complete.....now that's a real ahhhhhhhh.......




Couple of baseboards to place and let the decorating begin.....




Bright , simple space where there used to be a wasted dark storage room. Sofa....goodwill purchase....perfect and $60. Did I say perfect?




Favorite find for room. Overstock.com rug. Love it!

Here's a few more sweet things.




Upstairs log cottage......complete.

Thanks hubs!

doin' the deck

human backhoe and i are always in the middle of a project. projects are what we share inorder to spend quality time together. it is......us. we spend our time together in really constructive ways.....:)

one of this summer's projects was repairing and restoring our back deck. here it is in all it's grey mossy glory earlier this year.



and here it is after powerwashing, making repairs and finally staining the deck by hand with paint brushes, 2 coats worth....no rollers or sprayers for us home remodelers. we love working on our hands and knees in 90 plus degree heat...oh yeah. took us about 2 weeks to do the project right. plus we were hit with a few rain showers along the way that we had to wait a day or two for the deck to dry to resume where we left off on a previous day. such is life with the midwest summers.




a few more pics from the deck. love toffee twist sedge grass. here it is with diamond frost euphorbia and plain old orange marigolds.




finally paper lantern balls in an antique wire chicken egg basket. look at that lovely new cedar wood stain from cabot. it was a good semi transparent stain to match our log home. we should be good for another 2 years......til we do it again.



deck staining.....lots of rewards.....but very little time to enjoy it before you have to do it again. here's the product we used to stain the deck with.....took us awhile to find the right color. you know it was harder to pick a stain color than it was to name our children.....


(cabot's semi-transparent acrylic stain in new cedar)

now we can enjoy our backyard and watch the trees change to this pretty soon.

the architect and the non-soaring entry foyer

our entry foyer. not a huge space, as in the open echoing spaces that are pretty much in every new home today. this is, after all, a log cabin kinda place. since we moved here a year ago....i have kept thinking i wanna open up this area.....make it vault way up to the roof line. but the more i have lived here, the more i have enjoyed the coziness of the log cabin. i appreciate the coziness here more than any other of our previous homes. i am not sure a soaring space is appropriate any more to our cabin. our home is not so much grand as it is warm and inviting. this home wraps itself around you. a smaller foyer just fits. it welcomes you in from the wide open country fields and woods that surround us here. a cavernous open area would not. it may not be much, but it fits us at this time in our lives.






there are a couple special things i have in the foyer right now. one is this cut glass crystal vase given to me by a dear friend many years ago, it was her grandmother's. at this time it is filled with the pussy willows brought in from outside to force 2 weeks ago. they are starting to really open now. spring.......aaaaah!




and then there is this architectural sign. it was another find, found about 10 years ago from a antique shop just east of columbia, mo. i didn't know anything about the sign when i bought it. i just liked it and knew hubby would too. when i brought it home, the human backhoe, hubby, recognized the street name on the sign as being probably from st. louis, as he had lived there for most of his life. we both did some internet research and found out that h.g. hargitt was an architect from st. louis(ding,ding,ding....hubs was right) and that he worked with glass structures during the 1904 world's fair. hargitt invented a version of the first safety glass. here's a pic of the the 23 acre palace of agriculture building from the fair. in this palace alone, there are 147,250 panes of glass, all 18 x 25 inches.






and see that phone number on the sign .....



the 4 digit phone number (forest 3439) on the sign seems to date the piece to prior to the 1905, as this is the way phone numbers were written in that era.

here's a bit of history on 4 digit phone numbers that makes me believe that this sign dates back about 100 years:

4 digit phone numbers like “1244 Main” lasted until dial phones happened in the 1920's. those with the exchange first, such as this sign's, were used before 1905 or so. to make a call you would pick up and talk to an operator who would connect you to the exchange.



it was so amazing to research and learn the history surrounding this piece. i am assuming this sign was displayed somewhere in st. louis around about the early 1900's. quite a find by a history buff like me. and to think i bought the piece just because i liked it, but now i love knowing a bit about the history of the sign. and i love my cozy, warm, inviting, non-soaring entry foyer that has a bit of history in it.

building of THE loft- week 1

this weekend the human backhoe started the first big interior project on our log home since we moved in a year ago.




we knew from the moment we looked at our sweetwater bend log home that we wanted to open up this upstairs hallway. the hallway is actually 20 feet long and very narrow, altho in the pic it appears shorter than that. the room to the right was a 6x16 storage closet. we wanted to make a loft area for our boys to hang out in and we wanted the loft to overlook the staircase leading up from the greatroom. the two other rooms in the pic are the boys rooms. there is one more guest bedroom and bathroom on this level also.




the interior of the storage room was a dark and dreary space. i thought about maybe a craft room for this area.....but i couldn't fathom the idea of sitting in this dark space and being the least bit creative.

and i truly did not need another stuff collecting area in the home.




the new roughed-in loft space. note that it took about a day to build the new 16ft header and get this sucker installed. it was made of triple 2x12 douglas fir. and this not even a load bearing wall......hehehe. human backhoe, 17 yo son, and i lifted this thing into place.......a couple people in this group were muscular, i suppose.





looking from inside the storage closet towards where the loft overlook will be.




hey where did that wall go?......it IS gone!!!!!! yeah!!!! i CAN see the staircase. i can see the boys performing romeo and juliet already.......teehee.


here's the plan....not inorder of completion:

1. install heartpine wide plank floors
2. knock down the texture ceiling
3. build in an entertainment/storage system under the eave so as not to take up floor space.
4. install loft balcony railing that overlooks the staircase that leads to the main floor. this will probably be wrought iron. altho we haven't completely ruled out a pine railing of some sort.
5. of course.......paint.......no more 1980's green or stark white walls in this area.
6. oh and.....remove carpet on the stairs and refinish the existing wood stair treads that were previously covered.

my plan is to have this done before spring.........ummmm hb's plan is to not have any imposed deadline's by me......:0)

the nude sink

quick! take a look at this gosh awful nude/buff colored sink......



have you ever seen such a hidious color for a kitchen sink? well i hadn't. but we lived with it for a year......imagine that, for someone that has so little patience in regards to priority reno projects. no matter how much me or human backhoe scrubbed on it....it never ever looked clean. now wave bye-bye to it as it is headed to the habitat for humanity restore store bright and early in the morn.


and tadah!!!!.....here's our new baby.....(you might wanna protect your eyes from the gleaming white surface)....:)



it is a brand new huge cast iron kohler drop-in sink that we bought from craigslist for $70 last july. i really wanted a true farmhouse apron sink, but for the price of this one, ol' hb and i couldn't pass it up. this sink is huge and it makes for very easy washing of larger items.

we then added the gorgeous moen lancaster pull-down faucet in the mediterranean bronze finish...and there went any savings that we had incurred with the sink.....sorry hb.

well we still have a lot to do in our little log home kitchen as we renovate as time and moolah allows, including the more than temporary laminate counter tops you can see in the pic.

here's a running total on what has been completed on our kitchen by my dear h.b.:
-new sink installation
-new double drawer dishwasher installation
-new french door refridgerator and installation of new water line to it.

and here's a running total of what still needs to be completed:
-oh nevermind.....it'll all get done, won't it hb?.....:)

linking to the before and after party at......http://thriftydecorchick.blogspot.com