A Decent Proposal

My mother has offered us an enormous gift. She will be giving us a sum of money to use toward reupholstery and wall papering, projects she knows are way down on our list. It is a little morbidly inspired, but she would like to be able to see what her money is going toward rather than waiting until after she is dead. I think that she likes projects just as much as I do so she is also looking forward to being a part of the process of picking things out. She has two caveats though. One is that we need to strip the wallpaper from the playroom upstairs, the second is we need to recover the two wing back chairs she gave us which are in our Family Room. She wanted to pay to have them recovered when she first recycled them to us, but we declined that offer since we felt the children would trash them anyway. Her new theory is that we ought to recover them with the consideration that this will be a short term fabric. Something to get us through the next 10 years and then we can recover them again. That made a lot of sense to me, so while I worry what destruction the children will cause, I ready to go for it.

I had already ordered a lot of wallpaper last year as inspiration for picking the exterior paint scheme.  I pulled those out and Mr. W and I began the process of selecting our favorites for different rooms. I think with our budget we can repaper the Parlor, Family Room, and Dining Room, and strip and paint the Play Room and Study. Mom also wants us to purchase a china hutch so we can unpack all of our boxes of dishes and serving pieces still lingering in the basement.

The original Povey window of a bird in flight (Portlandia has been putting a bird on it since 1890) has partly inspired me to create a peacock blue Parlor. The turquoise blue in the background and in the jewels in the scallop shell/shield in the other window are about the right blue. My other idea was to do a dogwood motif, since there dogwood flowers in the transom in the bay as well as a dogwood tree planted just outside. Mr. W liked the peacock blue idea though. We settled upon the Bradbury & Bradbury Anglo-Japanese Roomset in Eucalyptus.

We'll go high Victorian in the Parlor and use every paper, dado, fill, frieze and a 3 papered ceiling. This is what it will look like with all the papers line up. It even compliments our Oushak rug from our trip to Turkey. When I was just dreaming about wallpaper for the Family Room, I noted that our picture rail is set at 14" below the ceiling in every room. This creates a problem since the bird frieze paper in this set is 24". If we trim off the top and bottom bordered we can get to 14".  

 What to do with all that wasted border paper? While brain storming how to treat the walls in the Entry, which has an even smaller frieze at 10", I realized I could stack the trimmed border pieces and run them above the picture rail. Among the ceiling papers is the Valencia Panel, which has oranges cascading from a vase. That comes two to a sheet. If I order one of those and center it one opposite walls in the entry I can add a little interest to the frieze.

She and I drove around to several fabric stores over the weekend and I brought back my favorites to see them in the space and get Mr. W's input. Since our new sofa will be brown, green is the best choice for the wing back chairs. From these three options:
 
 
Mr. W and I favor the green counterpane. It is all natural too, a cotton & linen blend. It was in the middle of the price range, but had a 15 yd minimum.  That wasn't a problem though since I need 14. I can use the surplus to make throw pillows for the new sofa.

Mr. W wants to configure the location of the television in the room and run speaker wire under the wall paper. We drew up some schematics and there just doesn't seem to be a place for my Amanda chair and ottoman. I can substitute my Eastlake arm chair for it and place it next to the fireplace, I'm not sure how comfortable that will be for me long term, but I have been thinking it would be nice to include one period, wood frame chair in this room, especially with the new mirror. It would help to break up all the upholstery and modernity. Here are the fabric options. Mr. W had some visceral reactions to some of them. (He hates my second choice!)

 

 

 

My first choice is the 3rd option, and he likes it too. This is so exciting!

PIstachio and Plum Nursery Reveal

I finally had a chance to take photos of the nursery. The framed Kew Garden print was finally finished right around the time I received the vinyl wall decal and the glider. A lot has come together in the past few months to create this unisex cum feminine nursery. What started out like this in April is now complete. This is the view that greets you at the door.

The dresser and crib are on the same wall, this is configured a little differently than when the boys shared this room.
 
When we began this nursery we didn't know what the sex would be. If she had been a boy I would have added purple elephants. But since she is a girl I'm doing a flower theme, hence the violet doily and tea pot. Mr. W brought the leather kangaroo back from a business trip to Japan. I've been coveting this Big Ben alarm clock for a long time for myself, but realized it would be perfect in the nursey. Moms always need to know how long they have been nursing!
 
A closer view of the wall decal. I know I'm late to the wall words trend, but it didn't seem to work in the bungalow, and there wasn't enough vertical wall space in that nursery.  I ordered this decal in plum and  I was able to reuse these wall plaques (from SL@H) which were a gift from a friend.

This is a nice view in which you can see how the crib skirt matches the extra hem we added to the curtain. My friend randomly gave us the crib sheet since I didn't register for a 3rd child. It fits perfectly!
 
We were able to put the changing table along this wall on it's own. A friend bought this pansy painting for me when we were in college, and now it works perfectly in the pistachio and plum nursery.

My nursing station. The new glider finally arrived as well. The plum color ties in with the curtain fabric and gives a great pop of color against the wainscot in this corner.

I'm so glad we decided to buy a new chair for the new nursery. It is very comfortable and I love that it spins. It makes it so easy to turn to reach a cup of tea or whatever I need from the side table.

 

A view back toward the door. The one thing I have yet to do is strip the paint from the transom window. I never climber a ladder near the end of the pregnancy to clean that...ad now who knows when I'll have time.

Desperately Seeking Sofa

When Mr. W was on paternity leave last month we realized that a family of 4-5 with only 3 chairs in the family isn't going to work. The boys kept grousing at him to get out of their seats. We so seldom all watch tv together that it is rarely an issue. We decided to rectify the situation and started shopping. But rather than the nice fancy leather one we were planning on getting before we moved in, we decided to go with cheap and disposable while we still have small children. Enter: Macy's.

We settled on a tufted back, twill fabric sofa that will seat 3, but is still small enough to fit in our Family room. The stock options were scarlet and grey. As much as Mr. W is a Buckeye fan, we decided to go with a special order cognac color. It should arrive to us at the beginning of November, maybe even in time for my birthday.

It can't come a moment too soon though, here are the boys double decker-ing it on a weekday afternoon.

An antiquing score

While driving out to the Needlepoint shop last week I noticed a 'Going Out of Business' sign on Antiques & Oddities. I don't get into their shop much, but I do admire their collection of windows while I pass by. Everything was marked to 50% off. I decided to stop by to see if there were any china hutches  since we are in desperate need of storage for our Dining Room, so much is still in boxes in our basement.

By the time I got there everything was pretty much picked over and very few large furniture pieces remained. But I did score a few items. I spied this pair of Eastlake style vases. There are different images on each side of the vase. The green color is perfect with the new fireplace tile as well as the wallpaper I am thinking about using on the walls eventually. They were made by Charles Barlow of Smithfield Works and thanks to the internet I was able to learn that this studio was indeed doing work in the time period I guessed, from 1880-1892.
 
I don't think I could have found a better pair for our the new Eastlake mirror! And at $50 for the pair, and 50% marked down I couldn't not buy them.
 
 Mr. W and I have long joked about getting a valet for him, but it isn't the sort of thing one comes across regularly in Oregon, and certainly not high on our list of needs. As I was getting rung up I did a quick scan around the room and noticed this awesome brass valet I had overlooked when I came in. 50% off $125 and I knew it was meant to be for Mr. W.  He was happier than I expected to see his new valet.


And honorable mention to Baby Boy and Punkin for allowing me to cruise through the store without too much trouble. I'm lucky they are easy children.

Side table makeover

On the way home from our end of the summer camping trip last year we drove down Powell Blvd and I spied this 70s era side table outside a second hand shop. I went back a couple days later with the boys; it had the right amount of detail I wanted for a bedside table in our guest room. I was hoping to find something for under $50 and they wanted about $85 for this which was way too much considering how many pieces of trim were missing or broken. Conveniently Mr. F called me in the middle of the hard sell and I walked away. That was just what I needed for the salesman to drop the price down to $60.

Fall passed and I never seemed to have the time to get out to sand and fix the table. I was hoping to get it together in the spring before Mr. & Mrs. K came out to stay with us for Easter, but again I didn't do it. As I was envisioning the new nursery I realized this pie crust top table would be the perfect side table for a nursing station. It is large enough to hold a lamp and any drinks and snacks I need. I had a can of Benj Moore Cameo White that was an extra from a project when I was working which is a nice  neutral off white that will go with the antique white crib and changing table, but could easily transition to a side table in our Master Bedroom in the future.

We had a few nice days at the beginning of May so I was able to get out and sand the table down. There were a ton of nooks and crannies so I used a chair since I was already big by then.

The top of the table was pretty gauged up so we'd need to use wood filler to even those out.

During the sanding process I realized that the underside of the table top was delaminating. We used wood glue and clamps to fix that.

This little broken bracket also had to be glued back together.

 

This weekend there was finally a break in the weather, not rainy, not too windy, not too hot, and we were not too busy for Mr. W to use the paint sprayer to prime and paint the table this weekend. Pretty nice considering it was Father's Day weekend. I really appreciated it though, I'm getting antsy about finishing the nursery in time. It looks a thousand times better even with just the primer!

 After letting the paint cure for a couple of days I was finally able to set up my nursing station table with the newly made over lamp and side table.

 I love all the detailing in the table legs. And this Cameo White color helps to set it off with the stained wainscot behind it.

 And if I take the photo just right you can see how well the incised circle pattern shows through even after being painted.

Final decisions made for the nursery.

We got so much accomplished this weekend, which I wasn't expecting, but I'm feeling such a sense of relief about it! I had received an email that Stars Antique Mall was having a sidewalk sale this weekend so on Friday I took Baby Boy over there to scout for high boy dressers. I really wanted to work with a CLer who refurbishes furniture in shabby chic style, but she has a 6 wk lead time and she doesn't respond much to email; I decided she wasn't reliable enough for me at this point. I really need to be able to unpack baby clothes and things into the nursery so I can have a sense of relief.

I really wanted an ivory colored dresser for this room to coordinate with  the rest of the nursery furniture, but I feel guilty about painting real wood or wood veneer.  These are a couple dresser options she sent me, and admittedly they would be super cute painted, but they don't look like they are in horrible shape so I'd have some guilt.

 

I found this dresser at Stars, which was cute and I loved the shape and amount of drawers, but it was pink, and I hate pink. I certainly wouldn't feel guilty about painting this one, but frankly I don't have the time for that right now. I have enough work cut out for us just getting the side table painted and finished. And I really shouldn't be sanding questionable paint right now.

We realized we needed to pull the trigger on everything, so we decided to go for the oak highboy dresser with attached mirror which I found at City Liquidators and that we'd go with the new glider from Good Night Room. It is admittedly dull and doesn't have a tufted back like I was looking for, but I'm running out of time and need to commit. We bought the dresser first to be picked up later that day and then headed to suburbia.  I was delighted to learn that they added a few new fabrics to their selection and one of them was a plum colored twill. Not only does this fit into the color scheme of the room best, I was starting to get disappointed I'd have to settle for a practical neutral in there, but it will be less likely to show the dirt than a cream colored one. The only downside is that it has an 8 week lead time and we've put this decision off till the end. That's okay though, even though it will arrive approximately 4 weeks after baby arrives, I will still spend plenty of months nursing in it.


Here is the dresser freshly cleaned and oiled. I had a chance to sort all the baby clothes too so I'm feeling good about everything.
 
One other thing that needed to be accomplished was finding some sort of cabinet or wardrobe to store all my table linens which had been occupying the closet in the guest room. Now that it is the boy's bedroom I need to be able to move all their clothes over from the closet in the nursery.  While driving to my dr apt this week I drove by a yard sale and saw half an Eastlake dresser. I stopped by on my way home to investigate. It is in really rough shape, but they only wanted $20 for it. The lock escutcheons are original, but the pulls are dreadful 60s era hammered pulls. I'm sure I can find a set of antique hardware to fix this up, and I might eve have it refinished at some point, but for now, $20 is exactly what I need to solve my linen storage problem.

In search of nursery furniture

This weekend was the Memorial Day camping trip but I bailed early. I was hoping to make it at least two nights with an escape plan for the 3rd night since I am 33 wks pregnant. However the campsite chosen this year was on the Washington coast and it rained the whole ding dong time. And any time it slightly cleared up, the mosquitoes came out. The clincher for me was that this camp ground's group campsite didn't have it's own outhouse. Instead one had to walk all the way thru the RV section to get to the bathrooms. That's not exactly idea if one needs to get up in the middle of the night multiple times to pee. I'd have to layer back on my clothes, wrestle back into my galoshes, waddle through the dark in the rain to the toilet and hopefully not pee myself on accident. I considered just squatting in the bushes since it was the middle of the night and no one would see me, but I was too worried I'd loose my balance and slip and fall in the mud. Since Mr. W snores through everything I was also afraid he wouldn't hear my cries for help and one of his friends would ed up finding me half naked in the mud. No thank you!

I left after lunch on Saturday and missed out on the Star Wars themed dinner we were planning with the L family for Sunday night. I made some Star Wars sugar cookies in advance with cookie cutters from WS. They turned out pretty cute, and I'm sure there will be lots of Star Wars events in my future with 3 children.

 

On my way home I stopped at HomeGoods when I crossed over into Oregon. We were planning on not getting a new chair for the nursery. The wing back chair and ottoman I had reupholstered for Baby Boy's arrival is in the playroom and I anticipate nursing a lot in it in that room while I watch the boys play. I saw a great photo of a purple tufted chair with low arms in a nursery and it inspired me to find a similar vintage chair for my own nursery. I thought I'd do an in person search while I'm child free since I haven't had much luck on CL. I found this one at HG in a shiny grey and shiny green. I like the tufting, but the back may not be high enough. This one was $399.

Even though it was very sunny in Portland, I was able to talk my mom into going furniture shopping with me. We started at City Liquidators, This chair was an upholstered rocker. It doesn't thrill me, but the price of $279 is not bad.

City Liquidators also has some antiques available . This dresser is exactly what I am looking for for the nursery, a 5 drawer highboy, something with an attached mirror. This turn of the century oak dresser even had most of it's original hardware intact. Unfortunately I have my heart set on an off white dresser that is shabby chic. I couldn't possibly paint over real oak!

We drove out to Bridgeport Village to check out Good Night Room, they closed their Irvington location. There had a mint green glider and ottoman on sale because they were floor models. The chair was about $500. An ottoman would overwhelm the space in our nursery, and the mint green would clash with the green of our walls. But here is the chair in a different fabric with a contrasting welt.

Our last stop was Kitchen Kaboodle. I was really tired at this point, the weather was SO different from that of the camping trip! None of the chairs really worked, This blue velvety chair had arms similar to what I was hoping for, but far too expensive at $770.


What I like best is the Julia chair from Ballards. It has the tufted back and low arms. And even though the comments section has a few complaining about how much smaller it is than they anticipated, it is comparable in size to my Amanda chair in the family room. It's made for short people like me. But so expensive! And I'd have to pay shipping. And none of the custom fabrics are plum. I'll order some fabric swatches, so we'll see. I'm hoping something perfect turns up on CL soon.

Vintage Lamp Makeover

My mom's best friend gave me this ivy covered lamp years ago. It belonged to her mother and she thought I would like it since I was in a big ivy kick in grade school and high school. I am assuming that this lamp is from the 60s or something. It originally had a large cylinder shaped shade, but the fabric was torn and a bit stained. After I graduated college and sharing a bungalow with roommates I decided to replace the lampshade. I was inspired by a how-to article in a BH&G magazine for a frilly shade. I was also working at RH at the time and used a damaged shade that had been marked out of stock for the framework. It's been about 15 yrs and the shade has definitely seen better days, as well as never being the exact right scale for the base anyway.

I had been using this in our guest room, but since that has morphed into the boys room, I figured it could work in the new nursery on the side table (yet to be refinished) in my nursing station. Baby Boy and I ventured out to NoPo to the Rainbow Lampshade Shop. If you bring in your lamp base you can have a fashion show with all the ready made shades they have so you can find the best pairing. I knew I wanted something with more feminine lines than a cylinder shade, maybe a pagoda style shade. The pagoda was too small diameter wise, they are really better paired with short, squat bases, like a ginger jar. There was a nice bell shaped shade, but I finally settled on this square shade with cut corners. I had her add a riser to the top of the harp to give it a little more height off the base.Maybe it needs a little more height?

I was considering getting a colored shade, but she also had some green gimps and I liked that idea best. I selected an olive and straw colored gimp which she applied to the top and bottom self edges. I'm happy with the way it turned out. Now I need to sand down that side table, it was very hard for me to get a good angle for the photos while sitting on the floor 6 months pregnant!

 

Accesorizing the crafting table

 Now that my little work table has been painted and placed in the bay window of my closet it is time to start unpacking into it and getting things set up so I can catch up with sewing projects and photo albums. I want a tray that I can keep desk thing on and then easily remove them when I need to set up my sewing machine. I wanted something with purple faux croc. At first I thought I would recover a tray I already have, but I couldn't find any purple croc paper online.
I was able to find a few ready made trays. This first one I saw on the P1 website so I went in to buy it. It isn't exactly the right shade of purple, but I do like that the large size would allow me to keep a stack of papers that need to be filed and remove it all from the desk when needed.  I also found this little chrome based, drum shade lamp on sale for $29! Perfect for what I was looking to do!
 
So here is the P1 tray:

And here is a tray I found at ZG while shopping with Ms. Mc. I prefer this shade of purple, and I think the round shape is a nice contrast to the rectangular shape of the desk. But now I like the idea of having a spot to keep papers.

Using the lampsade in the antique shop as inspiration, I realized I had a couple of little broach type things. When I was in grade school, I think, my grandma or someone else gave me these little metal pieces. The one on the right was from a pair of shoes, the black in the middle is a piece of the suede from the shoes. I can't remember what the other piece was from. Yes, I never throw anything away. I had two of each of these and have been hanging on to them all these years! I used one of each a few years ago when Ms. Mc had her Wine & Witches party and we all decorated witch hats. You never know when something could be reused!

 Here they both are against the lamp shade.

 I really wanted to get a pretty velvet ribbon to mount them, but they didn't have any at Joann's. I thought 2" wide ribbon would be too thick, so I went with the 1 1/2". Now I just need to decide which I like better. And if I like the one on the right better, do I want to keep the black part or remove it so you just see the purple of the ribbon?