Category Archives: home decor

August 6, 2014 · 7:15 AM

Of bastards and bathrooms…

Someone, or ones, stole my credit card info and attempted to ship $2,300 worth of Home Depot shite to Nevada.

(I don’t live in Nevada)

It’s a bit disconcerting to think that it might be possible that they knew I was working on a house, and thus I might not notice.

But they don’t know me that well.

I don’t shop there because of their right-winged evil overlord.

I’d post a warning about where my card got hacked, but it’s the same one I’ve had for over a decade of online shopping and automatic bill payments, so it could have been a security breach in one of a hundred or more websites and utility companies. Well, at least not right-wing fundraiser sites, or skanky porn, or games, or psychics, or…

But thankfully the evil corporate anti-everything good about life and humans credit card company had my back, so someone/s in Nevada didn’t get their new what… deluxe chainsaw? big-ass grill? swirly tub? giant refrigerator? or lots and lots and lots of nails?

I love that we’ve got an awesome independent lumber yard, hardware store, and green building supplier in our town (and that also probably proves extreme gentrification) but I can’t always afford their stuff, or rather, none of them stocks the really cheap stuff.

(If my credit card thief shopped at one of those stores he just might have gotten away with it.)

But sometimes cheap is okay and historically accurate.

So I did our half-bath floor in a pinwheel mosaic tile from the other big box home improvement store.

Though the floor we removed was already tile, it was ugly – creepy 1970s van stripes – and broken in places (thank you original owner for installing tile on thin-ass plywood, but at least it was easy to remove) and underneath was un-salvageable linoleum. We had been prepared to live with the room for a few years though, and it was the lowest priority to re-do, but then the toilet broke inexplicably, and it made sense to go ahead and replace the floor before we put in a new shitter.

(bathroom before when we first looked at the house – the previous owners left out their crap).

We reused the old vanity but gave it a fresh coat of paint, replaced the semi-non-functioning faucet, and replaced the fake wood triptych-mirrored medicine cabinet with a new one that is utterly cheap, but made in the USA, so it will do well enough.

We still need to install said medicine cabinet, add the towel and TP holders, paint some more, attach the floor trim, hang some art, sew or knit some curtains, and add a plant or something.

Along with the vintage-looking tile, the peach paint* throws the whole thing back to the 1950s, so hopefully the house feels good about it.

And it glows.

*Paint is Mythic brand and I love it – not stinky and well-priced for non-toxic paint – color is Benjamin Moore’s “Hathaway Peach.” Tile is American Olean. (I didn’t get anything to endorse this stuff, but I’ll gladly take some free paint or coupons if offered…). The former ugly but perfectly functional medicine cabinet goes to Habitat for Humanity, and the plumber took the old faucet and toilet for recycling (as least that’s what he said he’d do with it…) so it was a remodel with only one bag of trash.

Floored

I went on a floor sanding and refinishing bender recently and I am still recovering…

…but the dining room and my studio room are now mostly done.

Only four more rooms and three hallways to go – will I or won’t I endure?

We had a guy in the other day to look at something that seemed to be beyond our abilities. He came somewhat unexpectedly as people are wont to do in this small town which leaves me occasionally on edge since my work (not work, work) clothes are the shrunken bits thrown in the charity bag (I can’t find my stash of work clothes!) and I don’t want to be seen in busty gut-baring teeny t-shirts and sweatpants with burst seems. We were in the middle of sanding the dining room floor by hand – with little electric sanders, so at least with the aid of some power… he smirked and said “well you could do it that way, but I’d rent a sander.”

No f*ckingshit you’d rent a sander – most people would.

But floor sanders are big and heavy and use a lot of sandpaper and cost money to rent and we can only do one room at a time since we’re living in the house, so for about $10 worth of sandpaper (and a whole day) I can do it myself. (And I mostly did it myself since N quickly looses interest/endurance on these sorts of mind-numbing vibrating tedious tasks, and I’m able to call up the genetic reserves of my peasant ancestors from time to time).

And I also like the way it looks. In our old house, I sanded a few rooms by hand, and a few with a sander – the floors done by hand still looked old in a good way – they had more depth and patina and character. The ones done with a sander looked 1,000 times better what they had (and a heavy grind down really was necessary) but they were a little too clean and bright even though I matched the stain with the old.

I also chose to use a hard oil wax product on these floors instead of polyurethane.

That one gets another smirk from the work guys – “you could use that, but nothing wears like poly!” But poly looks a little bit like wood in plastic coating and I wanted something a little more rich and velvety. Again in the old house we used poly – the oil based stuff so it would take on a bit of an ageing amber tone – and I liked it, but after four or five years I was finding a few flakes and scratches and I was able to repair a few areas, but I felt sick to think we’d have to go through the whole business of sanding and re-coating the entire floor in a few years. But I could eat these words since we’ve only had the hard oil wax for a week* and I’ve no idea how it will hold – especially once there’s a four-footed creature about, and dinner parties. But I should only have to hit the worn areas with a fresh coat every few years instead of the whole sanding down and re-sealing business. And this stuff doesn’t require buffing like old-timey wax. So we’ll see.

You could be wondering how the linoleum floor patch looks now?

It’s holding up just fine – the rug covers about half of it, but it still gets walked upon plenty.

We’re still looking for new rugs though…

But this linoleum will certainly not be saved…

…and is a tiling project next on the list.

*I coated a few broken steps with it a couple of months ago and so far the test areas have held up well. And for the record, it’s Fiddes Hard Oil Wax in “American” tint. I got it online, but it can also be had in a few actual shops in Brooklyn and other hipster places in the states (it’s a British product). I used two thin coats with a bristle brush and I’m contemplating a third, maybe of clear, in the highest trafficked areas. It stunk a bit, but much less than the common brands of oil-based stain, and it dried in a few hours, but I waited to put rugs and furniture back in for a few days.

**The colors aren’t right in these pics – the trees around the house are throwing green light into the place, so everything – floors and walls – is a warmer, less yellowish more orangeish tone – I’d call the floors a bit of a warm pecan shade. And those big black rectangles are naked radiators without their front cover pieces.

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Tagged as 1950s house, cape cod house, DIY, fiddes, floor refinishing, floor sanding, floors, hard wax oil, home improvement, less toxic products, oak, oak floors, polyurethane, shiny, vintage house, workmen

July 2, 2014 · 7:45 AM

Don’t try this at home…

The thing about living in a small town really close to a little impoverished city (but also close to giant rich cities) is that our libraries suck. I’m originally from a midwestern state which had a very progressive library system and a whooping budget to support it. When I moved to my old city, it was full of incredibly beautiful library buildings, but so-so collections. Here? The buildings suck and the collections are downright pathetic. (Our town’s library is a nice little old space though). But that also means books aren’t thrown away or checked out often, so N was able to bring home a mother lode of decorating books from the late 1940s and early 1950s.

I dove in looking for period-appropriate color guidance and decorating ideas for our house of the era.

I’m all for creative re-use and never discarding something until it is truly and utterly useless.

I like old sh*t and prefer to own things that existed before me.

I don’t like fine antiques that need to be minded and not often used in my own living spaces, yet I know not everything belongs in a museum.

But this?

Good god, it makes me cringe.

Maybe I should put it into perspective – I’d gladly hack apart something from the 1980s because to me it isn’t old and there is still plenty of it around…. so that’s probably how someone felt about their 30-year-old furniture in the 1940s. However most of what we had 30 years ago is total sh*t and made from particle board and other unhackapartable things…

I should pause before I go into a very long-winded rant and sob story about a lovely old apartment I once inhabited with built-in cabinets, a lovely and still perfect deep cast-iron enameled bathtub, and solid and well-patinated hardwood floors only to have it entirely gutted by a new owner who wanted to make it “nice.” It wasn’t – she made it all beige and full of synthetics and she should have been thrown in some sort of prison for her destruction and wastefulness and lack of any amount of aesthetic sense.

Too many DIYers and paid “designers” are ruining the souls and characters of our old homes.

Our house isn’t that old, it’s from the 1950s, and a style I thought I’d never live in and don’t love, yet I’m keeping the good useful parts as they are, and I’m looking at ideas from the era to keep it from becoming too disjointed from its past (hence my dilemma over the knotty pine paneling) I feel that the original owner (yes even a phantasmic one) should walk into a home and see some familiar elements.

I found a few useful tips I could agree with though – I love a close lamp (and you certainly wouldn’t want to singe your yarn…)

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Filed under home, home decor, recycling

Tagged as antiques, DIY, home improvement, i hate particleboard, remodeling, ruining old furniture, ruining old houses, sawing off feet

June 25, 2014 · 7:53 AM

Not quite as old as a rock

I recently had one of those stupid decade-marking birthdays.

I’m mostly okay with aging – I’m not fighting it with dyes or potions or knives – but I miss my younger self, rather my younger ache-free self.

On this particular birthday, we went for ice cream and the teen behind the counter flirted heavily with N, but called me “ma’am”* very pointedly and twice – normally I’d address that with amusement and mild contempt for the youth of today, but it stung a bit this time. And on that day I also accepted the fact that my knee had gone to hell and wasn’t coming back any time soon.

So it’s a couple of weeks later, and I’ve been banned from hiking, stairs, ladders, and hills (we live on a hill for christsakes). I’m bummed and it’s slowed down the progress on the house and curtailed my typical summertime activities. Another downer is Italia going out of the World Cup. I’m not much of a sports fan, but I can commit to something that only happens every few years. In order for us to watch the matches though, we had to buy cable TV. I hate it. I thought we’d try to get our money’s worth and tried out a few of the channels with those ghastly home flipping/shopping/designing shows and in the end, I just want to forget it all happened…

I know the people on TV aren’t quite real, but those houses do exist, and the dumpsters of utterly wasted materials are very real too. Granted, tragically awful aesthetics and very broken things need to be addressed, but walls being knocked out for mega-refrigerators and perfectly fine stone and ceramic being smashed and tossed rather than extracted for re-use, or left in place makes me want to vomit.

Stone is ripped out of the earth and shouldn’t be a trend.

It should be banned altogether or require some sort of hoop jumping to get it, but not in an exclusive sense to make it more in demand.

We recently stayed in another fine old hotel, and I was happy to find that they retained the possibly original pink marble floor. The rest of the bathroom was done up in the latest trend – including a clashing granite sink top cut in a stupid shape for the stupid sink, but the floor was just lovely because of its age and it came from the days things stuck around a bit longer.

I’m thrilled we can cancel the TV now (but the World Cup also offered up some premium knitting time).

*We don’t live in the south or within a community where ma’am is a sign of respect – here it’s hurled at no-longer-young ladyfolk in sneering tones…

Don’t get me started on Mrs…

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Tagged as bad taste, counters, countertops, environmental disaster, flipping, granite, hgtv, historic hotels, home improvement, marble, mutant strawberry, pink marble, re-use, snakeskin, waste

June 18, 2014 · 6:38 AM

Old blue quilt

Many years ago, I found this old narrow reversible quilt at my old favorite thrift store. I loved that it was made from scraps, improvisational, hand and machine-sewn, and the fact that it was just plain old, and I like old sh*t.

I sewed a sleeve on the opposite of what I considered the more public side and hung it in my bedroom to ward off the cold seeping through the walls in my old apartment – I loved that place too because it was old – but damn, it was also cold.

It’s tufted with knots of white, blue, and reddish-pink (perhaps formerly red?) wool yarn. The interior might be filled with wool as well as it’s just a mass of somewhat disgusting clumpy lumps now, but I’d need to perform a little surgery to find out.

(And I don’t think I really want to see what’s in it in case it’s nasty).

The reverse has a pinwheel and some nice fabrics not seen on the front. This pinwheel got into my deep brain and caused me to make many half-demented pinwheels last summer, or maybe the summer before… I think I probably have enough to make something from them… I should find them.

I like this squiggly block.

The back has a few stained blocks, but were stained in their former life perhaps as clothing, as the stains were sewn over.

A few faint splotches look suspiciously like blood, or a really robust coffee mixed with a hearty and delicious red wine.

(That is also part of the reason I chose the other side to display).

And there are some lovely hand stitches too.

I also love that delicate blue pattern on the left side.

I can’t date it – there are definitely some old fabrics in it, perhaps from the 1910s, and the red, white, and blue color scheme could place it in WWII times, but some of the other fabrics have a 1950s and ’60s vibe? Though the shape is also older – long and narrow – somewhat too big for a crib and too small for a twin bed. It would probably best fit one of those narrow cot-like beds (don’t they have a name???).

But it seems that it could have been made from old clothes from a number of members of a family perhaps for a notable baby or a soldier – as a memento, or a comfort for someone leaving home.

But things are rarely as they seem, right?

When I was trying to pare down my things after I moved to N’s house, I gave it to him to give to one of his family members who was having babies at the time – I thought it would be nice for a wall in a kid’s room. But he wanted to keep it, though we didn’t get around to hanging it up then.

Or in that apartment of late of which I’d rather not speak or remember.

And we still haven’t put it up in the new house (or anything else yet until the painting is done…

rather, all of the repairs that need to be done to the walls before I can even begin to paint them).

But I rescued it from storage a few months ago, and I’m really glad I still have it.

And I ~~love~~ ~~hate~~ ~~love~~ ~~hate~~ ~~love~~ ~~hate~~ love that he enables me in the keeping of old sh*t.

Knot or not?

I’m adamant for leaving some original details in a home, but I’m having a terrible time deciding whether to keep our knotty pine paneling or paint over it.

This is one of the few times I wished the previous owner painted over something so I could just throw up my arms and say oh well, stripping it would be a nightmare and involve chemicals, so I’ll just paint over it too.

And in theory, I could paint it knowing that it would be possible to restore it later by stripping it, but who would?

I could also preserve it by drywalling over it, but that would involve either renting a truck or having the drywall delivered, and that would cost more than a gallon of paint and primer (and I know, maybe two gallons of primer, the really heavy-duty kind).

I really hate early American decor, country style, rustic/primitive/PA Dutch stuff, and I’m not a fan of the cabin look unless I’m in a cabin. Since we’re in a place with lots of trees and birds, it does often feel that we’re in a cabin, but then when we go to cabins it would feel like we didn’t leave home, and I want to feel like I’m in a cabin when I’m actually in a cabin, and when I’m home I like light open spaces.

We’ve also got some cheap 1970s fake wood paneling that I’m miserably attempting to fill in with spackle (more on that later) and have no regret “ruining,” but the pine is giving me pause…

It also begs for questionable colors in the pea soup and snot families…

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Tagged as 1950s decor, 1950s house, green, home improvement, knotty pine, knotty pine paneling, orange, original details, painting, painting knotty pine, paneling, pea soup, snot

May 14, 2014 · 8:41 AM

Trend cringe…

I don’t follow trends in fashion or home decor or electronics or cars or diets or, or, or…

And I don’t usually like what is trendy anyway.

I like certain colors and color combinations and sometimes they pop in and out of popularity, but never has the popularity merged with my need to buy.

I bought a huge wool rug for a song in 2007ish – normally I don’t go for stuff that looks like it came from stores like Ceramics Shed or Box and Bucket, but I like yellows and greys and greens and browns and of course wool, so I got it for our then large green and yellow dining room. But now it fits best in our living room, with brown furniture and soon-to-be yellow* walls. But we need curtains, and we need really wide curtains, so making them seemed like the likely option, so I ordered some fabric samples.

Then I went to the obnoxious store named for the thing at which you shoot arrows for something dumb and little and unavailable in our little town, and there were so many yellow and grey and ikat-like patterned things everywhere…

I don’t like that – I usually go against the tide – my home decor and self-presentation usually make people who follow trends cringe and look at me pitifully, and that’s the way it should be – I don’t like them, I don’t want to be like them. My car is from the ’90s and isn’t an SUV, shopping is not a hobby, I hate big-box-made-in-china-inflated-prices-for-low-quality-sh*t-especially-things-called-designer-but-just-generally-suck, and I know that in itself makes me a stereotype and stuffed in another big bag of the same folks, but at least it’s smaller one – a biodegradable, non-bleached, organic, waxed paper one perhaps?

In the end, I found cheap linen curtains that will have to do for the meantime, so I just ordered a little of the ikat fabric for some pillows.

*Oh holy hell, I can’t find a good pale mustardy yellow paint!!! They either look to lemon, or too grey, or too orange (I like orange, but the dining room is likely to be an orange variant) or shite under artificial light, or shite under natural light…

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Filed under home, home decor, sewing

Tagged as brown, color choices, fashion, grey, home decor fabric, ikat, living room, not yellow wallpaper, rugs, sewing, trends, wool rug, yellow, yellow and grey, yellow paint

May 7, 2014 · 9:55 AM

A sink hole…

We’re at that point in the house work where we’re finally seeing progress and remarkable change, but feeling utterly exhausted and in all kinds of pain.

I miss knitting a little in the evenings, but I just can’t do anything remotely detail-oriented or delicate with my hands at the moment.

And despite a daily shower, I still carry with me some of the wall colors.

But the painful parts are often unexpected and are the main factor to curtail any leisurely handiwork.

Our weeks-long back ordered kitchen sink finally arrived and we installed it immediately (and oh so securely) only to find it was defective. The drain hole was more oval than round. We called the big blue and yellow Swedish store and complained. They said they were already made aware that a batch of them were defective and the new ones (also back ordered) likely would be as well.

I’m tired of doing dishes in the bathroom sink. I got through the first day or two pretending to live in a seedy flophouse full of beat-down musicians and washed-up artists, then felt thanks that my ancestors were the tenement dwellers and not me (not yet).

So I tore that Domsjo a new one.

After more than an hour of aggressive filing, and several bruises later, the hole became round enough.

(In the end, we still had to call a plumber to hook it up, thanks to the previous owner’s pipe-y hacks.)

I’m thinking how I’d like to put the previous owner and a certain blue and yellow big store in a sink hole right about now…

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Tagged as bad owner, bruises, defective sink, DIY, domsjo, farmhouse sink, filing sink hole, home, home rehab, house, ikea hack, ikea sink, money pit, painting, patching, plumbing, reaming, sink hole, sinkhole

April 23, 2014 · 8:00 AM

A masterpiece on which to tread

I’m no artistic genius either.

I went to art school and thought I’d become a famous painter and lead a fascinating jet-setting life.

One problem though…

I was a lousy painter.

Things would start off okay, then I’d over-work the canvas, then I’d try to fix it, then it was a total mess.

By my second semester, I’d wisely switched to another medium.

My parents even took down my paintings over a decade and a half ago – a few years with them was enough of a struggle.

But I’ve still got a painter’s cockiness and swagger. I think that because I understand color and texture and shape and design, I can conquer any visual task – even a painterly one.

This is the only instance I have of over-confidence.

I’m also cheap.

And I like old sh*t.

So when I saw what was under our unfortunately rather new, but horrid, fake wood floating floor in the kitchen, I exploded in glee to see the original Armstrong linoleum floor in “Tuscany Tan” spatter pattern, c. 1954.

Then I pulled up more to find a hole the size of a Spaniel in a very conspicuous area, so I called a flooring guy to write up a quote for new linoleum.*

The cost for the new stuff nearly made me come in contact with said floor, but we could make it work by buying the cheaper versions of some other things in which we intended to splurge.

We pulled up the rest of the floor last weekend… and the rest of it was good!

A few hours later found me in the craft store buying oil paints.

(I can’t find my 20-year-old mostly unused paints at the moment – maybe I gave them away?)

I filled the hole with wood filler, sanded it, and started to make my trompe l’oeil masterpiece.

Only it was really, really off.

Naples yellow hue is really just beige, and my green needed to be mixed with some blue, so I went back to the store for a couple more tubes.

And then I got to the point where I started overworking it.

And then N became a backseat painter.

He almost became painted and feathered (or sawdusted).

And in the end, it is convincing enough.

I need to scrub off a little more of the yellowy wax build-up in the surrounding area (which I should have done before I painted) and with a few coats of sealant, it should be even better?

We still have another floor guy coming out to give another quote this week just in case…

Oh, and rugs, right? One of those will help it even more!

But really, this is better for all even if it isn’t perfect – being “green” is most effective when you can keep what you’ve got. I’m able to donate the ugly but still perfectly use-able floating floor to a charity building organization too.

*Linoleum is not vinyl, it’s made of linseed oil, and is historically appropriate and “green.” This also does not contain asbestos as did other similar resilient tile flooring before the 1980s.

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Filed under art school, home, home decor, recycling

Tagged as 1950s floor, 1950s kitchen, art school flunky, conserving linoleum, green remodeling, linoleum, oil paint, painting, restoring linoleum, spatter pattern, tuscany tan, vintage floor, vintage kitchen