Front Porch Decorating

I love my front porch. We live in a historic district and all the homes are about 100 years old.  Our home turns 100 this year. We have a brick street and a boulevard that the kids play in daily.  

 

Last year I decided to buy new furniture for the front porch. The rocking chairs are from Cracker Barrel. The chairs are from my collection that I painted. The tables are flee market finds.

This can be found on Etsy.

I love to sit on my front porch and watch my grandchildren play. Hope you enjoyed my porch tour!



Living Room Redecorating!

I started the living room redecorating by stripping the wallpaper.  We are living in the family home of my husband and his father started the tradition years ago to sign the walls each time the wall paper was stripped. We continued this tradition by letting our kids and grandkids sign the walls before we started.

 

Because we did not want to wallpaper again and the plaster walls need repair we used liner paper on the walls before we painted.  This is an easy way to cover ugly walls. We primed and painted the liner paper and then the decorating began.

I wanted to make a family tree like I had seen on Pinterest.  I started by finding a tree that I liked and penciling it on the wall. Then I took several different colors of acrylic brown and painted the tree/branches and added some as I went.

 

 

After the paint was complete I painted all the frame brown or used dark wood frames. I mixed old family pictures with new family pictures.

 

The remainder of the living room is decorated in a beach theme. I had several beach pictures and wanted to use them. I used the wall color from dining room as accent in the living room.

 

The "M" was bought at Hobby Lobby .

The star fish were bought at TJ Maxx .

I bought the picture frame at an thrift store and

painted it to match.

The Simplify sign can be custom made on Etsy.

 

 This sign is available on Etsy

 

The pillows I made from decorator fabric samples I bought from Joann Fabric and Craft Store.

The curtains were found at Kmart. They are a sheer teal blue.

 

So glad this is finished! Hope you enjoyed my living room redecorating tour!



Dining Room redecorating continued.

I showed you the walls of the dining room after I finished them, now I will show you some of the other things I did in dining room!

First step in redoing my dining room was to remove the wall paper.  I have always removed old wallpaper before putting on new paper.  Also I have always "sized" the walls. Sizing includes brushing or spraying wallpaper size or paste on the walls. This helps the new wallpaper stick better and also helps with the removal of old wallpaper.

The old wallpaper was easily removed. First I took the top vinyl off and that left the paper part of wallpaper. I used hot water in a spray bottle and saturated the paper. Then took a good scrapper and removed it easily.

Because my walls are plaster, and I didn't want to put up wallpaper this time, I needed to line the walls. I used a prepasted heavy duty wall liner paper. I put the wall liner on horizontally and mudded between the lines.  This made a beautiful surface to paint with no plaster cracks showing through!

My husband made a paint booth for me in the top of our garage. After taping all the spots I did not want spray painted, I sprayed my chandelier hammered black. I also sprayed the mirror frame black to match and used the same spray paint on the picture frames.

I used paper that looks like wainscoting for the bottom of the walls and put up a chair rail to finish off the walls.

My buffet and china cabinet were too dark to use in this new room so I painted them... below you will see the process that I used to antique them.

 

I painted the inside of the China cabinet black. I have White china so I thought this would make the china stand out.

On the outside of cabinets, I first painted them the color of my walls.

I followed the directions on the Valspar, Weathered Crackle Glaze I bought at Lowe's.

The buffet I did on a very warm, humid winter day and the china cabinet I did on a very cold, dry winter day.  The buffet turned out with more crackling on the humid day. So be careful about where and when you do your pieces. 

I couldn't find hardware in black that I liked so I took the old pieces and bought some new pieces from House of Antique Hardware and spray painted the black.

I love the way these pieces of furniture turned out and plan to do more soon!

 

 

 

 

Dining room walls!

While my husband is driving today I thought I would share some of my latest "kreations"!

This is the wall in my dining room!
The quote boxes I created. (My husband makes the boxes and I paint them.) You can find similar ones on my Etsy site or contact me for details to make your favorite verses/quotes into a box.
The flower pictures I found at TJ Maxx on clearance! The triple vase wall hanging I found at Jo-Ann Fabric. The shelf and design in top middle I found at Hobby Lobby! The crosses and angels were given to me as presents over the years! We hope to make some of the barbed wire and nail crosses to sell in the near future!

This is an old window that came out of our house. I found the wall art at Hobby Lobby. I cleaned the window with a scrub brush and reinforced the windows and removed the glaze that was loose. I cut the wall art to fit and placed it on wall first.
I like to use the Command removable picture hangers and I was able to hang this window with 4 of them!

This is the corner of my house that is decorated for season... Even if the rest of the house isn't decorated! I bought the ornament display tree from Improvements Catalog! I bought the decorations for each holiday from Hobby Lobby and Dollar Tree. The Quote Box is something I make and can be found in my Etsy shop! The candle holder on the wall is something we have had for years. I spray painted it black.
The pictures are black and whites of our historic neighborhood where we live! The frames were wood frames, bought at Sears, and I spray painted them black.

Until next post, may God Bless you and keep you!
Kate