Winter is here ... Bring on the decorating

 

 

Last Saturday morning we met the plow just down the road from our house.

Our neighbor, Jeff, just hanging off the side for the fun of it I guess.

 

 

Monday morning, the sky was a beautiful blue with those typical winter clouds hanging over the north.

 

Wednesday night we were stuck in our first snowplow brigade of the season.

For those of you who are not familiar with a snowplow brigade, it's when 2 to 3 snowplows line up side by side to plow the highways. They always crawl at a ridiculously slow pace (especially during rush hour) and there is always a line of cars behind them.

 

To celebrate this onslaught of wintery delight, I started my Christmas decorating this week.

 

I would like to introduce:

Belvedeer and Pelicandish,

 

 

Krismoose,

 

Snodude,

 

And I think we all know, Flounder and Sebastian.

 

The grandkids seem to enjoy them and they don't fit in with most of my decorating so these guys occupy the bathroom over the holidays. Actually, I think it was one of my grandkids who left the string of beads wrapped around the shell.

 

On my kitchen counter, I keep my cake dish occupied so I don't feel like I have to keep cake around all the time.

 

 

My little snowman occupies the back hall.

 

 

One of my newest additions this year is my Amish children on a sled.

These little things are cast iron and quite heavy for their size.

 

 

That's about all the decorating I've done so far.

Maybe by the end of the weekend I'll have some more done???

Maybe not.

 

 

 

 



Grandma's Dresser Makeover (Victim #1)

Earlier this year I inherited my grandmother's bedroom set.
Which is fine...but...
#1... I really did not need a bedroom set.
#2... I didn't want to see the set thrown out.
#3... I don't like the idea of having my bedroom cluttered up with huge pieces of furniture.
#4... I needed to find new uses for the set and until I did, it looked like this...

For almost 2 months, I had this pile in my spare room just waiting for .... inspiration.

I decided baby steps were the way to go. I'm going to work on one piece at a time and make each piece find a new home .... somewhere.

Victim #1.
The dresser.

It's large and it looks like it's packed with drawers. In actuality, there are only 6 drawers in the thing. 3 large and 3 small.

 

See, Large drawers.

 

 And, small drawers.

I removed the drawers.
Then I removed the guides from the 3 small side drawers and the large top drawer.

The hardware was showing it's age and was in need of a little help.

I took the hardware from the 2 large drawers that I was keeping with the dresser and poked the screws through an old pizza box so they would stand upright and make painting them easier.

They received a coat of black spray paint.

While I was waiting for the spray paint to dry, I started painting the dresser with CeCe Caldwell's Hershey Brown (which is now called Virginia Chestnut).

Now,
this picture was taken after it started getting dark out so I had to use my flash which bleached the color out a bit but this paint actually does dry much lighter than it looks like it's going to... so, technically, this is the actual color of the paint when it's dry...even though it's wet at this point.

 

 

Got all that?

 

Good.

 

Moving on...

 

I applied a coat of CeCe Caldwell's Clear Wax.

 

 

 Attached the newly painted hardware.

 

 

And now I have a much improved entertainment center for my living room.

 

Pay no attention to the dust. I was in a hurry to take pictures because I needed to put my fall decorations away.

Because.... Today, I started decorating for Christmas.

 

I thought I would go with this handmade horse drawn log sleigh that I usually have on top of my kitchen cupboards. I'll probably tweak this a few times before I'm completely satisfied but for now I like it.

 



 

 

Now on to Victim #2 of grandma's dresser set. 

The left over drawers.

The Great Dresser Makeover...well, maybe not that great.

I inherited this dresser from my grandson.

It appears he's a bit tough on furniture.

 

 

A bit of dirt.

I'll call this a bit of dirt because poor lighting made the picture a bit yellowish.

 

Only 1 knob left out of 10.

 

Some random pencil marks.

 

Broken drawer.

 

And coffee cup stains....hmmm (he's only 7).

 

His mother did the art work in a desperate attempt to make it interesting.

 

First thing I did was give the whole dresser a few coats of CeCe Caldwell's Sedona Red.

 

 

Now this already looks better but I had the broken drawer to deal with.

 

 

I found a random piece of thin plywood in the basement left over from when we built our house. I held it up to the front of the dresser and marked where the side needed to be cut.

I used clamps to secure the wood to my picnic table,

closed my eyes (almost),

and cut along the line I had drawn.

Took the piece back in the house and slid it into place

(actually astonished that it fit), 

marked where the overhang out the front needed to be cut,

clamped it down once again to the picnic table,

and made the second cut.

 

 

This was my first time ever using a power saw.

Not too bad if I do say so myself.

 

Now I have a shelf instead of a drawer.

 

 

I decided that it was a little on the flimsy side and needed a bit more support so I added a small strip of wood under the ledge.

 

 

Then I painted the inside of the shelf.

 

 

Next I applied a coat of CeCe Caldwell's Satin Finish.

 

 

It looks a little funky when you first paint it on but it dries nice and smooth.

 

 

The next issue I had to deal with was my lack of drawer pulls.

Since new knobs don't come cheap, I had to get a little creative.

Hello grandpa's old cobwebby basement. 

These will do just fine.

 

 

A little primer.

 

 

A little Paint.

 

And...wa...la...

 

 

(in case you were wondering about the screws in the center of the knobs... it looked like it was going to rain any minute and I needed to be able to pick them up and move them at a moments notice. This way I can pick them up while the paint is wet without having to touch the knobs)

 

This is what I needed to attach the knobs to the dresser.

 

 

The washer in front to keep the bolt from falling through the hole in the knob.

 

 

2 nylon washers (spacers) in back to allow for a little depth between the knob and the drawer.

 

 

Much better.