Pretty in Pink Foyer

I painstakingly finished hanging the pink Anthropologie "Thin Air" wallpaper in the Foyer this past weekend.  Not sure why I thought going around three arches with wallpaper was a good idea. But luckily Joe came to the rescue with brand new razor blades.  As you recall I did one wall late last year and Santa brought me two more rolls for Christmas so I could appease my anal retentiveness and my need for continuity.   So it went okay, but I highly recommend a pattern that doesn't necessarily need to line up, unless you don't mind spending gobs of money on wallpaper and don't mind a lot of waste. I am pretty frugal by nature at least when it comes to throwing things in the garbage so I was happy I could use every last inch of this wallpaper. 

We really have two foyers, since I'm standing in the first one with gray stripes by the front door looking into my pink one.  Joe says this is my Winchester Mystery House. If you don't know the story of Mrs. Winchester, she was constantly changing her house without the help of any professional so things were haphazard. It was meant as a compliment that I can continue experimenting at my leisure in what things make me happy.  I don't follow rules, just having fun and learning as I go. 

I still have a cute little pink poinsettia in the foyer. The last of the Christmas Decor. 

My boys aren't really keen on the color pink and floral designs.  But hopefully if they stare at this house long enough they will come to appreciate it. Insert evil laugh *here.*

I need dining room Chair advice!  I am tiring of these ruffles on the Parson chairs. I can either try to find Parson chair covers that are more modern and tailored. Or I can try to find some pretty vintage arm chairs.  I will keep you posted. 

I am so happy to have this finished. Wallpaper is quite frankly a pain in the @ss.  I guess that's why they recommend professionals tackle this.  

I'm off to frame some new art.  Happy Monday!

xo

Cathleen

 

Persian Rugs

Happy New Year!! Spent the whole day on the 1st of the year putting away Christmas decorations, cleaning, and displaying some new items for the new Year!  A few rugs from Turkey came, a beautiful runner in pinks and blues for the upstairs hallway and a "prayer" rug for entry way into the kitchen. 

I absolutely love the quality of vintage rugs. You can't even compare them with new rugs. They were built to last. This runner is from the 1950's and has minimal wear.  I purchased a thick rug pad to go underneath to both protect the floor and the rug from more wear. 

This rug is 11' long by about 3' wide.  It really brightens up the hallway.

And downstairs I got this 4' by 3' prayer rug in teal.  I love the color so much and it brings life to this little space. 

I'm waiting on one additional rug for the kitchen and in the meantime, I will be adding more wallpaper to these curved walls. Wish me luck!

xo

Cathleen
 

Painting a garage entry

Well we're almost done unpacking! And projects are under way in the new house. We couldn't wait to get started and we've been painting, sanding, wood cutting fools for the past two weeks.  One of the first things I did because it was easy enough, was stain the staircase in the garage and paint the inside garage door.  Here is a before shot of the bare wood.

I added Minwax Wood Finish stain in Ebony.

I applied it with a brush and let it dry for a day and then added 2 coats of water based Minwax polycrylic polyurethane in a semi-gloss finish. I sanded between coats.  My puppy looks out into the garage to see what I'm doing. Don't worry, it's dry!

The door got two coats of Valspar's Sea Sparkle in a satin finish. It happened to be one of the paints we took with us that I never got around to using.

The bookcase fit perectly in this space. I found it at the Habitat for Humanity Restore for $25. I was going to use it in the house, but decided we needed garage organization stat!  If you notice the garage walls are unfinished.  At some point down the road we'd like to paint the walls and add rafters, shelves, and some cabinets.

I'm happy to have finally found some time to write and hope to keep sharing these little (and bigger) projects with you.

xo
Cathleen

New front door again!

Well I think it's finally time we show you our new front door! It's been well over a month since we changed it out.  We will have a warm place in our hearts for our old yeller, I mean old yellow. But it was time to say goodbye. See pics below.

When Joe said we had "rot" I hardly could believe him. I mean we just replaced the door a few years ago. But the way our porch sits and our awnings hang and with the gutters that never seem to work right, the rain water just took over. Here is the bottom corner of the door where most of the rot was occurring. Joe decided that the whole door and frame needed replacing. Again. Le Sigh.

First Joe used his box cutter tool to carefully remove the trim around the door frame so he didn't peel off my cute stripes on the wall.

I'm not to go into a lot of detail here about replacing a door since you can read that on our original door post (see link above.)  But here is the door and interior casing removed.

And here's the old door, about to be put on the curb, ready for a random Craig's List user perusing the "for free" section.

While Joe got everything aligned and properly fitting (his circular saw got a lot of work on the outside door opening), I got to pick a fun new color for our door and I was leaning towards something more subtle and looking for a change.  I decided to go with this fun light blue called "Sea Sparkle" by Valspar in an exterior high gloss.  We also decided to change out the handle/lock with oil rubbed bronze hardware from Lowes. Our old lock and handle was peeling pretty badly and I didn't want to spray paint it again to have the same thing happen. Another lesson learned.

I love the new color against the gray siding with pops of dark black fixtures. Oh and this was taken during October since our black wreath is still on the door.

And I just couldn't get my mind off wanting to change the inside door color. White was just so boring and after looking at so many black interior doors I had to try it on ours. Now was my chance! Here is the BEFORE shot of our door.

And here is the AFTER:

I chose "Dark Kettle Black" also by Valspar in a Semi-gloss finish.  I didn't want to risk all the brush strokes showing up, but I regret not going with a high gloss. I think it could have been more dramatic.   I'm glad that whole door fiasco is over and we can move on.  Oh and we almost bought a storm door to solve the rot problem, but we are going to give it some time and see how it goes.  We're not sure we're "storm door" people yet. :)

And I can't believe it's already December! Where did all the time go?

xo
Cathleen

Summer windows

It's not Summer yet, doesn't even feel like Spring. But it's never too early to start looking forward to it and brightening things up in your home.  I decided to take down our dark gray curtains and put up white ones. I needed some more natural light. These curtains are from Target, called Threshold Grayson Grommet Window Panel Pair in white. I purchased two sets.  But I'm thinking about heading back for some sheer grommet curtains to fill in the blanks. 

Here they are closed and you can see they still let in lots of light.

I think it's time to remove those curtain tie backs. Won't be using those at all.  

And a view you may recognize from last week of our entry way.  And oh, the curtains are a tad too short, so it looks like I may have to lengthen them in the near future.  We put up the curtain rod ourselves when we moved in, to fit the curtains we originally hung, so changing the curtains to store bought curtains unfortunately means they won't fit the same. A tip for future curtain installers.

xo
Cathleen

Entry Way updates

Now that our new flooring has been installed, it's high time I posted some pics of it!  Especially since I need to update the House Tour on this blog.  So here we have our entryway!  Some of the pics on the wall have been updated since the last post as well. 

This view is looking at the entry way from the front windows.

The flooring really ties all the colors together better than the old flooring.

The round art on the left is new from Urban Outfitters. It's a picture of two squirrels and says "I'm nuts about you."  It looks like an old embroidered piece of fabric.

I'm still loving our bright yellow door especially with the new spring wreath.

And one look down our hallway again, sans the rug so you can get a look at those rustic looking floors.

Happy Friday everyone!
xo
Cathleen

Spring Wreath

Found myself a cute Spring wreath finally, after testing out a Peacock wreath that didn't really work out. 

I think it does a great job at toning down the yellow door too. Oh and don't mind the lock box on our handle. We're still waiting on our reconstruction company to come by and finish up paperwork on the kitchen.

So cheery right?   I found it at Michaels for 50% off the $34 price tag.  I think it would have been much more to make this myself.  

Glad it's finally spring time!

xo
Cathleen

Peacock Wreath

I thought a Peacock wreath for the PeaHen Pad would be a great idea. I loved the colors and the idea of it.  Until I got home and put it on the door.  Sadly, it looked like it was Fall again and from afar screemed "Haalloweeeeeen!"  

There's just something about it that didn't work.  Maybe it's the placement? Was it too big? Too low? Wrong time of year?

Sadly my Peacock friend was returned to Michaels where it was purchased. Maybe I'll return to buy it next Fall when it could definitely work, but in the meantime I'm still on the search for a more Spring time wreath.

Have you found the perfect Spring time wreath? I'd love to see it!

xo

Cathleen

Quick porch updates

Before things get ugly and creapy around here with October shortly upon us, I thought I would have some cheery and fun things to spruce up our entry way beforehand. We've been enjoying these little updates since the beginning of September when I knew my daughter's birthday was just around the corner. We wanted things to look nice out there and never really did any updating since our house was painted just a few months ago. 

So while on a trip to Lowes to look for flowers, I found a few other things that I thought would be nice for our front porch.  Check out this adorable vintage bicycle on a mat! I just love everything about it. The dark background, with the cute green bird and "hello" and of course the bicycle complete with basket.  It really did have me at hello.  And for $12 bucks at Lowes it was worth it.

I decided that the pink petunias had seen their last days, so I got purple and white petunias for my porch pot. That one little red one snuck up on me.

I switched out my hanging planter with dead flowers for my glass mosaic lantern. This does the trick for Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Christmas. No need to worry about plants that don't survive the winter and I get to have a pretty candle burning on cold winter nights.  I love the sparkle it brings to our front porch.

And what goes so well with our yellow front door? Yellow Mums of course!  These pretty babies were just $1.47 at Lowes.  I needed two to fill the pot.

These were a little splurge. They are perrenials and are a type of phlox. They need lots of sunlight so not sure how they will survive flanking our steps but we shall see.  Gosh, and it looks like we have some touch ups to do on our porch.

And look at all that beautiful black mulch.  I bought two bags to fill in around our front plants and it really feels finished now.

Just two weeks left until October is here! Can you believe it?  We are uber excited here at the Peahen Pad!
Have you spruced up your front porch for the upcoming Fall season? We would love to see photos.

xo
Cathleen