Archive for the ‘after’ Category

The Great Rearrangement

Thursday, October 21st, 2010

Marvel at the power of human beings moving things. Things like coffee tables.

Remember this one from Craigslist? BOOM. In the den now.

The giant Burly Beast? BOOM. Living room.

It only weighs about 500lbs. I think I blew a gasket and The Boy has a shiny new hernia.

Still need a new mantel.

What about lights? You might have noticed the new Craigslist bubble lamp made its way into the bedroom.

But what of the lucite/gold motherf*cker?

BOOM. Guest bedroom.

Which means the Sputnik had to find a new home…

BOOM. Back to the den.

See that? How I made that circle back to the den? Those are blogging skills.

As you can see we moved some stuff around, moved other things to storage and are testing out the new arrangement. So far? Good to go. Weather and schedules have been a little nuts, so exterior projects have been put on hold. Which gets me all itchy for change and then the interior takes the brunt of my crazy.

FILED UNDER: after, bedroom, decorating, den, electrical, furniture, guest bedroom, lighting

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Cleaning Vintage Paintings

Friday, September 24th, 2010

Lisa H. emailed asking for some advice on how to clean an oil painting she recently found at a thrift store.

Above is an example of a filthy painting I just pulled out of my garage. Since I buy so many paintings at thrift stores, I use a little trick that gets years of grime off easily and quickly. The secret?

Bread! Doughy white bread to be exact.

Well, we didn’t have any white bread laying around except for this old bagel, which if you hate carbs would count as evil evil bread. What you need is the interior surface of the bread exposed. Either get a precut loaf of bread or cut something in half. Just get to the squishy white part.

Rub the soft side all over the painting. Don’t push hard, just gently run the bread all over the surface. The bread will pick up all the grime and grossness like a sponge.

Once your bread is filthy, toast it up and slap some jam on it. Or throw it away. That’s your call.

Use an extra clean piece of bread to do the final gentle rub down and your grime should be gone.

The grime may be gone but there will be residual bread crumbs all over the place. I use a clean soft bristle paint brush to wipe them all off and get rid of any remaining gunk.

That’s it, you’re done. Feel free to hang it anywhere your little heart desires.

Bam!

BEFORE & AFTER

FILED UNDER: after, before, DIY, tutorial

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Front Door, Finished

Monday, August 23rd, 2010

The front door needed a few final tweaks to make it the bomb shit. We patched up the old hinge holes left after the screen door was removed and slapped on a few final coats of paint.

Pur-tty. Like they were never there.

You know what fills an old hinge hole really well? Paint stir sticks from Home Depot. We’ve patched a fair amount of old hinge holes using stir sticks and somehow they are the perfect width and depth. Trim it to height, glue it in the hole, nail it, wood filler, sand it down and BAM! No more old hinge hole.

The door is looking pretty snazzy. We planned on painting the porch on Sunday but it was soooo hot and I was so exhausted. Sunday marked the end of my long summer work schedule, so I’m free, free to work on the house on the weekends again!

Instead of working on anything though we just ended up lounging in the tank pool and watching True Blood.

Even with all the frustration of fixing and patching the front door instead of getting a new one, I’m pretty happy with the result. We have four more doors to install in the back of the house, and we will definitely go the new route. Now finding affordable modern single light glass doors is the new goal.

I can’t wait to landscape, it’s long overdue. The front of the house is looking so sexy that the weeds are kind of like Alexander Skarsgard with a shirt on. Totally ruins the view.

FILED UNDER: after, DIY, exterior

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