Red Ladder Back Chairs Take a Backseat From The Dining Room But Are Front And Center In Breakfast Nook

A few days ago I showed you the dining chairs that I found at a consignment shop and the subsequent reupholstering in white. In that post I mentioned that my red ladder back chairs, who had been married to my farmhouse dining table for over ten years, had to go since the dining and living room is being designed using all neutrals.

Today, I am showing you where they ended up...in my breakfast nook. I don't know if I should call it a nook, because this area has very large, wonderful french windows which open up to the outdoor living space. So it is not really very 'nooky,' but you get the point.  Perhaps, I need a new name for the area. If you got one, please share it!

I found this super gorgeous round glass top pedestal table at one of my favorite consignment stores. I loved it the moment I set my eyes on it, but felt like it had a lofty price attached to it.  But after doing a little research, I learned that was made by the fine furniture company Henredon and had gone for well over 5 times what it was currently priced.  I ask myself, "Who the heck spends all that money on such a table and then just decides to sell it for next to nothing?"  Well, their stupidity is my gain! (wink)

This nook (I swear I need a new name) is adjacent to my family room, which I showed you a peek in my blog post.  The slipcover fabrics and the rug have the same cranberry red color in them, so the chairs were perfect.  We eat at this table frequently and I love the glass top because it is easy to wipe up with a little spritz of Windex and a paper towel.

I change out the top of the table every few days.  My sister, Lisa, just found this totally cute little green owl at Salvation Army for me.  As many of you know, I give my owls a white paint face lift.  But, I think he will stay green for now.  We have had a debate going on about that hole in his chest.  Any guesses as to why that hole is there?  Come on...give me a guess.  Let's see if we can come up with it!

So I've have done a lot of things like this around my new house.  I am hoping to get around and get images so you can see some of my progress.  Hope it inspires you in some way.  Hey! one more image of that awesome table base!

To die for! Hope you have a great weekend!  I'm getting out and enjoying some of this sunshine.  That Tropical Storm we had lingering over us last weekend was a bummer.  Gonna go put my face in the sun.

-The End-

Dining Chair Transformation: From Drab to White and Fab

I have a billion projects going at once.  I am so busy with them that have not been good about blogging about any of them!  In fact, today I went on a treasure hunt in consignment shops and forgot to take my camera!  I haven't posted in a week, so I thought I would share something that I am pretty excited about.

About a month ago, I was hunting around in a consignment store looking for all sorts of stuff, when I found these dining chairs.  Before we even closed on the new house, I knew that I wanted to make the foyer, living and dining room all in whites and neutrals.  Since my farmhouse dining table had red ladder back chairs, I knew I would have to switch them out.  Don't worry though, those red ladder backs are super happy in a new location that I might show you soon.

before

So back to the chair I found.  I knew the light wood was perfect for my farmhouse table and the wonderful shell motif across the top of the back added a nice tropical "I live in Florida" feel.  I didn't care about the fabric on them and it's a good thing because this fabric is u g l y!   I knew that I was most likely going to have them recovered.  I have the best upholsterer, Chris Green, so all I had to do was find the perfect chairs and fabric.  I knew these chairs were most likely pretty high end and after doing a little research, I found out that they were in fact, Bernhardt dining chairs that were originally about $425 each!  The gal selling them had marked them down three times and after speaking with her, she took $80 each for them. Steal!  

I checked out Calico Corners for fabric, but in the end used materials ordered through Chris.  Since white dining chairs can be a frightful thought.  I mean, what happens when Sloppy Poppy comes over and spills in his lap?!!  My solution?  White leather seat cushions, leaving the lovely white on white floral silk pattern for the backs.  The leather is easily wiped clean of any spills.

Chris just finished them this week and delivered them.  I'm in love! They look great in the dining room, which I will show you at another time.  It's still being re-designed.

After

After

One of the fun projects that is keeping me from blogging.  I am hoping to get better about this. I promise!

-The End-

Reminder: It's Summer!

Our son on the tube just off the coastline back in 2010

My hubby and I used to be avid boaters.  It is one of the reasons that we lived on the canal at our last house.  It afforded us access to the ocean.  We had many fun years as the kids were growing spending days out on the boat and even taking several trips down to The Florida Keys and over to the Bahamas for long weekends.  But like everything in life, things change.  Our kids became teenagers and spending a weekend day on the boat with their parents took a second seat to hitting the beach or shopping mall with friends.

So when we made this move miles from the coastline, we knew that in some way we still needed to be connected to the water.  Not in the sense of access to the ocean, just connected to some sort of body of water.  This is why we bought a house on a large lake or should I say, why we found this house more appealing than others.  It allowed us to perhaps keep our dingy.  Yep, a dingy.  Which for those of you who might not know what I am talking about, its an inflatable raft style boat that many boaters have on or tethered to their boats for mobility when docked in marinas.

We sold out boat, but we couldn't part with the dingy.  You see, the dingy was the center of many of our fun late weekend afternoons.  We would lower it into the canal, filled with a snack and a bottle of wine or pitcher of margaritas and crawl around the neighborhood canals.  I am sure that plenty of our neighbors got a kick out of us.  One neighbor use to say, "Hey there you are...the "canal rats!"



So yesterday after lunch out and picking up his Father's Day present, which was an electric motor for the dingy, we wheeled the dingy down to the lake for it's maiden voyage. 

We cruised around the lake, checking out a few of the houses that we looked at during our search to see if they had sold.  We saw several little turtles stick their heads up to look and dart down into the lake grasses.  We also saw several people fishing from their backyards.


We came upon this one man at the southern end of our lake sitting in his yard fishing.  As we approached his area, we over heard him call into the house to his wife and say, "Ya gotta come out here and see this boat!"  I guess canoes and kayaks are the norm.  An inflatable must be an unusual site.  


Oh well, I have never been a very mainstream normal kinda gal.  I'm not going to change it now.  We chuckled and motored on, but on our return past this fisherman, my eye caught something even more unusual than our dingy.  Check this out...

The Blue Heron looking like he is going to sit in the chair.

Look at the Blue Heron.  The big bird looks like he ran the man out of his chair and is intending on sitting down and taking a rest himself!  So I call out to the man, "Looks like you have a friend that is about to take your seat!"  He responds, "The only thing that big bird is looking for is the fish that I catch!"  He went onto to explain that we have three resident Blue Herons and that this particular one shows up whenever he is fishing hoping to get a hand out.  As we got closer, our dingy spooked the grand monster and he took off running.

Spooked bird taking a run for it.  

Guess this bird isn't use to such a watercraft in the lake as well!  I don't know if from the image you can get an idea of the size of this bird.  He would stand as high as my shoulder for sure.  I love seeing them fly.  It's such a loping, majestic glide.  Kinda 'lopey' like my hubby. Here he is captain of his ship on it's maiden lake voyage on his 18th Father's Day.

That smile is purely from happiness, the margaritas had nothing to do with it. (wink)  Hope you all had a wonderful weekend.  Remember, it's summer.  Time to slow it down a bit and enjoy the gifts around us.  Have you thought about how you are going to stop and reflect and just enjoy this summer? What simple thing do you have planned?  If not, get thinking about it! Life too short to spend your days unpacking boxes, err, doing chores, err fixing up that room.  Like I said...remember, it's summer...

-The End-

Favorite Furnishings Make For A Room With A Hug

More is...well, more. I had a sister in law who use to needle me with a less is more mantra. Yet, her house was cluttered with...well, clutter.  More is more doesn't mean too much is too much.  It means surround yourself with everything you love, not everything you have.  It's like a great big hug.

A room in my new house is done. It is the room with all my recovered furniture from last year. I talked about this furniture redo in my blog post Slipcovers Revealed.  In addition, I added all my little whatnots. This is stuff I have collected over the years including shells from vacations and such.  

Unpacking boxes can be a daunting task.  But it can hold a fun element.  As I was unpacking all my hoards of junk treasures, I found myself enjoying opening each ball of paper.  It was like re-discovering the joy of having collected these things all over again. Birthday gifts from....me.  I even found myself guessing what was inside before unwrapping them.  Remember that Halloween party game where you had to reach into a bag without looking and guess the contents?  Like that, only better because my ears were not being told that it was human brains as my hand was touching cooked, cold macaroni shells.  

Getting back to the point, this room is my little hug.  It has my favorite fall-into furniture along with my little loves. Not that this room is that little, I realize.  It has some lofty ceilings and a pretty amazing fireplace. Notice that awesome black glass top table in the middle?  Just picked that up in a consignment store for a song!

So, between the crazy combinations of fabrics, eclectic furnishings, this is one of those more is more spots that I love.  That old sister in law isn't in our lives anymore, but I bet she would agree that sometimes, more can be more.  Less is more....really?  What was she really saying anyway.  (wink)

-The End-
Linking to:
Show and Tell Friday

The Truth and a Chandy

Okay, so.  I'm just gonna put it out there. Yep. The truth.  Not that I think you guys ever thought I spoke anything but the truth.  Sometimes...I speak way too much truth. But that's just me.  So why would that change at the ripe old age of 48.  Yep. 48.  I turned that this past month while away from my blog.

An iPhone pic from moving out of the former home.

So the truth.  After moving 8 times since 1988, buying and purchasing and selling, buying and purchasing and selling over and over again, we have landed the house of my dreams.  Now, before you get all excited for me, I have to tell you something.  In order to get such a place, we had to find someone willing to walk away from an over improved home and had to buy it "As Is."  That real estate term, in case you don't know it, states that the buyer is purchasing the property in the current state regardless of the condition of anything releasing the seller from the 2 percent clause. (If you don't know what the 2 percent clause is, look it up...not boring you here with that!!)  Outside all the legal jargon, we have learned that with THIS house the term "AS IS" means "Everything is broken!"  Ha!  We didn't even do formal inspections!!  Guess what?  We still don't care!  Sometimes, ya gotta be willing to overlook the faults, bite the bullet and get what you want vowing to fix what you can as you go.  This is where we find ourselves.

So the last month, we have been in fix it mode.  You know, the boring stuff like appliance repair, and appliance repair...and oh, and appliance repair!  But that doesn't mean that I haven't had some fun finding some great things.  For example, the seller decided to strip the house of a few items that needed to be replaced, like the ceiling light fixture in the foyer.  Yep, he took lighting.  Oh well, this means that I get pick my own.

I set out to all my favorite consignment stores looking for the perfect chandy.  I didn't look at antique places or thrift shops for this.  I needed something a little more special, newer and such.  But you know me, I am a bargain person and I was not going to pay full retail of this item!  Oh no!  It took me a few days to nail it.  In fact, I found this one day in a consignment store over by my daughter's former school (remember I talked about that 3 hours of driving in my last blog post) and am glad that I stopped to check out the place. I am super duper excited about the lighting fixture that I found.  I just got it installed in the foyer and took these snap shots to show you.

How totally cool is this fixture?!!  I just love the glass flowers and the droplets.  It was super hard to transport and install.  Lost a few pieces along the way.  But it has such a WOW factor at my front door.  Don't you think?!

It's not for everyone, but it is for me.  I'm kinda glad the guy who sold me this house took the light fixture.  His was probably ugly anyway.  I like mine just fine and it didn't set me back too badly.  Sometimes, if you stay positive, it all works out!

-The End-

I've Been Away Too Long

I've taken breaks from The Homeless Finch in the past due to vacations and the like.  But, it has been 7 weeks since my last post.  Funny...it feels longer.  I never anticipated being away like this, but the transition into the new house has been way more than I anticipated.  Until the end of last week, we have been driving my daughter to her previous school.  The drive took a full hour and a half two times a day.  It was worse than it sounds...really.  It's okay because anyone can do anything for a short period of time, right?

Even though we have moved 7 times since 1988, this one was much more difficult. Was it because we moved pretty far from our previous houses?  (If you are not counting the move out of state and back into state in one year just over ten years ago.)  Probably not.  Was it the timing?  My daughter having not graduated from 8th grade yet and a son struggling to keep decent grades after too many changes in his life this past year?  Maybe.  Am I getting older? Yep. Probably.   All this and more has made it next to impossible for me to find time to even read my favorite blogs, let alone write mine.

So, I'm easing back in.  I've started reading some of my favorite blogs and this post will be my 'toe in the water' attempt to write again.  I don't know what direction The Homeless Finch will take this year.  I certainly have a ton of house posts I could write, but am very hesitant to make home decor the center focus of The Homeless Finch.  ....  or maybe I will.   Hey, maybe I will just take one day at a time and we can all see how things develop.  I have plans to paint several pieces of art specifically for rooms in my house.  I know I will be sharing the process and finished works for sure.  Sound good?

For now, I will show you two images I took on my iPhone a few days apart.  I go and sit in this spot to rest and relax between unpacking boxes. It's the lake view from the cabana out by the pool.

Yes, you are correct.  In the second image I might just have been also enjoying a nice, crisp glass of white wine!  Love this spot.  Perhaps I will talk more about it later.

-The End-