Vintage Beach Chairs

In anticipation of our recent trip to the coast, Hubby mentioned wanting to bring comfy beach chairs. After taking a peek at what the local stores offered and not being entirely impressed with the prices or the options, I remembered a pair of vintage beach chairs that we had stored in our shed, waiting for me to find the time to refurbish them. One no longer had its cloth seat, and the other seat was so brittle it disintegrated in my hands while taking it off the wood frame. Hubby did some light repairs to the frames, and I sewed two seats from brightly patterned decorator's fabric that I purchased rather inexpensively, a modern floral/paisley print for one chair, and a beachy stripe for the other.  I sanded the wooden frames and freshened them up with a couple coats of paint, a color quite reminiscent of drift wood...perfect for beach chairs, I would say. 

The whole process really didn't take long, and the cost to repair both chairs was less than the cost of purchasing one beach chair at a retail store.  I am delighted with our "new" old chairs, and, like I have said before, it was so rewarding to breath new life into something we already had.

Never to Return to the Red Room

I'm sorry for my absence and sporadic posting. I've certainly missed being here on a regular basis, but it has been a busy (and a bit stressful) the past few weeks here at Front Forty Farm.  It's amazing how much goes on in a day with twelve people, of all different ages, living under one roof.  I wake in the morning with plans to accomplish certain things, but by 9:00 am most of those plans have been thrown out the window, and new ones have taken their place.  We all have cabin fever and are ready for a change. We are ready for spring.  It's coming, I know, but with snow, wind and single digit temperatures again this past weekend, it certainly didn't feel like spring. We remain hopeful, though, knowing winter never lasts forever. One of my cures for cabin fever, as some of you probably know from past posts, is cleaning, tidying and changing things up a bit in the house, so I decided it was finally time to change the "red room", time for a lighter, more cheerful color. Time to actually do it!

Remember the red?

The color is "Cargo Pants" from Sherwin Williams. It's a lovely greyish-green...just enough green to keep the grey from being drab, but not so much green that it actually looks green.  Does that make sense?  I absolutely love the color and the change it brought to this room.  And the best part?  The change only cost us the price of one gallon of paint.  Hubby has a stash of paint in the basement that he has saved from past construction jobs, and we looked through the colors he had.  I was skeptical at first, not thinking he would have a color that was suitable.  If I was going to put all that time and effort into painting the "red room", the new color had to be just right.  I was pleasantly surprised, though, when we found a gallon of "Cargo Pants", and was even more surprised when I found that it only took two coats of that light color to cover the heavy, dark red.  We only had to purchase one more gallon of paint.

It took me about a month to complete the project because I could only work on it on Saturdays when we all took a break from school lessons.  I kept my goal to one wall at a time, so that I didn't feel overwhelmed by the immensity of the project, and I finally put the finishing touches on it this past Saturday.  I am so pleased with the results.  The room is fresh and airy, and it brightens my spirits whenever I walk into it.  I picked a few branches from my forsythia bush and put them in a vase of water on the piano, hoping to force the buds to open.  For now the "red room",which, thankfully, is no longer red, is my breath of fresh air, my "spring "amidst all the snow and mud.

New Use for Vintage Tablecloths

I love vintage tablecloths and have a hard time resisting when I find them for a good price at thrifts shops or antique stores. I have accumulated a small collection of striped, floral, fruit patterns, and checks.  They are so bright and cheery and reminiscent of days gone by.  I have discovered, though, that most of the patterned ones I find are too small for our very large farmhouse table.  I do have a few heirloom linen and lace tablecloths past down from my grandmother and great-grandmother that fit our table nicely, but the everyday tablecloths tend to be a bit smaller.  They still look pretty thrown on the table in a casual way with a jar of wildflowers or used on the picnic table, but I have found another use for my vintage tablecloths.

The other day after cleaning the bathroom and throwing the existing shower curtain into the laundry, I wanted to cover up the ugly vinyl curtain that remained.  I was in search of something summery, something that reminded me of picnics, 4th of July, sunny days at the beach, strawberries...and what do you think came to mind?  My vintage tablecloths, of course!  I dug out a few curtain rings, clipped them to the tablecloth, and hung them on the rod.  That was it...the perfect summery shower curtain!

Linking up with Living Well Spending Less.

Library Chair Makeover

Hubby and I purchased two old library chairs that had been used in our local library for years.  The caning in the chairs had long been replaced by thin pieces of board, and the boards themselves were old and water stained, taking away from the chairs' beauty.  Hubby intends to re-cane the chairs someday...someday when our lives aren't quite so busy...but for now I decided to cover the water stained boards with brightly colored fabric.  After the long winter, I felt our library needed some color. Although I love the neutral palette of the "wood smoke" walls (such an appropriate color name for a New England farmhouse, don't you think?), the white trim, and dark floors; a neutral back drop simply calls for a splash of color here and there. Adding fabric to the chairs' seats, I thought, was a good way to incorporate some color.  I searched through my fabric stash and found this lovely tangerine and grey fabric from Amy Butler's August Fields line.  I made a cotton muslin pillow to pad the seat of the chair just a bit, stapled the new fabric over the cushion and reattached the seat using upholstery tacks. I actually reused the ones used to originally attach the board to the chair. I'm quite pleased with the results and enjoy seeing the cheery splash of tangerine when I walk into the library.

Spring Sewing: throw pillows

Good morning!  Back to back posts, I know, that is unheard of for me.  See what happens when one takes a small break? I'm excited about getting things freshened up for spring...I feel like I'm preparing for a special guest, and, then, all of your sweet comments yesterday simply inspired me to share again today.

So, I decided I needed to do something about the big, red beast that takes up residence in our living room. It's hard for me to believe that at one point I actually liked this piece of furniture...but I did, and, in fact, I was so thrilled that this particular couch came in the color red. Red, I had a crush on red! When we first built our home we painted our mudroom barn red (which is now a pretty sky blue); our everyday dishes were red (eventually, many of them broke, and I was able to replace them with white); our piano room is currently red (I have plans for the very near future of changing that), and our couch is red...oh, and the barn is red and our front door is red.  What was I thinking?  I put myself in red overload.  I guess it felt warm, cozy...and maybe farm-housey. After moving from a rental house where all the walls and trim were white, I was starving for color, and the color red, evidently, fulfilled that craving. Well, I have outgrown my love of red. I still like it on the buildings outside and in small amounts.  I don't mind accenting in a bit of red here and there, especially in winter, but I tend to lean more towards the calming neutrals and soothing blues now. With days that are so full of activity and noise, I am now craving colors that create peace and tranquility.

I would like nothing more than to replace this big, ugly red couch with something more to my liking, but a new couch is not in the budget right now, so I decided some new throw pillows might make the red beast a bit more tolerable.  I couldn't resist this lovely songbird fabric when I found it on sale and bought enough for three pillows.  I paired it with a celery green, suede-like fabric for the back side, and using this tutorial I sewed three new throw pillows for our couch, adding buttons to the back of each.  I stuffed them with the old, ugly red throw pillows that came with the couch.  I'm happy with how they turned out, and the bright cheery birds do help make the beast a bit more tolerable.

Linked with Craft Frenzy Friday

Spring Sewing: a shower curtain

March, the official month of spring, has arrived!  Although the ground is still covered with snow and ice, the light is changing; the sun is bright; the skies are blue, and the days are getting longer.  Here in the northeast corner of New England, spring rarely arrives on its scheduled date; regardless, in ten days my calendar will tell me it's spring. Everything about me is yearning for spring...for the smell of thawing soil, the arrival of the songbirds and their lovely voices, the sight of bare ground and tiny green shoots poking up through the ever-warming earth, and the freedom of walking outside without bundling in layers of clothing first.

With spring comes spring cleaning.  This time of year I like to sort, clean, and tidy up, getting as much housework done as possible while we are still mainly inside, so that I am free to work outside once the weather turns warm.  (Oh, how those vegetable seeds sitting in my pantry call to me each time I walk in there!) Along with cleaning, I look for ways to replace the warm and cozy things of winter with items that give the house a lighter, fresher, more airy feeling.

I have recently been looking at shower curtains at local retail stores, drooling over the cheerful colors and patterns. I, however, always leave the store empty-ended, a bit discouraged at the high prices.  I decided that making one would be the best solution, and I found some lovely linen, decorator's fabric on sale for $3.00/yd. in the softest shade of pale blue. I purchased two yards and didn't cut any of it. I simply hemmed the edges of the entire piece and added buttonholes at the top.  For a fraction of what I would have spent purchasing a shower curtain retail, I have one that is quite suitable, I think. 

Thank you all for the sweet comments you left last week regarding my little break.  I made it through the craziness, and now I'm happy to be back.  The sun is shining, and the snow is melting (even if ever so slowly)...every day is one day closer to the cleansing spring air. See you soon, as I have more spring sewing that I want to share with you.  Thanks for stopping by and have a great day!

Linked with Nicole.

Two More Bedrooms

Construction has begun again on the addition. We have had to take it in phases. The first phase, consisting of a laundry/sewing room, library, and two bedrooms on the second floor, is complete.  The next phase is to finish two more loft bedrooms, which is actually "third" floor attic space that is being converted to bedrooms. The final phase will be the addition of a mud room and a small porch. Last winter as Hubby was framing one of the upstairs bedrooms in the addition, the idea came to him to break into the existing attic and create space for two more bedrooms. We spent an entire day cleaning out the attic, purging things that we should have gotten rid of years ago. It felt good to get rid of an entire room's worth of junk in preparation of turning that unused space into something useful.  One room is in the attic space of the new addition, and the other room is in the attic space of the existing house.  They are small with little or no wall space, cozy, tucked up high on the third floor, under the eaves...a perfect getaway for teenagers.  Hubby has a week home with us, so he has been working on putting tongue and groove pine on the ceilings, giving a comfortable, cabin-like coziness to these two rooms. I'm so excited about putting unused, possibly wasted space, to good use. Although the rooms are tiny, they will give my teenage daughters a place to call their own, a place they can retreat to. Being a member of a very large family is a blessing and has its many advantages, but, at times, one does need an escape. Going from cramming twelve people into three, rather small bedrooms to having seven bedrooms is quite a luxury. The kids have learned tolerance from the closeness of sharing a room with three sometimes four other siblings, and I am grateful for that, but I will gladly accept the blessing of added space.

I found some lovely inspiration rooms that I have pinned to one of my boards on Pinterest, and I wanted to share them with you, but I wasn't sure if I could post them here on my blog (copyright issues...not sure how that all works yet). I'll give you the links instead. One of our rooms has skylights in the ceiling, like this inspiration room (just not nearly as big). How soothing to lie in bed and gaze up at the stars!
The second room we are building is similar to this inspiration room. I love the wood on the wall around the window and the simple, vintage, cabin-like feel to it, with one window between the eaves and very short knee walls, and how would you like to wake up on a snow day in either this room or this one?!?  I think our reclaimed space will be perfect for giving two of our children some space of their own.  I look forward to seeing how they personalize each space.