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New Digs: Unusual Home Make-overs

Posted by claire to Decorating and Reuse on 8 June 2010, with 4 comments so far.


A dugout home, a la Laura Ingalls Wilder

When I was a kid, my dad read all of Laura Ingalls Wilder’s Little House on the Prairie books to me. I loved imagining life as a settler, and I was fascinated by the idea that for part of her life Laura lived in a house that they carved out of the ground. It seemed amazing to think that your walls, floor, and ceiling might all be made of dirt. As I was growing up in a very clean house I simply couldn’t imagine my mother letting the walls be made of dirt.


The Cave Home of Curt and Deborah Sleeper

In a recent slide show on extreme home make-overs, The New York Times looked at several innovative approaches to making existing spaces into homes. Laura’s dirt house came to mind when I saw Curt and Deborah Sleeper’s Sandstone Cave Home in Festus, MO.

The Sleepers had been living in cramped quarters with their two children when an eBay property caught their eye. The three acres of land also featured an empty sandstone cave that was once a quarry. In the days of Laura Ingalls Wilder, a dugout home not only kept the family from all the elements, the earth that surround the home acted as a thermal layer for the home, keeping the space warmer in the winter and cooler in the summer. The Sleepers realized their new land featured a cave that had the same benefits and with 15,000 feet of space, they decided to build into the cave.

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Posted in Decorating, Reuse | 4 Comments »

Upscale Salvaged Wood Furniture

Posted by claire to Decorating and Furniture and Reuse and Salvage on 4 June 2010, with no comments so far.


Above and below: Recycled wood Armoires by RenziVivian.

I love taking old things and finding exciting new ways to repurpose them in our home. While wandering through the internet the other day, I stumbled upon these great armoires by RenziVivian.

Using existing parts of discarded furniture, these pieces are cobbled together like a big wooden quilt. The style and vintage of the various elements have little to do with one another and when combined make a unique scrapbook of references to different times and trends. The pieces can apparently be used for computer desks, televisions, or clothing storage. I couldn’t locate a place to actually purchase these armoires, but I think a similar DIY project could happen in your own home.

While we are on the subject a reclaiming wood and making artful and functional objects for your home, I would love to direct your attention to Whit McLeod. When my husband and I first arrived in Humboldt county I noticed some of his work on display in a local gallery. I was immediately attracted to the impeccable craftsmanship and the idea that all the wood was salvaged from 70-gallon oak wine barrels. Living in wine country makes these used barrels easy to obtain and McLeod reuses the wood beautifully.


Whit McLeod Folding Chair from reclaimed wine barrels.

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Posted in Decorating, Furniture, Reuse, Salvage | No Comments »

Chair Makeover: How Paint and Fabric Can Change Everything

Posted by claire to Decorating and Furniture on 27 May 2010, with 14 comments so far.

Ever since Garth and I suddenly had a large new house to fill with furniture, I have been trying my hand at upholstery.  My first attempt was a five-dollar chair we picked up at a garage sale. I found that carefully removing the original fabric from the chair and noting the order in which you had to remove the fabric seemed to be the key to a successful job. Keeping the fabric for any given area in one piece when you remove it automatically provides you with a pattern to help cut from your new fabric. I recently tackled another chair reupholstery project and followed this same logic.

We stumbled on this new chair at a thrift store several months ago and I fell in love with it. The curvy back and button tufting is great, and reupholstering it didn’t seem like a task that would be too impossible as long as I was attentive with my chair dissection.

Our living room is painted a bright shade of green and I wanted an upholstery fabric with a fun print that could hold its own against the green walls. I decided on this Alexander Henry tattoo print in an upholstery weight—I liked the quirky print and the colors went well with artwork I already have hanging on the walls. To determine how much fabric I would need, I consulted an upholstery chart and selected a similar chair. Once the fabric was cut and I was back home, I realized that the white and gold wood of the chair just wasn’t going to sing with the new fabric. I would have to paint the chair as well.

Before I could paint, I carefully removed all the fabric from the chair and masked the areas I didn’t want to paint. I primed the wood with a spray primer and headed off to find the right paint color.

I like to use spray paint for a job where I want to avoid brush strokes and this was one of those jobs. A local gallery stocks a wide assortment of high quality spray paints with waaaay more color options than the hardware store. The brand I used, Sabotaz 80, turned out to be really excellent spray paint. Sabotaz is a medium pressure spray, which means the paints comes out evenly and smoothly and when buying a can you are given two different spray caps to help control the size of the spray area. I was very impressed with how easily I could control the paint and how evenly the color was distributed. Next time you have a spray painting craft get your hands on some of this!

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Posted in Decorating, Furniture | 14 Comments »

Lovin’ for An Oven: How We Reclaimed a Vintage Stove With Natural Cleaners

Posted by claire to How-To and Kitchen on 30 April 2010, with 17 comments so far.

Since moving into our home in August we have been garage sale shopping like it is our job on the weekends and trolling our local Craigslist for furniture deals. Craigslist has been an amazing source. I love being able to take something that someone no longer needs/wants/uses and giving it a new life in our house. Our favorite new acquisition? A 1940s Wedgewood stove with two ovens, brolier drawers, and a griddle.

The stove was being removed from a kitchen with more modern appliances on the way, and we were happy to ditch our newer stove for this larger, older model. The stove that came with our house worked fine, though it clacked loudly as it struggled to ignite the gas range and let’s be serious, it doesn’t look half as cool.

In the former owner’s home our stove looked fairly clean, I could tell it would need a good scrubbing but I was not prepared for the incredible mess I would have to deal with when it was pulled from its longtime home. When we came to collect our Wedgewood stove it was covered on both sides with years of grease and grime. Every knob housed a greasy build-up, the chrome was dull and rusty, inside the oven was covered in, well, you get the picture. This thing had to be well cleaned before we could install it.

Above: Our stove after some scrubbing, but still far from clean!

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Posted in How-To, Kitchen | 17 Comments »

Etched to Order: D.I.Y. Dry Goods Organization

Posted by claire to How-To and Kitchen and Organizing on 31 March 2010, with 15 comments so far.

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I’ve always been attracted to those old, vintage kitchen tins. I owned some lovely ones for a while that were shiny and silver with sleek black labels reading COFFEE, SUGAR, TEA, and FLOUR. They looked great, but they weren’t large enough to contain the amount of tea and coffee that Garth and I keep in our house. We also use a variety of flours, sugars, and other dry goods that deserve convenient containers. I don’t expect to find manufactured containers with the perfect labels for my specific kitchen, but I did want to create a system to organize all the dry goods in our kitchen.

In our house, both Garth and I cook, though I tend to be the person who arranges things in the kitchen. My hope is that a well displayed, well labeled wall of ingredients would cut down on his cries of, “Hey! Where is the ________?” and my later question, “When you were cooking the other day, where on earth did you put the ______?”

The solution was fairly easy, attractive, and not very labor intensive. While fixing up our kitchen I left a cabinet door off one wall cabinet. This opened up shelves for a clear, organized display of our baking supplies, nuts, and dried fruits. Then I made my own equivalent of the old kitchen tins.

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Posted in How-To, Kitchen, Organizing | 15 Comments »

Steamy Lights: How We Found Our Perfect Wall Sconces

Posted by claire to Kitchen and Lighting and Reuse on 5 March 2010, with 2 comments so far.

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Garth and I have been on a quest to find and creatively reuse old or discarded objects in our kitchen makeover. We hope that the result of our labor is a unique kitchen that is very functional. Alas, finding the right item to reuse can be tricky when we are problem solving. This was the case when we decided to replace the wall sconces next to the windows. The wall sconces that graced our kitchen walls when we moved in were not offensive, but as we began to pull the room together it became obvious that we should investigate other options.

Not knowing much about wiring a lamp myself, I ran to all the light fixture stores I could think of (this didn’t take too long, as we don’t live in a big town). Nothing felt inspired enough to go on our walls.

Garth and I began to brainstorm what type of object we could re-purpose into wall sconces. Mason jars? Bottles? Cans? Hmmm. I headed to the source for all things handmade: Etsy.com. It didn’t take long for us to discover an Etsy shop that we fell in love with called lightexture. Their self-description reads:

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ClayLight Simple from lightexture

lightexture is a collaboration between an architect and a lighting designer, We work together to explore light through the construction of lighting fixtures.
In our light construction we incorporate ready-made objects, lighting components, pottery by ceramic artist Sharan Elran and more. The lamps are fitted and assembled by hand in our studio. One of our goals is to create energy efficient fixtures, while maintaining our focus on their atmospheric and spatial performance.

Not only were all the lamps in this shop interesting, the light each piece casts is artful and exciting. We were sold on the SteamLight Sconces almost at once, which are made from steamer baskets. The re-purposed cooking tools felt like the perfect thing to hang in our kitchen. These lights have the added bonus of opening and closing to allow more or less light into the room while casting amazing shadows on the wall.

steamlight

Although I am committed to doing things ourselves as much as possible, I also love to support people who make amazing and beautiful things way better than I could. This is definitely the case in this situation. We placed our order and received our sconces in a very timely fashion. If I wasn’t already in love with the object, the packaging certainly helped—each sconce was beautifully packaged in recycled cardboard boxes with a small, silver stamped image of the lamp on top. It felt like Christmas.

Installing them did not seem to difficult (though I admit, you have to ask Garth about that)—they came with very clear instructions to follow. In no time we had new sconces on the wall.

Check out lightexture’s other website, which includes animations of how these amazing lights work.

While you do that, we will be having a SteamLight disco party in our kitchen.

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Posted in Kitchen, Lighting, Reuse | 2 Comments »

Hooked on Silverware: Make DIY Wall Hooks from Forks, Knives, and Spoons

Posted by claire to Decorating and Kitchen and Reuse on 22 February 2010, with 10 comments so far.

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When we finished drywalling and painting in our kitchen, I noticed that there were two awkward, large hooks on the wall near the sink.  No thank you, I thought as I grabbed a screwdriver and took them down.

As I dried some dishes a day later, I realized what the hooks were for—dishtowels.  Hmmmm.  I wanted to find a smaller, more interesting solution for hanging towels on the wall.

Garth and I have been on a creative reuse kick in the kitchen, we are trying to repurpose kitchen-related items in cleaver ways. Several weeks earlier I noticed that one of our favorite antique stores had a basket of old silver forks, spoons, and knives for a dollar a piece. Suddenly this seemed like the perfect (and thrifty) solution to my dishtowel dilemma.

I picked out a couple of spoons and a small spreading knife and got to work. I clamped the bowl of a spoon in our shop vise and cranked it until it was flat. Next, I clamped the arched neck of the spoon in the vise and squeezed it flat as well. Now that the entire spoon was flattened I used the vise to hold it tight while I slowly, carefully, bent the spoon handle backwards (this way when it was hung on the wall the decorative edge of the handle would face out). Finally, I used a wood/metal drill bit to drill three holes in the flattened bowl of the spoon.

Ta-da! I made a dishtowel hook that was ready to hang. I repeated this process for my other spoon and the spreading knife.

Making three hooks took me about fifteen minutes.

I took a look on Etsy (because turning old utensils into something else is no new idea) and found a seller out of Wisconsin making hooks and other exciting objects out of old cutlery for very reasonable prices.  If you aren’t into trolling antique stores to find your own vintage utensils take a look at JJEvensenArt and support a crafter who is committed to repurposing!

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Image from JJEvensArt

Posted in Decorating, Kitchen, Reuse | 10 Comments »

From Bland…To Blinding (How to Make Roman Shades)

Posted by claire to Decorating and Kitchen on 10 February 2010, with 23 comments so far.

before and after

Slowly, slowly Garth and I have been re-doing our kitchen. When we moved in, I vowed to first rid the house of wallpaper and get all of the walls painted before getting into too much decoration. This is easier said than done. Painting the walls in a room suddenly makes everything else that should/could be done that much more obvious. It is like buying a new dress and realizing you probably need new shoes to go with it and possibly a belt and purse as well. This is the case with the kitchen. With the wall newly drywalled and painted, I wanted to see more change happen fast. We would like to change most things about our kitchen, but working within our budget means we can really only change things that we can do ourselves.

One of the fastest ways to change the feeling of a space is with fabric, which is why new window treatments seemed like the perfect solution to really change the mood in our kitchen.

Read on for a step-by-step Roman shades how-to, with process shots.

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Posted in Decorating, Kitchen | 23 Comments »

The Claire Lair

Posted by claire to Introductions on 19 January 2010, with 6 comments so far.

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Garth offered such a lovely introduction to himself I am going to find it hard to follow him.  Here goes: I am Claire Joyce and I am an artist, teacher, and maker of assorted things.

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My artwork for the past several years has involved working with glue and glitter to make large, sparkling glitter paintings, but I also use my art-making time to sew, draw and build.  Never one to shy away from new processes or projects, at one time or another, I have had jobs teaching costume design, building sets and puppets for a puppet company, and wiping litho stones.

My husband Garth and I ended up in Eureka, California after first living in Atlanta, GA, and then Orange County as we followed teaching jobs across the country. Eureka had a magical pull for us and we are constantly finding new people, places, and resources here that amaze and intrigue us.

Buying a house has been a new and exciting adventure that has lead to us both requiring new sets of skills from drywalling to a bit of amateur upholstery. We both love sharing project ideas with a larger audience and have sincerely appreciated the amount of help and advice that readers have offered these first few months. We are both hoping that interaction can continue.

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Garth and I will keep writing about our home renovations (there is PLENTY left to do) and crazy DIY projects, as well as the more mundane aspects of homeownership.  I am looking forward to talking about some of our more daunting upcoming tasks (have you ever tiled a bathroom?) and some less crazy things like planning our garden or learning to compost.

Stay tuned!  Leave us some advice!  You may even help us avoid tragic mistakes and share some credit when we manage to succeed.

Posted in Introductions | 6 Comments »