One of my favorite things to do....recovering lampshades!!

I want to show you some lampshades that I have covered. I started recovering them about four years ago and I love to do them! It a great thing to do while watching TV, like crocheting or knitting as most of it is done by hand (at least by me, store bought shades are mostly glued). I do use some hot glue but that will be maybe attaching the trims, the shade fronts and linings are all done by hand and I find it enjoyable to do. NOTE: Unless you wear a thimble, keep plenty of Bandaids and Tide bleach stick available as those needles do stick you especially when something is exciting on the tube and it draws your attention instead of the needle! Actually, using a thimble makes it easier to push the needle when needed but I don't like them.

Here are some pictures of my lampshades. I always coordinate the shades with the fabrics and colors in that particular room. I have never been one to have shades or anything else for that matter that is 'neutral' so it can go anywhere. First of all, I hate don't care for beige! I loved the time when gray finally was the 'new beige'. Gray, I like. I also like colors that have a gray tone to them, I think those shades are soothing. I LOVE COLOR!! So.... here are the shades: (Later you'll see the whole rooms that they are in.)

The one above is in my sewing room along with a couple more identical in fabric etc, just different shapes. I love the Mary Rose fabric!

The shades above and below are in the laundry room.

 

The three shades above are all in the blue bedroom on the third floor which was the original servant's quarters. There are four good sized bedrooms up there and a large center room and strangely enough a sink and toilet in the middle of the room. I guess servants didn't need much privacy! ;) We are going to do some moving things around and make a full bath up there for guests.

This is one of two identical shades that are going to go in the green bedroom that we are working on right now. Our winter project.

The three shades above are in the turret bedroom, it is adorable! Everyone loves the turret room! Great angles, lots of windows and way up high!!

I'm going to post a tutorial on covering a lampshade shortly...so 'keep tuned'!

I guess I should show the parlor, the first view of the house that guests see....

One of the pictures that that real estate agent sent me were of this room, the parlor where you enter the house. They really got to me and I had to just go and take a look at the house, I told my husband. The first day I went to see the house, we were in the house about 2 hours and I took lots of pictures, now in that crashed hard drive :( . My friend and I went to get something to eat and I could hardly speak! I was SOOOOO in awe of this house, the fact that the asking price was way less then the house we were living in BUT 100 miles from us and way to far away from my husband's job. (I told you before how that worked out, he got let go because the company was closing that office.) All in all, we bought the house and this is what the parlor and hallway look like. I will post more pictures of it later, the sections not shown in this post.

This house was built by a lumber company owner at the turn of the century. His name was William T. Sigler. He and his family owned it until the teens when he sold it to the Campbells, Thomas and Nannie Campbell. Thomas Campbell died in April 1935. He was a coal merchant and Nannie kept the company going for many years until she went into a nursing home in the 1960's. The house sat empty for almost 20 years. I'll do a whole post on the history as I know it later.

The trim and lumber details in the house show tremendously here in these ares. Here are a few pictures.

Those sconces beside the pier mirror are not old or original. We put them in in several places throughout the house. They are very high quality, very heavy solid brass fixtures that we purchased on closeout for $10.00 each! I found them listed at the time on many sites listed for over $250.00 each! Another blessing!

When we can afford to do so, I want to have a green carpet runner, that coordinates with the walls, put on the stairs all the way up. Maybe those brass rails toward the back of the step. The stairs have triangular brass corner guards on them now.

I love this bench and am going to make an upholstered cushion with lots of pillows sometime, just not on the 'immediate need list' right now.

This huge pier mirror was not put in by the original owner either. Probably another addition by the Campbell's.

The bench shown above was made from a bed. We bought it at an auction for $35.00. It had already been made but was done terribly so we took it all part, made it more secure and I upholstered it and made a cushion for it as well.

I love this little print, very "Icart-ish'. We have two cats so I love that aspect of it and if you look, the huge stained glass windows over the stairway have blue ribbons in it as well! I'm always looking for repeated patterns to pull things together.

When we bought the house, it had a really weird light at the top of the newel post. In the original pictures that I have of the house, it doesn't show a light here. It was a later addition. I bought this cherub at an auction for $12.00. To be honest, I wasn't even sure what it was, I just knew it had to be mine! A friend at the auction said "Hey that would make a great newel post light!". After some research I found out it was part of an oil lamp made by Bradley & Hubbard. We put an antique glass globe from one of the gas lamps in the house that remained (no gas, just some of the fixtures remain) and attached it to the newel post. Attaching the globe to the figure was a bit perplexing as to how? We used a plate hanger with a spring and finagled it to hold the globe. We had to change the bulb the other day and I thought it was going to be a nightmare to do so but it was quite easy. By the way...when I saw these pictures, I thought, man I've got to dust UNDER that cherub! I promise I will, next chance I get! ;)

Tell you what, the painting of that hallway was a bear! It had been 20 years since I had that wallpapering business when I papered many 2 story hallways like this but like I said, I'm no spring chicken anymore and the first time I climbed up that tall ladder and positioned myself on the walk plank was scary! It got easier after that though and I got my 'sea legs' back. I'm in no hurry to do it again though.

This is the view at the top of the stairs looking down into the stairwell at those huge stained glass windows that Nannie Campbell had put in. They were not put in by the original owner according to some old photos.

Looking down into the parlor from the stairs. That green chair doesn't doesn't get it there for me. It is going to go in the office, a room that we haven't done yet. It matches the couch at the top of the stairs, a fabulous 1940's find for us!

Lots more to show you, soon to come!

I'll start with the master bedroom remodel/renovation.

I wish that I had the 'before pictures' but my computer crashed last Spring and I haven't tried to rescue them yet from the hard drive. I'm a bit intimidated about doing that and with money being tight, that's been put on the back burner. I'll put it into the house first every time anyway. I'll post them when I can get them. The difference is night and day. Here's what it looks like now. This is the pretty much the first room we did so we would have a nice 'retreat' to go to amid the remodeling mess. I should mention that while this is a Victorian house, I am not trying to create a Victorian atmosphere. I have some Victorian elements in the home but I have my own individual style and I have eclectic taste. Might not be everyone's taste but I'm not trying to please anyone but us. ;)

I wanted to really highlight the round room and draw all the windows together. I purchased 50 yards of aqua bengaline (faille) fabric on Ebay for just over $100.00 (a real deal, that seller doesn't sell it anymore) and made a huge gathered 22" valance (the ceilings are 9' high in this room). Next I had to figure out how to mount them. I surely didn't want to purchase expensive round curtains rods so I had John make a double layer of 4" X 4" blocks made from 2X4's and we nailed them up with out nail gun. (THE VERY BEST TOOL you could ever buy!!!) He put them up about every foot next to the ceiling and then I just nailed the valance on with the brads in the gun.

Behind the bed John cut me large squares and just over squares (2 sizes to fit the wall) about 2' each out of pegboard and I padded and upholstered them with the fabric. For interest I turned every other one so the grain of the fabric would look like a checkerboard from the side, although from the front you can't see it as much. It took 13 of the 50 yards to do the wall. They were nailed with the nail gun on the wall in a marked pattern and I made teeny little yoyo's out of the fabric and then hot glued them on where we had nailed the boards on.

The headboard was made from an antique interior Victorian railing, a piece of salvage bought at an auction, I paid big for this salvage not even knowing what I was going to do with it. It was $110.00, that's a lot for me. We cut it down and put ends on it. I did a crackle finish in aqua using the same shade as the walls on top and a deeper teal under the top coat. The dresser across the room is done with the same crackle finish.

The nightstands were a dressing table John took apart, separating the sides, I painted the tops white after John added a small back to them. I wanted them to coordinate in color to the piece under the stained glass window (in front of the large window). We paid just $20.00 for the dressing table at an auction!

You can see the 'checkerboard' pattern I was speaking of above in the picture below.It's all about texture in this room.

The piece of furniture under the stained glass window is one of my favorite things. I bought the furniture at an auction for $35.00. It had a formica top over that beautiful bottom. I tiled the top with aqua tile in a crackle pattern by breaking the tiles. We trimmed it out with wood and John made a short back for it. I went to another auction and bought an antique server that was water damaged for $2.00. The only reason I wanted it was for the mirror which fit perfectly for the back. John actually made the back to fit the mirror as it was the perfect width. The top is painted white because the wood wasn't pretty, I don't know what they had done to it but something had to be done, so it was painted white. Now this piece and the nightstands coordinated with white tops and dark bottoms. The wood embellishment was added too. After painting I didn't care for the contrast between the white and the dark bottom, it just needed something, so I made a sweet little gathered skirt to soften it up and nailed it on.

For the long drapes I bought ready made but since they were too short for 9' ceilings, I added a 'stripe' of the bengaline fabric about 1/3 of the way up, that's quite popular now too, and hung them on short stationary rods. They stay where they are. They were from Penney's. The sheers were from Walnut. The diamond design is repeated throughout the room if you really look. The stained glass window was $35.00 at an auction.

The couch, chair and ottoman came from an auction. I saw them online, they were the perfect style, color and I could tell they were in good shape. We waited for three or four hours and I got them for a whopping $65.00! They are in gorgeous condition!

Can you tell what the ceiling medallion is? I bought a non-working clock from the 50's on Ebay for $5.00, took the clock off and we mounted to the ceiling, nail gun of course, but you have to be careful! Much nicer than the ones you buy at Lowes and a whole lot cheaper!

I found out that the original floors of the bedrooms on the second floor had been painted with a faux wood design and this room was able to be salvaged so I just freshened it up. Doing some faux painting myself I wanted to save it as it was over 100 years old. We did put a new piece of aqua carpet in most of the room but the part of the floors that you see, is the original design. That's not real wood graining you see, it is painted on! Back then, typically on the second floors of houses, they used lesser woods like pine, which didn't have the nice grains like oak,(typically used on the first floors) so the builder of this house had faux painters paint nice graining in the wood. This was the only room that was able to be saved. I'll show the other rooms in the near future.

I think we spent about $1500.00 and that included the comforter, drapes, fabric, new carpet ($700.00) and everything else (paint, etc.). It's a challenge for me to decorate with next to nothing and this is probably one of our most expensive rooms.
Keep tuned....more to come!!

Here's the house when it was first built circa 1900

Let me introduce myself.....

                First, this photo just might have been taken a few years ago, ya think???


My name is Marilyn and for me it was 'love at first sight'. I speaking of my house. My husband didn't share my immediate enthusiasm. But then he didn't care as long as I was happy. (Gotta love him, he's up for anything I want to do!) His first thoughts as we approached the house for the first time was 'Boy, I wouldn't want to have to drive up that hill in the snow!' I had already seen it with a friend and even though it was 100 miles from home, I had been sent some pictures by the real estate agent and I just had to 'go and take a look'. I had only found the house online because it had been listed to be in the town we lived in and I had not seen it before and was curious where it was. We wanted to move one more time and I wanted another turn of the century Victorian. Well, it wasn't in our town, it was 100 miles from it and in a place I had never heard of! Long story short, here we are, almost four years later.

My dear hubby was willing to make the daily commute but as much as I was in awe of this house, I told him that I wouldn't do it and wouldn't expect him to. He insisted it wasn't that big of a deal, we took the plunge and bought it, while trying to still sell the one we were in. Then the economy took a dive for the worse, as we are all very aware of. 

That house we weren't able to sell? We still own it, it's rented now.

That commute my hubby was willing to make? Didn't have to, he got let go because the company was closing that office due to the failing economy.

We are in our dream house still, doing what we can with little reserves anymore. It is only by the Grace of God that we have survived.  John did get another job for a year or so but the same thing happened due to the building industry suffering. A dream so close and yet so far but God is God and we are still here and He is on a daily basis putting things in our path, things to decorate the house with, to restore what we can (lots of sweat equity) and money to pay our bills. We truly believe with all our hearts that He has a plan for us and that we were brought by Him to Piedmont.