Memorial Day Weekend Projects

It was just me and the dogs for the three day weekend, so I took advantage of the free time and worked on some diy projects.  We're getting close to decision time on how we want to refinish our kitchen cabinets.  I really want the 'antique' look and have been eager to try out the technique, so practiced on a trunk and picture frame. 

Started out with a coat of primer to seal in the old white paint on the trunk.  Then added two coats of our wall color.  It wasn't clear exactly what products I was supposed to use ... there are several of different "glaze" products out there.  I did lots of online research and ended up getting a clear mixing glaze and tinted it (3 parts glaze, 1 part latex brown paint) with the dark brown color we used for our woodwork.  The final product turned out beautifully and the process was much easier than I expected.  Just paint on a coat of glaze one section at a time, then wipe it off with a wet rag until you're satisfied with the color. 

I fell in love with this fabric and it matches with our house colors beautifully.  Kind of difficult to tell on this finished product, but it really is pretty.

I intend to do a wall collage in my hallway, so I started hitting garage sales the past couple of weekends on the hunt for old, cheap picture frames.  The price tag on this one was $10 ... I paid $5.   It was an ugly gold color, so I decided to try my new 'antique' technique on it. 

Started by adding one coat of wall color.

Brushed on the glaze, wiped off, and viola ... this will fit my color scheme much better than the gold. 

New Roof

BEFORE

We put it off for as long as we could, but it was time for a new roof.  We spent a couple of weeks doing our homework and interviewing local roofers and I'll tell ya, we never paid any attention to roofs until it was time for a new on ourselves.  Now we notice if a roof has ridge vents, three tab or architechtural shingles, new boots, etc.  After a drive around town trying to determine our color choice we arrived home embarrassed at the look of our 20+ year old roof.  It was horrible!  I guess you get used to something and it never occurs to you that you might own 'that house with the ugly roof.'  Now we've got to figure out what color to paint the house so it coordinates a little better, but the color scheme is not so terrible that we can't enjoy our beeeeauuuuutiful new roof!!!

AFTER

Room #3 - Renovation

Room #3 is complete!

Before - far left door of the Master bedroom entered the kitchen, which obviously makes no sense at all, so we closed that one in.

After - minus one door.

Before - three windows facing the neighbors house and three facing the back yard.

After - minus two windows facing the back yard.


Before

Closing in two windows to the back yard.

Final product, minus two windows.

Before - neighbor side

After

Chimney ... Check

With a little encouragement from our homeowner's insurance company, we set aside our window installation / renovations to fix our chimney (see demoliltion post from June 2010). No chances of a strong wind knocking that bad boy off our roof anymore.

Francie's Fancies 2011

Frances Newton Hall, my Grandma passed away on Halloween in 1996. Since then the Sister's Three (her three daughters) moped around on the holiday. Last year we decided we should celebrate Grandma instead of continuing to mourn her and all signed up for the Boston, Georgia 5K Halloween walk. This year we donned bright purple Halloween shirts with the celebratory name of our new group, Francie's Fancies on the back.

This was "Francie"

And we are her "Fancies"

The Sister's Three

The whole gang

No doubt that Grandma Frances Hall was smiling down on us while we celebrated her memory.

I'm a Scrapper

It's time you knew the truth about the gals in my family ... we are all scrapbookers. We have scrapbook weekends and spend HOURS upon HOURS perfecting our pages. We joke about who will inherit the shelves of albums we have created and that eventually we will need to rent a storage unit just to store them all. It is a hobby that we love and while we are scrapping our memories, our all day and night crop weekends are memories in themselves. It is very special when we get all of the ladies together (and extra special when there are a couple bottles of wine). Our guys are very supportive, meaning they enjoy a weekend of freedom just as much as we do.

Here is one of my latest pages. This was Grandpa's last Christmas ...

Doppelganger

We met up with one of our puppy families earlier this year. After taking Porsche (formerly Red) from our third litter they purchased a chocolate lab puppy from another breeder to be her playmate. This outsider pup looked eerily like Jake and had he not been wearing a collar, I might have sent the wrong pup home with Porsche!

(Jake is on the left)