How I Found My Style Feature

Hi everybody!
I hope you are having a fabulous holiday weekend. 
I'm posting today over @ From My Front Porch To Yours.
Pamela has kindly allowed me over to share a little bit about how I found my style on her weekly Sunday feature. 
Thank you, Pamela. 
It's an honor.   

Hop over and check it out. 
Katie 

Black Door Debacle

Good evening!
I have a fail to share with you. 
When be bought our house the children were 9, 6, and 3.

I took great pains to make sure that they didn't do anything to their doors. I wanted to keep them as pristine as possible because I knew painting them would be a bear. No stickers, posters or coloring on them was allowed. I was fine with stickers and posters on the walls but not on the doors. 

Our doors are now 23 years old and some of them look it.

I'd seen many stunning images of doors painted black.

I love that look but I knew it wasn't for me. A good well done finish on a door should last for at least a decade and a black door wouldn't withstand the test of time with me. I'm too fickle. 

But I wanted to try one somewhere and thought the door leading out to the garage would be perfect.

Black would provide an accent in an otherwise boring hall. 

Big mistake.

Big mess.

The door out to the garage was replaced at some point to become more air tight. The garage side was never painted and it was filthy so earlier this summer I painted that side with latex black in a satin finish. I realized in the midst of it that there were problems with the door itself. 

When we got the door about 15 years ago I painted the interior side of the door. I thought I was just a bad painter. 

I hadn't worked with oil based paint that often and I had a hard time. After painting miles and miles of oil based paint on other trim in this house, I realized the problem is not with me but with this door. 

This door is perfectly smooth. The other doors in the house have a faux wood grain pressed into them. This door does not. It is smooth except for the dents in it from kicking it open. Dents that didn't show until it was black. 

Painting something without the "wood" grain is a beast. Every mistake, drip and streak shows.

EVERY SINGLE ONE! So the project that was supposed to be easy as pie, was not. IT GOT WORSE.

I primed the interior side of the door and let it dry. 

When I painted the black latex it got gloppy.

I had to scrape it off and blobs of black sticky paint were everywhere. You cannot paint latex on top of oil even if you prime. I knew that but I did it anyway. The door itself looked like a door from a movie set or a fun house. 

We stopped in at Ace and got some oil based black, also in a satin finish. The imperfections just reflected in the satin finish. The best fix seemed to be flat black. Latex for the garage side and oil for the interior side. 

Paint and sand seemed to be my routine with this project.

Needless to say, I'm not in love with it. In my opinion black highlights the flaws. Bill says we are getting a new door. 

 I'm not looking forward to that because I remember the last time he put in a door...

Our pretty black door isn't so pretty.
Katie    
From My Front House to Yours   
French Country Cottage

Here We Go Around the Year Again

It really doesn't take long for me to start thinking about  apples, pumpkins, hay bales and scarecrows once school starts.

Fall is a big season in the blog world! 
It's like the "season" on Downton Abbey.

Bloggers are having parties and blog hops all displaying fall perfection. They are showing off their homes on fall home tours. They are pulling out all the stops in order to create the new "it" pumpkin! 
Will it be bigger than the dryer hose pumpkin? 
Will it cause as much of a stir as the canning jar lid pumpkin?
Will it even be orange?

There is so much anticipation! 
I feel so much pressure to have the perfect fall porch pin

 or the perfect fall mantel post. 

Dare I say, I'm not looking forward to fall?
I used to cover just about every surface with fall embellishments. 
There was smattering of leaves, acorns, squirrels and burlap 
everywhere
 but     
fall is merely a shadow compared to the real decorating season - Christmas! 

I'm tired just thinking about it.   
Jim died last fall and I don't look forward to those memories. I really am okay and I've moved past the grief but I don't think I'm ready to see orange leaves quite yet -
not quite yet.
Fall, Christmas, winter, Valentine's Day, Easter are all reasons to decorate. It feels like summer is the only respite from the constant change. 
The decorating seasons just go on and on and on and for some reason I'm not feeling it.

Maybe that will change once Pumpkin Spice Lattes start to permeate the air. 
We'll see and so will you if the creative juices start flowing.
Katie  
Linking with,
A Stroll Thru Life   
Savvy Southern Style  
French Country Cottage

Beadboard on a Little Shelf

I have a quick project to share with you.

I was removing the china from my little white shelf in the living room.

We don't need as much display space for china now that we have the kitchen shelves. 
We have an abundance of dishes on display at this point. 

I emptied out the shelf and decided it was time to do something about the back of it.

The back was made from new wood and it has split as it has aged over the years. I can't put a new back on this piece because this shelf is molly bolted to the wall and can't be taken down. Covering up the cracks seemed to be the best option.  

I love beadboard and had two types to choose from - wallpaper and wood paneling.

It seemed that wallpapering the back was the easiest way to go.

I measured, cut and pasted. This product is pre-pasted so all you need is some warm water to moisten the back. 
The directions are on the roll.

It is so much better. When I used beadboard wallpaper upstairs, it needed a coat of paint to look like wood.
Here it looks pretty good without painting it. 

Instead of the plates I used a wooden block, books and a little rusty grate to add interest. 

The little piece of grate came from our trip to Arkansas.

I love this. It was such an easy fix.  

Katie


Linking with,
Savvy Southern Style
From My Front Porch to Yours
French Country Cottage   
Miss Mustard Seed    
Jen Rizzo
A Stroll Thru Life   
Cedar Hill Farmhouse

The Fireplace Surround

Hi everybody!

We are getting some much needed rain!

We've been dealing with a little bit of a health crisis with Bill's mom. Nothing serious but we've got to get her up and moving again. Prayerfully, she will be on her way to rehab soon. 

I'm not here to show anything off today. 

???

I know. Hard to believe. I need to ask you a question.

This is how our fireplace looks today.

This is how it looked three years ago. This was about a month after I started blogging.  

I don't know if you were around then but in a random moment, Bill said I could paint the mantel. 

He doesn't believe in painting good wood so it was very out of the ordinary. 

So the very next day on August 10, 2012 I painted the mantel. 

Let me stop for a minute. 

To the best of my understanding, fireplace mantel is spelled MANTEL

A covering or mantle is spelled MANTLE, 
"The snow provided a mantle of white upon the ground."

However, I've seen them flip flopped quite a bit. 

What do you think? Is it a regional thing? Feel free to weigh in below. 

Now back to our riveting story...

Painting the mantel wasn't enough for me so I rooted around in the garage and found some scrap wood to make a surround. 

I absolutely had no plan. I just started cutting and hammering. 

I was completely in love. 

Last September I made this piece of wall art to bring in more white. 

Here is my question. 
Should I white wash the brick?
or
I thought about making a permanent white paneled top for above the mantel.
What do you think?
Should we leave it as is? It is enough white?
You can see my Cozy Fireplaces board on Pinterest. 

There is a lot of brick surrounding this fireplace.

Now onto a different subject. 
Months and months ago, I asked you what you thought I should do with the piano.  
I decided to leave it until I find the perfect piece. it is staying for now.  

I hope you all are having a great Sunday!
Final question.
What do you say? Y'all or You Guys?

Katie 

Summer Break Ends

It boggles my mind to think about all the projects I accomplished this summer. Today is my last day of inservice and I'm exhausted but happy. 
I'll take some pictures of our darling classroom to show you.   

There were some things I didn't get to this summer but I'm okay with that. It was full of DIY.
Can we recap summer 2014?

The deck needed rearranging and sprucing up. 

There was some yard work that needed to be done. 

Our brick path had sunk so I dug it up and fixed it.

I decorated the house for summer with some metal accents.

Creating the Tiffany blue boxes was a fun day. 

Fixing the kitchen table was a load off of my mind. 

I scraped the popcorn off of the ceiling in the living room and painted it. 

It was a horrible job but we are so glad it's done.

The next week I did the ceiling in the office. Bill treated me to a nice dinner at a wonderful restaurant in Ft. Worth! 

We began and completed the pool. It's my favorite upcycle to date and it will forever remind me of the coldest summer we have ever had. 

I redid my office/craft closet. I'm smitten with it and have kept it neat! 

On July 3rd I noticed the cabinet was pulling away from the wall.

It didn't fall down but it got taken down. I patched the wall and put up shelves. Those are now painted with oil based paint and have been revealed.

The desk and hutch turned potting bench is one of my favorite repurposed projects.

It started a slew of furniture shuffling and painting which I've just started to reveal. 

We also finished two deck projects outside. You've yet to see those.

The last weeks of summer were a little more relaxing. 

We took a quick trip.

 Bekah is moved to her new apartment. 
Her view is gorgeous.

Movies, binge watching, jigsaw puzzles and another trip to the antique mall were all that was left on the agenda but I'm back at work.

Here is a sneak peak of our classroom.

I'll have more to show soon. 

 Katie    
Linking with,
A Stroll Thru Life