That thing in the basement

When we moved into the house there was this giant metal thing in the basement and we had no idea what it was. After a week or so we realized it was a divider that went by the front door. Apparently it was taken out when the floors were redone.

For a while now we have been thinking about putting it back up or possibly using it somewhere else in the house. Today we decided to prop it up next to the front doors and see how it looked.







We like the look at lot. What do you think? Unfortunately the divider is filthy so it will need to be sanded down and repainted. This brings us to our next question, what color should we paint it? The color it is now isn't half bad but you can tell it used to be black at one point too. Would that make it seem too obtrusive if it was that dark?

End of line.

New purchases!

We got some exciting new things today at Highland Row Antiques!

A fun little plant stand for a great price!



We don't have a good outdoor area yet but when we do I will paint it a fun color and move it outdoors. For now I'm thinking it could serve as a sometimes tiny table for our two chairs in the living room.

We also got.....


AN ARC LAMP!





I've wanted one of these for quite a while. It was in pretty good shape and the price was wonderful. Now when I sit on the couch and knit in the evenings I won't have to squint.

Has anyone else made any fun purchases lately?

Suggestions needed

For Christmas Susan's Aunt Sue gave us this awesome Satellite Bowl sold by MoMA. We immediately placed it on our dinning table and stuck some leftover Christmas ornaments in it.



It looked great for the holidays but we are at a loss for what to put in it now. Do any of our readers have any fun suggestions?

Modern on the cheap

We have seen this done on a few other sites so we figured we would try it out ourselves.

First take the interesting owl statue you got for free but is a little too 70's looking.



Clean the surface well to get rid of all the dust and oils from hands touching it. I used Mineral Spirits but rubbing alcohol will work well too. Be sure to use a cleaner that will evaporate quickly and not something that will leave any kind of residue that will mess up your paint job.

If the statue is not painted you will need to prime it. However, ours was so we were lazy and skipped the priming.

Apply 3-4 light coats of flat white spray paint. It's better to do light coats in order to prevent runs in your paint.



Let things dry and step back and enjoy your new modern looking statue. It almost looks like it came from the Jonathan Adler store.



Be seeing you.

Chop Chop Round 2

Ever since we had the goats out we have been slowly removing the rest of the little junk from our backyard. We decided it was time to bring in some people to take care of the big stuff that we couldn't do.

We went with Limb-it-Less Tree Removal which is the same company we used before. Initially, we called them out to remove the logs on the ground and 2-3 standing trees in the back yard. After talking a bit we decided it would be cost effective to remove more trees since the tree guys would already be there with the equipment. 2-3 trees quickly became 7 trees which ended up turning into 11 trees.













I'm shocked this tree hadn't snapped yet. It was one of the tallest in our yard and there was hardly anything to it.



The first thing they took care of were the left over piles I had made and the privets we had not chopped down yet.





A loader was used to carry out most of junk and all the logs. If I had a good looking yard this would have bothered me but since it's all pine straw and weeds I didn't care.



You could never pay me enough to do this job. I'd either fall off the tree or cut my arms off on the first day.



I never get tired of watching trees fall. It's scary and exciting at the same time.





Our neighbors and I were happy to get rid of these trees for 2 reason. The first was because they were leaning towards the neighbor's house. The second is that now both yards can get a little more sun.







All of the stumps plus an additional 15 or so were grounded down the next day. We were so happy to have all the privet stumps done because it is a pain in the butt to dig them up.







It still amazes us how big our back yard is. We never assumed it was this big when we bought the house.

The next steps will be to install a fence and come up with a plan for what we are going to plant back there. We don't want it totally open like it is now but it's nice we have a clean canvas to work with.

It will be a while before we can fence or landscape though. We just found out the county is coming to dig up our back yard (as well as the yards of several neighbors) to get to a sewer line. More on this as it develops.

Be seeing you.

Susan's Christmas Gift

This is just a start. I will post more about it as things get going.

How I made those eyes

Someone requested a tutorial for the spooky house eyes. It's a pretty simple process.

1) Go to an office supply store, like Staples or Office Depot, and buy several packs of black poster board. The bigger the sheets the better.

2) Place enough pieces together to fill the window and tape them together. Some trimming and measuring will need to be done so it will fit nicely into the window frame. Our windows are 3 feet by 6 feet so we needed a lot of poster board.

3) Once the two panels are taped together, draw an eye on one of the panels. I made sure the pupil was in the center of ours so it would cover as much of the center window frame as possible. This may not be the case for you.

4) Flip the second panel over and staple/tape it to the back of first panel. I did this so I would only have to cut out the eye once and both would match perfectly. Just make sure you flip over the second panel otherwise you will have two eyes facing the same direction.

5) After everything is cut out place the panel in the window frame and tape it to the edges. This worked out fine on one window because there was nothing in front of it. However, the second window had a desk in front of it and made it difficult to tape up all the edges. The lack of proper taping and the fact that our windows get covered in condensation on the inside caused the eye to fall down after a few days.

6 - Optional) Cut some scrap wood, I used quarter round, and tack it to the sides and top of the panel. That made it more structural and prevented the sagging.

7) Attach some semi sheer fabric to the back of the eyes so you can't see in the window. Unfortunately, the fabric we used was a little to sheer so you could still see through the windows some. Next year we will just get some better fabric.

8) Arrange the light(s) in the room so it will illuminate the eyes nicely. Usually we just place a lamp in the middle of the room that is sitting window height. If the lamp is too close to the window it won't look right. This will probably involve you walking outside and looking at the eyes numerous times until you find the right arrangement.

The hardest part of this whole process was laying out the poster board to fill the window. I went through several arrangements until I found the one that worked the best for our window. I know this probably isn't a big deal, but I wanted to use as little poster board as possible.

Next year I will most likely get a couple of sheets of luan and cut the eyes out of that. That way I won't have any sagging issues like I did with the poster board since our windows are so big. If your windows are smaller the poster board will be fine.

Since I didn't take pictures while putting the eyes together, here are a couple of after shots so you can see how it was done.

Here is the back side of one of the panels. This is also the one I attached the wood strips to.



Here you can see the panel placed in the window frame and the fabric attached to it. We were lazy and didn't trim the fabric to fit.



This is what it looked like during the day.



I hope this helps you make your house extra spooky next year.

Be seeing you.