♥ It's Finished! ♥

The staircase is {finally} finished…..and decorated for Christmas!

We just love it! It definitely has the cabin feel that we hoped to achieve!

And it was definitely worth the wait and the mess for the last three months!

Before & After:  What a difference.....I can't believe I ever liked that wallpaper!  Wow! 

Thanks for stopping by! I hope you'll stop in for the Sunporch Chat tomorrow!

Have a great Tuesday!  :)

♥ Sneak Peek ♥

Jason has been a busy bee working on the staircase. He worked all weekend, minus the time we were in church.  He's made great progress in the past few days!

I thought I’d tease you a little bit with a sneak peek. Please excuse the dust.

Oh what a difference it is! I can’t wait to show you the rest of it. Of course, I want to wait until it’s all done though! 

Jason is working on the trim work now and I’ve still got to tear down wallpaper and extend the red paint on the living room side wall. 

It’s got to be done in time for Christmas decorating, which for us is the first week of November!  :)

Enjoy your day! :)

♥ A Field Trip to Mama's House ♥

You wanna go on a field trip with me to my mama’s house? She’s always got some kind of sweets over there. We’ll have to see what she has when we arrive.

A couple of weeks ago, I took you on a little tour around my house showing you some things my hubby has made for me over the years. That day, I mentioned that he has made nearly as much, if not just as much, for her as he has for me. So today, I thought I’d take you a field trip next door to my mom’s house and show you just what all Jason has made for his dear mother-in-law.

Her style is definitely country and cozy.  :) 

We’ll start with my favorite piece that he made her. I LOVE this blue cabinet and I’m pretty sure it’s her favorite too! It’s in the dining room area.

He also made her these two corner cabinets.

He made the shelf above the windows.

And he made the table bench. I also love this. Love all the blue in her home.

In the kitchen, he made her the built-in pantry.

On the other side of the bar, he made the bar stools. (Hey, Jason, I need some of these up in the Cedar Loft…..hint, hint……. ).

In the living room, he built her shelves above the windows too.

And he made the shelving unit to hold all her angels. A visiting Spanish missionary once called her home, “the house of angels”. Very fitting, I think, with all the angels she collects.

He built the bed and chest in their bedroom.   Mama loves hearts!

And when they remodeled their master bath, Jason made the built-in linen cabinet at the end of the shower in the corner.

See? She really does have a house full of "Jason creations", doesn’t she?  I told Jason I think he's trying to win the Best Son-in-Law Award.  He laughed and reminded me it would be the Only Son-in-Law Award.  ha ha! 

Thanks for joining me today. I hope you enjoyed your visit.

Have a great day! :)

♥ Tammy ♥

♥ My Carpenter ♥

I have a carpenter that brings reality to my dreams! I never take it for granted either. If I think it up, he eventually makes it for me. I did say eventually……after all, he does work a full time job. But he does love to build things and I love for him to build things. He’s my hubby! :)

Today, I thought I’d take you through our home and show you what he’s made, at least some of the bigger pieces anyway.  Some of the photos were taken with my husband's point and shoot camera, therefore couldn't be enlarged and others were taken with my camera and those are biggie sized.  :)  

We’ll begin out in The Cedar Loft (which serves as our home-away-from-home/apartment/pool house):

TV Cabinet

 

Now coming back into the house on the sunporch:



coffee table made from old window

 

Potting bench made from a door

Through the back door from the sunporch, into the kitchen:

My favorite!  My Red Cupboard

Dough Bowl Rack

Table bench

In the dining room:

Buffet/Sideboard

 

And in the living room:



Shutters flanking the fireplace

Entertainment Center

Now I’ll take you down the hallway and we’ll stop in the hall bathroom:



Bathroom cabinet

And next is Luke’s little bedroom (our 4 year old):

Luke's bed

Luke's nightstand

And in the master bedroom:



Wall TV Cabinet

Now let’s turn around and go back into the living room and go upstairs. First at the top of the stairs, here’s the wonderful bookshelves for our many books. We love books! We homeschool.  We collect books! We love the motto: Wear the old coat, buy the new book. :)



bookshelves across entire wall of loft

And last of all into Joy’s room (our 13 year old):



Joy's desk and bulletin board

Maybe next time I’ll take you to my mom’s house so you can see what all Jason has made for her! After all, he does have to make his mother-in-law happy! Did I tell you he is her favorite son-in-law?  :)  Well, he's also her only son-in-law.  He’s made just about as many things for her as he has me!

Thanks for joining me today for a tour of my carpenter’s creations! I know I really am blessed and I know probably a little spoiled too. But I like being blessed (and spoiled). :)

Have a great weekend!  :)

Linking with Sunny Simple Sundays. 

♥ Tammy ♥

♥ A Staircase Update ♥

We have progress on the staircase………slow progress, but progress nevertheless!

My carpenter (aka Jason) is a perfectionist and he’s pondered, planned, cut, recut, and redone posts and boards several times. I’m absolutely no help on figuring the measurements and the way things fit. I just know what looks good to me and I hold boards for him. I mean I’m the one that just hangs a picture by “eyeing it” and he finds studs, measures each side, top and bottom. So that tells you how much help I am on figuring out how all the pieces of the staircase fit together.  :)

But, I know when I like it and I like what’s starting to come together. The heighth of the posts will be cut down some from what you see in these pics and will also be sanded down so they aren’t quite as sharp and square, if that makes sense. The spindles will have 2” cut from the bottom so they won’t come that far down at the bottom.

And the thing that really gets me is that all of this that you see up right now is basically only up to make sure it all fits together properly. All of the staircase boards and posts will come down tonight, adjustments will be made to them, and then they will be stained. Then they all go back into place with all the other spindles added. Jason didn’t want to stain it all and risk messing up the finish trying to fit the pieces in, or wasting stain if it didn’t work out. And then there are still walls and doors to be finished as well in the foyer area and trim work to be done around all of it. And then there’s the one wall on the living room side that will have wallpaper removed and be painted red.

Here you can get an idea of how the treads and risers will look.  Jason temporarily put in a pair to show me how they will look together....the stained tread and the red riser.

I'm getting a wider staircase in this makeover too......5" wider actually.  When building our house, they made the stairs narrower than standard size it seems.  I always thought they seemed narrower than they should be.  I'm going to love that extra 5"!  

Yep, progress is slow but it IS getting there. I think there is a standing rule, or if there isn’t one established, there should be……..However long you think it will take to complete a home improvement project, plan on it probably taking twice that long. Now I will be happy if it’s all done by the end of October in time for Christmas decorating the first week of November.

Bless their hearts, my piano students are used to my house being a construction zone by now. I think they’re never surprised by what we have torn out and are working on!  :)

But, it will be worth it in the end. At least that what I keep telling myself!

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I enjoyed your comments yesterday. I’ve decided that if I’m a home stalker, ya’ll are too! Lol! And it really never occurred to me to drive around and look at homes at night so I could see inside the windows. I mean you ladies are serious about this!  But hey, I’ll have to try that!  I’ll say that you all made me feel much better.  I now know I'm not alone!  :)   And I’d LOVE to see homes in your area that you find charming! One more thing….Tammy of A Primitive Place said something that I didn’t even notice – all of the homes I showed had porches. I didn’t even consciously notice that when we got those pictures – guess I’m just naturally drawn to porches being a southern girl and all.

  Thanks for stopping by and have a great Thursday!  :)

♥ A Little Staircase Progress ♥

A stripped down staircase with no railings has become everyday scenery around here. There once was a time that would have really bothered me. I’m not sure it’s a good thing that it doesn’t bother me that much anymore though. Does that mean I’ve lowered my standards? Ha ha! Really, I’ve just learned that these things take time, and yes, I will have to live with inconvenience and an ugly staircase for awhile.  And folks coming in my home for piano lessons will see this mess.    BUT, in the end it will be worth it. And we can only do so much. I should actually say JASON can only do so much. I really have not had much to do with this home improvement project so far. Other than helping him hold a board here and there and moving boards from the saw horses, that’s about it. Bless his heart, he worked the whole time I was sick. I emerged from my 3 days in the bed to see a little progress!

Then this weekend, we could really see the progress. Just to update you, we decided against actual log siding for the walls. 1) Because it was really expensive. 2) Because the more we looked at the inside of cabins, the more we saw the knotty pine boards on the interior. 3) By using the knotty pine boards, all of the “woods” would match including the posts on the staircase.

Here’s the progress so far:

The wood makes it feel cozy to me. And for some reason, it makes that wall seem deeper. I like the stain color with my red walls, which was a custom mix by Sherwin Williams to blend in with our trim in there already . Although we won’t be able to work on it this weekend, we hope to have it completed before the first of October. We all know how that goes when you have a goal……something inevitably delays things, but we’ll just have to see.............

That ugly wallpaper is almost gone. There’s a little glimpse of it way up there……..see? I can't believe I ever liked that wallpaper.

I’ve decided we must have lost our minds to begin this project right before getting back to our homeschool routine. But that’s just like something we would do!  :)   Oh well, good thing about it, I’ll have a brand new staircase to decorate for Christmas! :)  And Jason even thought to put me some outlets in there for my lights.    :)

Thanks so much for stopping by today! Have a great day!  :)

♥ Tammy ♥

Spring Days

Spring is officially here, although we’ve actually had spring like days for quite awhile now! So much for our persimmon seed weather prediction of lots of snow for the winter, huh?

With weather so beautiful, Jason was able to (finally) finish Amber’s cabinet! He put the finishing touches on it Monday evening and the cabinet is now in its new home at the salon. I really like the way it turned out!  (I snapped a picture of it before it was loaded up and ready to go).

Notice the addition on the side? It is removable if Amber so desires. It holds her hair styling equipment……..hair dryer, curling irons, and flat irons….etc….

Nearly two weeks ago, on another beautiful weekend, we were blessed to attend my Grandma’s 94th birthday party. She is an amazing woman! She has done remarkably well for her age. However, we did receive word last night that she is in the hospital. She apparently had a light heart attack and has pneumonia on one side. I’d appreciate it if you remember Grandma in your prayers!

That same weekend of Grandma’s birthday party, we were blessed to meet a very sweet blogging friend, Betty of Through My Back Door! Betty made time to meet with us even though she had been cooking brunch for her granddaughter, Amanda, and her family (whom we have all been praying for). She is such a bubbly precious person! I felt like I have known her forever! Blogging friends are just awesome! Betty also works part time at The Speckled Hen, which is a wonderful primitive store! But as I told her, I’m not sure how she keeps from wanting everything in the store when she goes to work! I’m pretty sure I’d be in trouble if I worked there on a regular basis! Oh to have a store such as that near me! We have nothing of that sort near us. Sharon is the owner of The Speckled Hen and she is one talented lady! Her decorating skills are obvious by looking around her store!  It is such a charming place!

Sharon is a really sweet person too! She gave the kids a candle that they had been admiring (and smelling) the whole time we were there!  :) 

Thank you, Sharon, for opening your store to us, for the candle, and to you and Betty both for making us feel so welcome!

Here we are. That’s Betty next to Joy and Sharon next to Betty.  (Jason was there.....but he was the photographer).

This past weekend, while I was inside the house (all.weekend.long) nursing a migraine headache, and Jason was finishing up Amber’s cabinet, Joy worked with Luke on his baseball skills. The baseball set was a birthday gift from Uncle Richie and Aunt Missy. He loved it!

He had the stance down pretty well.

I don’t think he ever hit a ball though. But he never gave up trying!

I think he actually did more of this…….retrieving the ball.

Pitching was his favorite thing about baseball.  Can you tell by the grin on his face?

Along with spring comes the desire to give the house a good spring cleaning. That is definitely on my to-do list. (Bet you thought I was going to show you a nice clean house now didn’t you?) Not yet......remember I had a migraine all weekend!  We have a certain 4 year old around here that has somehow acquired quite a few toys that need to be organized and…….ahem….donated to kids that don’t have any toys.  :)  We haven’t taken a spring break (as such) from homeschooling, although we’ve had a little bit lighter load this week. I’m hoping to get a little of that spring cleaning done before this week is gone.

I hope you’re all enjoying this spring weather! Thank you so much for stopping by! Have a great day!  :)

Project in the Workshop

Between all the birthday celebrations and life in general, Jason has been working any spare moment he can grab on a cabinet for Amber (Colt's girlfriend) for her station at the salon. Every creative hairdresser needs a nice cabinet to keep her organized, right?

She sent him a picture of the basic idea of a cabinet she wanted. After getting measurements for a perfect fit for the spot she needed, he went to work.

He brought the cabinet out of the workshop so I could get some photos. Here’s a little sneak preview:

That's the stack of drawers to the side of it.

Amber picked out the knobs at Hobby Lobby. I love the little rustic distressed flare to them! I think they will look great on the black cabinet (which will be distressed with a little robin's egg blue).

I can’t wait to see it completed and displayed at the salon. And I know Amber will be glad when it's done! :) I’ll be sure and share the completed project before it goes to its new home!

Thanks for stopping by! Have a great day! :)