In case you haven’t heard, Hubby and I are officially empty nesters again, but this time it seems to be permanent. Last time, it was because the kids had gone off to college. Now, our son has a house he bought over a year ago and our daughter has signed a lease for an apartment so she is committed elsewhere for at least a year. We asked her to empty her room because we had plans for it.
Six or more weeks later, it still looked like this, and one Saturday we went up to clear off the desk so we could grow plants on it in front of the window. Before we started, we asked her to stop by after work on Sunday evening because we would have a box or two for her.
Before…
This shot was taken from the doorway. She had taken the stuff she knew she wanted out but wasn’t sure what to do with the rest. There didn’t seem to be any sort of system, but she later told us that some boxes were partially filled with items to donate to charity. Continue reading
I’m back with another installment in my Trash to Treasure series. This project was a bit larger than the last project. The table shown below was pickup from the side of the road where someone had thrown it out with the trash. To be fair, the table looked almost new then except for the botched paint job on the table top. The rest of the table has never been painted and has been exposed to all the weather Indiana has to offer on our covered, but open, porch for several years.
I took these photos before heading to the local PPG store for some expert advice.
I had a pretty good idea that painting would be in the future for this table and my mother-in-law taught us that if a project was worth painting you needed to buy good quality paint. We learned that lesson the hard way when we tried to go cheap on the paint to get our old house ready to sell. We ended up doing more work in the form of extra coats of paint and buying more paint to get it done all because we tried to save a few dollars on paint in the first place. So yes, Porter Paint is more expensive, but if I am putting in the time and effort I want it to look good.
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So, after some discussion with Harry, the man working the counter, it was decided that I needed exterior paint and primer and that if he tinted the primer part way to the color I was painting over it, I had better chances of covering that lovely design. So I bought a quart of primer and a quart of gloss paint in the color he called Special High Dive (special, because he had to fudge it because he didn’t have the right base in the quart size and grabbed the wrong one to begin with). It turned out great and I really love that it is “special”. I also bought a Wooster Brush 4187-2 Ultra/Pro Firm Shortcut Angle Sash Paintbrush, 2-Inchbecause I love the short stubby flexible handle it offers.
So, you might be asking yourself how I decided what color to paint this lovely table. Well, I read the book,The Turquoise Table: Finding Community and Connection in Your Own Front Yard by Kristin Schell, and decided that I needed a turquoise table for our house. Since I am not much for sitting in the sun or on picnic tables, I wanted to have a table of a different sort and it would be on my front porch which is shady except in the late afternoon. I knew I had just the table to do the job too. If you haven’t read this book yet, I highly recommend it. I enjoyed reading the hard copy so much I got the audio version to listen to it also.
So, without further ado, here are the photos of the table during the various stages of the project.
The primer coat comes first. It soaked up a lot of the primer. I turned the table upside down and put it on a small plastic table to keep from having to stand on my head while I painted. Then after it dried for an hour or so, I flipped it over to prime the top and edges.
Once that had an hour or so to dry, I turned it back over and began painting it with the gloss paint. Look at the difference in the colors!
The darker color shown is the gloss paint that was supposed to be High Dive, but oddly enough it turned out darker on the stick at least.
Here is the table after a coat each of primer and paint on the entire table.
I decided I wasn’t so good at this painting thing and that the top looked very blotchy, so I found some YouTube videos to help me figure out how to do it better for the second coat.
Even though it is blotchy, it still looks pretty good, and oh so much better than it did earlier in the day when I was about to start this transformation.
Here is the final product in place on the porch. It is a little hard to spot from the sidewalk especially when that part of the porch is in the shade.
I am thrilled with how nicely it turned out and I think the porch looks very nice now. Once the tree comes into its leaves, you won’t be able to see this much of the house.
Please watch the video below to see how all of this started.
So, if you watch this video, you will get a better sense of what the turquoise table is all about. If you ever walk by and my car is in the driveway, even if I’m not out at the turquoise table, ring the bell and we’ll go out to the turquoise table, weather permitting, and sit a spell and share our lives and catch up with each other. You can call ahead if you want and tell me to put the kettle on if you like.
I want to be a front yard person. I want to get to know my neighbors. I want to invite friends to my house. If you have a turquoise table, you can register it here.
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Turn is the word prompt for this week’s Five Minute Friday Challenge. I often have to turn these words over and over in my mind until what I want to write about that word comes to me. Often it starts with thinking of all the ways the word can be used. Turn here, you missed your turn, turn around, take your turn, turn something old into something new, turn over a new leaf, turn the page, a turn for the worse, turn around and go back, turnover, turnip, turntable, everything will turn out fine, you get the idea. So many ways this could go, really. I deliberately try not to read any of the other writers’ take on the word so it won’t influence what I write.
Then, I remembered this cool photo I took while a trip with my hubby a while back. It was such a cool road we were driving on that we decided to turn into the scenic overlook parking area and get out an try to capture the wonder of what we were seeing. I discovered the coolness that is the panoramic mode on my cell phone camera and was able to capture the shot used above. Being able to take cool pictures is half the fun of these travel adventures. An additional perk is being able to turn the photos we take into graphics for this blog.
These days, hubby and I are concentrating our efforts on reclaiming our home one room or area at a time. The first area we decided to tackle was turning our adult daughter’s old bedroom into our reading room. I took before and after photos and plan to share that with you very soon. We were thrilled with how it turned out and hubby decided he wanted to tackle the basement next. That project is much more involved as it has three rooms full of stuff and is in need of some serious decluttering, cleaning, and rearranging. Those posts will also be coming in the not so distant future. We are finding that this reclaiming of our home has become addictive and instead of dreading it we are marveling at how much we have already accomplished and planning the next steps in the process. Exciting posts are coming, so please be sure to sign up for the email list so you won’t miss anything. If you have any trouble, just use the contact form to have me add your email address to the list. Trust me, the before and after pics are dramatic, you do not want to miss the transformations! We are turning our family home into the home we want to spend our retirement in and making it into the oasis we deserve to spend our time in between now and our golden years. What turns have you taken lately?
This post is part of the weekly Five Minute Friday link-up!
The prompt this week is: Turn
The assignment: Write for five minutes on the word of the week. This is meant to be a free write, which means: no editing, no over-thinking, no worrying about perfect grammar or punctuation. Just write.
