Middle Bedroom, Before and After

I'm having a tough time coming up with a good way to demonstrate my shutter speed post so I thought I would show you the middle bedroom.

The motivation for sprucing up the middle bedroom was, as you now know, the photo shoot.  Even though BH&G told me this room wasn't in the shot list, the openness of the upstairs made it quite possible it would end up in a portion of a shot.  Aside from the kitchen, whose makeover I showed you a few weeks ago, this was the other room that wasn't quite ready for prime time.

This shows the room's evolution.  Above is the room when I bought the house.   This was the only room that didn't have wallpaper.  I painted it Benjamin Moore Bali which I thought was a nice vintage/beach glass color.  I've tried unsuccessfully a few times to bring "sea" colors into the house.  They just don't fit and I can't explain why.

I initially set up the room as a "studio" where I was going to work on my artwork but, after three years of never working on a piece of art, the large desk was becoming a dumping ground.

I got rid of the large desk and replaced it with this antique spool bed that I stained dark brown using gel stain.  I built a platform inside the frame so it needed only a mattress to become a daybed.

And here is the room today.  I've repainted the walls in Benjamin Moore White River at 50% strength.  My paint colors keep getting lighter and lighter and I'll probably navigate to Decorator's White next time around so the woodwork can be darker which has more of a historical look.

The rug is too small but I love the colors.  I've tried a few different Dash & Albert rugs that just didn't look right.  Too new looking I think.  The antique Bar Harbor wicker chair came from York Antiques in Maine.  I would have preferred an upholstered chair but with limited time and funds before the photo shoot, I thought this was good versatile chair that would work as an accessory in almost any room.  

The paint on the chair is the original paint which is bluish-greenish gray.  The cushion is covered in a vintage ticking from Wendy Lewis.  I love all the colors with the rug.  Now if I can only find a larger one in the same colors.

The bedding.  The matelasse coverlet I got from Antiques on 9 in Kennebunk for 70% off...the best deal of my life. The pillows from back to front are:  A vintage linen pillow case from Wendy Lewis.  The Euro-sized floral pillow shams are Ralph Lauren.  The blue ticking pillow shams and red ticking are also textiles from Wendy Lewis.  The bolsters are an oatmeal colored Ralph Lauren linen I bought on ebay for $20 which is trimmed in an old linen shirt from my closet.

Above the bed is the vintage cow print/chart that was formerly in the kitchen. 

Many thanks to Ann LaFortune for making the shams and the bolsters for me.  I sent Ann a bunch of fabric and she helped me figure out what to use where.  

The back of the blue shams are done in the same oatmeal linen as the bolsters with a flap of oatmeal and brown windowpane plaid linen making them completely reversible.

I also bought these cool pillow covers made from vintage material from Ann's etsy shop that work really well in the dining room.  Be sure to check out Ann's shop.  Her prices are really fair and she also does custom work.

I would have preferred to have a small chest rather than the small table under the painting.  I feel there are too many spindly legs in the room and a chest would allow the spindles on the bed to be the star in the room.

The table was $27 at the Cambridge Antiques Market.  I've used an old square English fishing basket underneath to fill some of that space and disguise some of those spindles.

The small green cabinet in the corner houses a lot of electronics for the house:  modems, wireless routers, phone, etc. and a small TV that would allow a guest to hang out and watch their own TV if they wanted to. 

Above the TV is a painting that you might think is vintage.  It's actually a new painting by a friend, Katrina Walker, from Provincetown. The painting provides a peek inside the Beachcombers Club, a private men's club of artists and writers that started in 1921.  Katrina found the vintage frame, that fit the painting perfectly, in the trash.  This is a very cherished piece.

There's no hiding that my elliptical machine sits in the corner along with the wrenches pieces I showed in the last post.

Above the windows, I've kept the original shelves.  Since the windows are really low on the walls, I use the shelves as kind of a valance on which to place an ever-changing collection of things I find interesting at the moment.

There's a  raku vessel, an art piece made from found objects including an old flag, a shoe last, an abstract bronze sculpture and a shadowbox piece by Provincetown poet/artist Lynn Stanley.

Finally, this is the Great Great Grandpa vignette.  I love to pull these items together to study their relationships.  I'll do another post sometime soon on vignettes so I won't talk a lot about it.  

Here is a close up of the details.

For a quick makeover, I'm pretty happy with how it turned out.  I'm sure it will continue to evolve.  I was also pleased that the photographer was inspired to take a few photos in this room.  One of his shots was just amazing so I'm hoping to see it again in the book.

Dawn Southworth in the Middle Bedroom

Here's a little sneak peek of the middle bedroom featuring the work of 

Massachusetts artist Dawn Southworth.

These two pieces are titled Wrenching Dreams I and II.  

Wouldn't this be a great way to display a collection of old tools?

The wrenches are vintage paper cutouts applied to collaged tar paper.  

Some of the wrenches, as you'll see below, are sewn to the piece with metal

wire thread.  The frames are made from wood reclaimed from a shoe factory

which is riddled with nail holes.

You can see more of Dawn's work at the Clark Gallery website.  

Be sure to check out her ironing board covers.  They're powerful, haunting,

creepy beautiful...perfectly fitting for this Halloween season.

Hope to take more photos of the middle bedroom over the 

weekend...if the light is bad enough!!

Summer?

I'm having a hard time with the fact that summer is almost over.  It doesn't help that this weekend was in the mid-80s and the past few days were in the low 60s.  I almost feel like putting the heat on!

Even my garden is taken off guard.  The morning glory are just starting to bloom.

The zinnias are just starting.

And my nasturtium have yet to bloom.  A cold June, and a hot and dry July really got everything off to a late start.   

A friend visited for the long weekend and helped me finish a few projects.  I've really been at a standstill with the spool bed since getting its new dark brown finish on.  I wanted the finished bed to be sofa height so using a box spring and mattress would have been too high.

So I've adapted it with a few cross braces that have legs.  And then I added 3/4-inch MDF...

....to create a really solid platform for a mattress.  

As with most things in the house, I like them to perform a dual purpose.  This baby is so sturdy, I can remove the mattress to create a stage...

...and reenact River Dance.  

Performances open October 7th with matinees on Sundays.  Reserve tickets now.

A Little Bit Country

Country Living

I try not to look at magazines because they make me want to make over rooms.  I recently saw some images from Country Living and I was pleasnatly surprised.  It's nice to see them redefining "country."  It's much more fresh and modern.

I never thought I'd admit it but, as Marie Osmond said, "I'm a little bit country."  (And don't you dare say, Who is Marie Osmond?!)

Urban Cottage

When I first showed the guest room makeover, someone suggested I add a quilt to the bed.  It reminded me that I had a bunch of quilts stashed away in the basement and I thought I had the perfect one.

Several years ago, I saw a documentary on PBS about The Quilts of Gee's Bend, Alabama.  If you haven't seen it, you must!  These weren't your granny's calico-printed patterns.  They were beautiful abstract folk art created with whatever the women (and sometimes men!) had on hand and assembled using nothing other than their (great) intuition.



Quilt by Linda Pettway



This make-do quilt is constructed from old work clothes.  See the pockets?



Quilt by Minnie Sue Coleman



Some are intensely colored variations of traditional quilt designs.

Quilt by Mary Lee Bendolph

Others remind me of the abstract work from the mid-20th Century.  The interesting part of that is that many of these quilts predate the work of the abstract artists.

It was at this point I took an interest in quilts that broke the rules and I found many beautiful examples of quilts from the south, primarily East Texas, that were just beautiful works of folk art.  Many of these were made and packed away for special occasions so they're in immaculate condition.  This quilt above has been seen on the bed in guest room...

...and more recently almost cropped out of the photo of the upstairs landing where I've hung it over the banister.

The quilt on the guest room bed now (a variation of a diamonds and geese pattern) is one of my favorites.

When I was painting the little closet between the guest and middle bedrooms, I thought this would be the perfect place to display all of the quilts.

Here's a wider view of that closet and in to the middle bedroom which I've repainted. 

Quilts, wicker, cow print.  I guess you can take the boy out of the country but you can't take the country out of the boy.

I'm a little bit country.

Progress

Progress is being made.  The old sliding doors on the bathroom and pantry that were falling apart were removed and the two salvaged doors...

...were in place on the second day.

They're all trimmed out and ready to prime and paint.  Not sure about the orange X.  I think it means, no victims found, take the door.

I think it's a great improvement and I don't think Sam put any more than about 10 hours into the project.

Katy Elliot left me a comment the other day that she had a spool bed in her guest room (seen above).  Great mix of patterns, right?

If you don't know Katy Elliot, you should check out her blog.  She's been blogging since 2005 (can you imagine?) and has worked for House & Garden and Domino magazines.  In 2008, she and her husband Greg bought a 1750-ish house in Marblehead, Massachusetts and they're renovating it pretty much on their own.  I can't believe the projects they tackle on their own.

In the post on her guest bedroom, she had a link to another post on Jenny Lind beds where I saw this image above.  I love this room but is that a princess phone hanging on the wall?  Regardless, I'd be really happy if I could make my bed look like this.

Here's a reminder of what mine looked like when I bought it.

I here is the transformation in progress.  I'm using Minwax Brazilian Rosewood gel stain.  If you've never used it, it's an oil-based stain that can be used on wood, fiberglass or metal.  It's semi-transparent so you can let the underlying surface so through if you want.  I thought the underlying color of the paint would be a great base color for the stain to make it look more like real wood.

The original paint color is very close to Benjamin Moore Roxbury Caramel, HC-42.

You can see on the top rail and corner post, I've allowed some of the original paint color to show through so it has more depth.

The spools look pretty good but the flat surfaces need a second coat.  It does seem to take a few days to dry really well so plan accordingly if you're going to give it a try.  

I'm really pleased with how it's turning out.

And I'm thinking a light color rug will really help highlight the details of the bed.