A new fridge

We just picked up a new old fridge tonight!  It's a later 1950's era Norge Customatic.  We do need to do a little repair work, which we discovered after hefting it into the Cottage.  The shelves are sliders, and both of the back pieces that the shelves attach to on the left side are broken :(

But it is very cool-check out the handles!

The Kitchenaid and the floors

A few new developments here at the Cottage!

First, I'm still working on cleaning up the Kitchenaid.  It's really kinda icky.  I can't blame the previous owners, I don't think I've ever thought about flour dust and such getting into things while mixing.  But it does!  I'll post pics of how to get a 4C apart after I get ours cleaned up in case you have one and think it might benefit from a good cleaning.

First we took the chrome part off of the top, then the cover over the back where the cord plugs in.  This is what we found:

This is the front where the PTO (where the attachments attach) is:

And this is the gook that fell out onto the counter:

And that is as far as I got with it.

Because we picked up a lot of salvaged wood I found on Craigslist.  It was a garage.  And now the 2x4's will probably turn into a wood shed, I'll use the clapboard on another shed, and the sheathing...ah, the sheathing.  The best part.  It will probably be our new floor in the living room!

Here is what we got:

And a closer look...it was tarped and sat covered for a few years...and got kind of mildewed and yucky:

So I spent some time with a power washer while Mr Eclectic split more of the wood mountain, then laid it out to dry:

And of course now they are saying it might rain tonight, when it wasn't supposed of as of this am!  So we had to bring it all in...and of course, since it was in anyway, we decided to see how it looked:

The flash doesn't show it as well as it does in person, but the icky growing mildew stuff left some interesting patters, and the aging of it makes it basically look like the all too popular (of course because *I* wanted it) barn wood.  Barnwood would be thicker, but otherwise, this is pretty much the same.

We'll probably run a sander over it to touch it up, and then finish it with an oil, like tung or linseed (or a mix of the two).

So, about the floor...

I mused more on the idea of a pallet floor yesterday.  The main problems being: collecting enough pallets to actually generate the needed amount of planks, the taking apart of all of those pallets, and most importantly the fact that most won't be an equal thinkness requiring planing and sanding as well as getting them all to stay put (since they won't be tongue and groove).  I'm not sure face nailing will keep the planks from cupping up in areas where the dog (or the people) might bring in more water on their feet.

So I got to thinking about inexpensive white pine floors.  The problem is, they would look rather...new.  I know they wouldn't stay "perfect" looking long, since pine is so soft, but they would have that light pine color that just wouldn't match the Cottage and might look weird with the ceiling in the living room.

And then I researched old fashioned stains.  I alread figured on using linseed or tung (or a mix of them) oil as a sealer.  So I wanted a similarly toxin free option to make my new floors look old (er).  After looking about, I found this blog about coffee staining and distressing: http://pumpkinpiepainter.blogspot.com/2011/05/my-coffee-stained-chain-beaten-wooden.html with this final photo as the result (ok, so it's not a floor, but same idea)

Not bad, huh?  I also know that iron can leave darker stains (think of old nails in wood) so I am thinking of doing a base coffee stain with bits of iron left on it to darken some areas-or just put some steel wool in vinegar and brush it on after letting it sit.

The flooring might not be settled, but one thing is for sure, when it is, it will be unique and it won't look new or perfect!  Exactly how we like it here at the Eclectic Cottage.

Living Room, Part III, The Rebuild

So now you've seen the ugly truth hiding below the tiles...it's time to see what all that demo led to!

Once we had all the joists out, we cleaned all the debris off the dirt and replaced the sills:

Then it was on to new joists with vapor barrier below on the dirt:

We insulated between the joists so the floor wouldn't be so cold:

And layed new subfloor on top:

Now we had to deal with the ceiling.  It was covered in popcorn, there were several light fixtures we were removing and replacing, and the biggest problems of all-the ceiling was different where the closets were and there was a hole down the center where a faux beam had been.

This is the ceiling:

We had some choices.  Try to repair it, rip it all out, or leave it and cover it up.  We originally tried to cover it with 4x8 sheets of beadboard from the home store.  We got two pieces up and decided it looked awful. Then we talked about drywall, but thought it would look off in the room.  So we went with a product we've worked with before in our old house, tongue and groove pine planks.

By now, you're seeing the white washed paneling in the photos.  It's the same paneling, just sanded and white washed with Minwax Whitewash Pickling stain.  We DIDN'T follow the directions, which is why it has the vintage-y worn look.  We brushed it on, let it sit for 10-20 minutes then wiped it off with a towel.  It dried in some places and not in others, giving it that worn barnwood look.  It has to be done carefully, you don't have to use pressue when wiping the stain off, just let the towel run over the boards.

And now, the more recent "now" photos from the left corner to the right:

Next up, information on the cool stuff you're seeing in the now pictures, and the "what were they thinking" photos of the "framing" of the window you see in the last image.

Kicking around some ideas....

The living room decor is basically all decided, if not finished.  We still need to find more paneling to match and sand,  white wash and install it (one wall left!), and finish installing the pine plank ceiling and lay a floor.  I promise I WILL eventually go through the before during and after as well as a how to for more than just the stone hearth pad.

The bathroom wasn't all that bad really, all we need to do in there is deal with the few patches of plain drywall and figure out some type of door system where the mechanicals are.

The kitchen was like the bathroom, not too much to do, just little bits here and there to tie it all together.

BUT the dining room, bedroom and hallway...woo-boy.  The dining room is blah.  It's painted in a blah color and has no character.  The hall is similar but it also has a poorly built crooked leaning wall that it shares with the bedroom, which has a faux drop ceiling and ugly paneling (the 4x8 sheets, not planks).

So I have a blank canvas so to speak...which means I have come up with ideas and ideas and...uh-oh.  Which ones to choose?  Which ones will tie in with the rest of the Cottage?

Here's a few, I apologize for borrowing the images but I've followed trails all over and don't know who the original photographer was on them.

I like this idea for the hallway, but I'd probably use something other than birds or plants (tall ships maybe, or copies of old maps and postcards from our area):

Then there's the ceiling, which was done in pop corn.  Unfortunately, it's "popping off" in a few places, so we were thinking of using some wood from some old crates that are past their usefulness as crates (this is faux barnwood, but it is the properly grayed look, the pieces would be much shorter from the crates):

Instead of using old magazine pages, I was also considering paneling with wither blue on the bottom and white on top or the opposite:

And then there's the dining room, which is BLAH.  It's painted in a sort of beigy bland color and has no character outside of the scrounged up furniture we've added.  I was thinking of distressed paneling like what was have in the living room, but in color (maybe not THIS distressed):

I'm also digging the idea of running it horizontally instead of vertically, but not all the way up the walls

And the bedroom...we already have pine 6" plank paneling at our Old House that we will be removing and replacing with drywall.  We figure there's a good chance whomever buys it will do that anyway, so we might as well use it!  I think a light wash like this will look fantastic:

And since we have NO CLOSET (we HAD one, but removed it for more room in the living room) I want to build a wall of shelving that will house newly built crates for our clothes.

Kind of like this but a full wall and with wooden crates:

We could stencil fun fake company names on them even, like Genuine Lake Driftwood.