Once Upon a Window Seat, Part IV: The Final Chapter

Catch up on the project with Part I , Part II and Part III.

The mostly finished window seat and book cases.

Building a window seat and book cases in our living room proved to be challenging, but the work wasn't over after the last board was fastened and the last cabinet door hung. I wanted the wood to complement the other dark woods in the room. Woods that are likely to remain, such as the mahogany china cabinet, antique piano and foyer doors. 

This piano is probably the oldest thing that I own. 

One thing that breaks my heart about this house is that the old, original parquet floor in the foyer only comes part of the way into the living room. Oh, to have parquet throughout the house!

I used oil-based stain because it has a longer working time than water-based. With pine, you never can tell how stain will absorb, so I wanted something that I could work into the wood really well. I chose antique walnut, which is the same stain that I used on the foyer doors. It also complements the piano and china cabinet. Wearing rubber gloves is a must when working with stain, especially if you're covering a lot of ground.  

Find an old rag that you don't mind sacrificing, and rub the stain into the wood really well. When you wipe off the excess, work in the same direction as the wood grain to avoid dark streaks. 

Smaller cabinet door for under the window seat.

The trim around the cabinet doors doesn't match the plywood perfectly because they're different species with different levels of porosity and wood grain. Once I wiped on polyurethane after the stain was set, the colors turned richer and the differences became less noticeable. Although we hadn't painted the room yet, I taped off the walls around the cabinets to protect them from stain.

Although I knew better, I used masking tape to tape off the cabinet. It peeled off some of the paint primer on the walls. If you try this at home, do yourself a favor and use painter's tape.

After staining, I installed the cabinet hardware. Prefab cabinets come with pre-drilled holes for hardware. When you build your own, you have to figure out where the hardware goes. 

First, I measured the distance between bolt openings on the door handles. They're usually somewhat standard, but measuring helps avoid major screw ups. I marked the edge of the cabinet door to show where the handle should fit.  

Sometimes it's easier to measure from the 1-inch mark than from the end of the tape.

Tiny silver marks on the door from a washable marker help with alignment.

Finding the width of the trim helps you find the center where the handles should fit.

Speed Squares are such amazing little tools. So simple, but they help you keep everything straight. 

Speed Squares have a perfect 90-degree angle, which keeps things straight as long as the edge of the board is also straight.

To the extent possible, keep the drill bit horizontal to the plane of the cabinet door. If the bolt holes are tilted, the bolts won't align with the door handles.

Slip the bolts through the back side of the door and into the handles, and tighten them until the handle fits snug against the door. 

After installing the hardware, there was one more thing left to do. I deliberately left the back wall of the book shelves bare because I wanted to decoupage pages from old books. 

I cut out certain paged and pasted them on the wall with thinned wood glue and a sponge paintbrush. It's like going back to kindergarten craft time, except that nobody tells you not to eat the paste (Don't eat the paste!). The only rules that I discovered are that thinning the glue with water makes it easier to spread, but thinning it too much can warp the pages. 

This is my Edgar Allan Poe section when I'd just started the job. 

Lime green flip flops aren't mandatory. 

We ran out of time because company was arriving, so I had to put the remainder of decoupaging on pause. I do that a lot, putting off projects. 

A bit of advice for decoupaging. Cover the surface with pages that aren't special before layering on the pages that you want to see. That way, you won't have to cut and trim and cuss to make the pages fit the way you want them to. I trimmed and cussed a bit. 

Besides finishing the back walls, there are two more things that have to be done. I still need to finish sewing the bench cushion cover, and I want to install a plant shelf between the two book cases. Mr. V. and I found two of these brackets at a little antique shop, and they will fit under the left and right ends of the shelf. 

$20 for a pair of these. Not too shabby. 

It will look a little something like this, except that I'll fasten them to the cabinets so that Mr. V. doesn't have to hold them forever. 

He isn't crazy about modeling for me.

All in all, I would call this project an official success. The bench seat is so sturdy that I can walk on it without any bends or creaks, and the cabinets are so sound that I think that's where I'll hide next tornado season. 

Building a custom cabinet takes a lot of planning, flexibility and compromise, especially in an old house where nothing is square.  But that's also part of the fun. You can customize it any way that you like. As long as the structure is sound, anything goes. 

XOXO

Upcycling, Repurposing and Inspirational Things

One of my favorite things is finding inspiration in the unusual. Upcycling has become a trendy, even stylish term lately, but repurposing interesting objects has been the hobby of many folks for a long time. 

When we first moved to Knoxville in 2000, Mr. Vagabond and I lived in an adorable little Barber Victorian cottage on the fringe of the historic Fourth & Gill community. Although I'd long been a fan of thrift (ok, junk) stores, I soon discovered that Knoxville took it to a whole new level compared to what I'd seen in other towns. One of the first things I started collecting here was dishes. I used some of them in my little garden.

Unfortunately, my Golden Retriever bit the heads off every petunia. 

That was a neat way to use broken dishes and teacups with crazing in the glaze. The bad parts of the plates were hidden in the dirt, and I broke out the bottoms of the teacups. 

I amassed stacks and stacks of creamy-white Homer Laughlin dinnerware. Some pieces were plain, and others had delicate, faded floral patterns. I considered them my fancy plates, and reserved them for special occasions. Some of the pieces have disappeared over the past 12 years, and that makes me sad. 

Anyway, back to repurposing. 

Every older man I know has several glass insulators in a box somewhere in his garage. I've always loved the look of them, but never knew what I could do with one. 

What about this?

Or this?

Beautiful, no? Clever, too. 

At one time, I could find glass insulators for nothing at local thrift stores. Now they are VERY pricey, as their value is becoming more and more apparent. Lucky me, I had some foresight and bought every one I could find back in the day. Now to bring out the diamond bit and my Rotozip!

Old glass bottles are another favorite of mine. I have loads of them. 

So what about something like this?

I've been buying old bottles for about as long as I can remember, too.

Another favorite thing is old doors. I love old doors. I have one leaning against the wall in my kitchen just waiting for new purpose. 

Maybe one of these ideas will work. 

I could use one of these in my foyer

My old door is just about this size.

Now, THIS is really cool!
 

One of the tricks to repurposing or upcycling, at least when it comes to interiors, is to make an item that is already attractive into something useful as well. An old thing on a shelf is just an old thing on a shelf. If it isn't beautiful in the first place, it probably won't stand on its own as art or an artistic furnishing.

An old bottle with bubbles in the glass is a thing of beauty just the way it is. An old door that is rugged and full of detail is lovely for its craftsmanship alone. 

When you choose an object to convert into something else, consider the object for its own sake, just as it is, before you think about what you could turn it into. That way, you're not adding decoration to something that's not really worth it. 

XOXO

Extracting an Interior Design Color Palette in Gimp

A few days ago, I learned how to create an interior design color palette from an image and I thought this info might be useful for others. How many times have you seen an image of a room and wished you knew the colors the decorator used? For me, the answer is lots.

And away we go.

I use photo manipulation / editing software called Gimp, which is very similar to Photoshop. The biggest difference is that Gimp is free. Free!  You can download it here. 

Open an image of a room that you love with Gimp. I fell for the colors in this one.

Cheery little space.

There are so many things to love about this room. The creamy white walls, aquamarine bench cushions, sandy-colored floor tiles, all punctuated with a soft yet bright yellow. And of course the cute pup!

You may not realize it, but oftentimes a room is appealing because of the overall presentation, and not just the main fixtures in the room. If you only pulled the colors of the walls, cabinets, floor, countertop and bench cushions, you wouldn't have all of the components that make this room a thing that resonates beauty. So yes, the colors should include the pup. :-)

In the upper toolbar of the image in Gimp, click on "Colors" then "Info" then "Smooth Palette." A new window will pop up that looks like this:

Each detectible color in the original image is arranged in neat columns for you view in an orderly fashion and select for your personal palette.

The next thing I do is create a new file. I usually make it 640 by 480 pixels. Click on the upper ruler and hold down the mouse button, then drag down into the body of the image. A line will come down from the bar and land wherever you release the mouse button. You can move it if you don't like the position. Repeat that step a few times to make horizontal dividers. I usually make three dividers, which gives me four spaces. Then repeat the whole thing from the left ruler to make vertical dividers. The rulers on the top and side will help you place the guides evenly.

Once the guidelines are set where you want them in the body of the blank image, use the square select tool in the upper left of the separate toolbar (where the paint brushes, bucket fill and other tools are located) to select one square of the grid. The guidelines in the image will act as a slight bumper to help prevent the drag from going past the lines and bleeding into the next section. You can drag the tool past the guides, but if you get close and release the mouse button, it will outline only the selected square. The highlighted square will flicker around the perimeter, showing you that it is selected.

Using the eyedropper tool, select a color in the striped palette that you like. Fill the selected square with color from the dropper tool using the paint bucket or a paint brush tool.

Fill each square with a different color that you like from the palette using the square select tool, eyedropper tool and paint bucket or paintbrush.

These are the colors I picked.

You probably don't want to create a grid that shows every single color in the image. That would be gigantic. I already have a pretty good idea of the wall color since I used a similar color in my downstairs bath, so I didn't think it was necessary to add it to this palette. But I especially wanted the yellows, aquas and greens. 

The main grid will not have the white dividers between the colors, but that's easy to add after you fill the squares. On the upper toolbar, click on "View" then "Show grid." A tight grid will appear, covering the whole image. Choose the square select tool again and select along two parallel grid lines between two colors, then fill the selection with white. Repeat at the edge of each square. 

Once you have one large palette, you can modify it very easily (and save it with a new filename) to make new palettes. The fuzzy select tool will capture one color at a time in the grid, which is easier than using the square select tool. Click on a colored square, select a color from a palette and replace the color in the fuzzy selected area with the new color. 

And there you have it. The next time you see a picture of a room that makes you go gaga, pull the colors you want to remember and make a palette to help you reproduce whichever elements of the room you like. 

XOXO