Serpentine Secretary

I can't stop/won't stop with the Craigslist shopping lately. There are so many great finds here and most everything is so incredibly affordable that it's hard to pass a lot of it by. Some things need more work than others though and part of me wonders if it's worth it in those cases.

Like this secretary I recently picked up from a Craigslist seller. I am so in love with the scalloped, serpentine drawer, but man, does it need some work!

When I came by the seller's house to look at it, I was a little disappointed with the condition of the wood. From the photos, it looked like it was in original condition, but I could see right away in person that it had been painted and then (mostly) stripped and that it needed some love. The wood is pretty dry. The seller gave me really great deal on it though and it was hard to pass by since the shape is so unique.

I think with some cleaning the solid brass flower pulls could be cute. Though maybe on a different piece?

Check out the carved curve of the drawer

I also love the unique leg shape that's so slim from the front and much wider from the side view.

I love tiger oak, but I think this piece would look better painted. If the wood was in better shape, I'd totally fix it up more and keep the wood stain (you know I'm all for wood furniture), but I think this would look better in a painted finish - either a gloss or a chalk paint.

I thought I would like it here in the entry, but the curve of the stairs sticks out too much. There's still several feet of clearance, but I think I'll keep my eye out for something with a slimmer profile for here - maybe wall-mounted.

I've actually been thinking it would look really cool in the landing upstairs by the girls rooms, especially if it was painted.

I imagine the girls leaving each other fun little notes inside and storing their treasures in the drawers. We've been collecting seashells for a few years now from our different travels (and my parents have been bringing some to the girls too - they went to Ireland and Scotland this month and they brought back some beauties for us) and this little secretary seems like a perfect place to keep the shells.

I know I'll be glad I bought it when I do get around to refinishing the secretary. My threshold lately has been "will I regret not buying this a year from now?" and if I can honestly say yes, I go for it (and then cram it into the garage! ha!). What is your rule?

How I Painted My Stairs

I've decided I definitely want to change the stairs (treads, banister, balusters - everything) down the road a bit. But for now, I knew it made sense to just paint what I've got. Most of you agreed that I could change the look enough with paint that it would be worth the time and effort.

Well, there was definitely time and effort spent! And I'm pretty happy with the change the color makes in the space.

I think it will be worth all the effort in the end, once the runner's installed. The hardest part by far was all the sanding. And thank goodness for Bondo!

Bondo is one of those products that might look intimidating, but is actually pretty easy to use. You mix a hardening cream with the epoxy base putty in small batches and then smear on the mixture quickly before it starts to set.

The stuff stinks bad, but it works miracles and fills any hole/crease/crevice/seam you present it with.

After the Bondo had dried for a few hours I sanded the filler down. This was seriously a full day's work. Every tread took about an hour. But by the time I was finished, the Bondo had perfectly sealed all the imperfections and all the hand-scraped detail on the old wood had been sanded away.

Michael helped me hang plastic sheeting on the walls and we wiped everything down twice.

I used my favorite Critter sprayer to paint the stairs with the first coat of tinted blue-gray primer.

And some of the imperfections started to reveal themselves.

As Linus would say - Ruh-ro.

So I caulked and did another coat of Bondo where it was needed and then sanded the whole thing again. (and sniffed and sneezed and coughed the whole time - stupid cold.)

I sprayed a second coat of primer on and then the first of two coats of Benjamin Moore's Chelsea Gray in the Advance line paint.

The color is light enough to brighten the space a bit, but dark enough to hide dirt perfectly I think. 

The treads look almost like solid planks now! I'm so happy with how they turned out. We just saved ourselves a couple thousand dollars by not replacing these oversized treads!

I have no ideas yet for what I'm going to use for a stair runner, but I'm really excited to pick that out next. I'll be trying something similar to this tutorial.

Also, on a whim I pulled out one of my old gold leaf pens and painted one of the round screw covers. The pen was pretty dry so the color's not very saturated, but I kind of like the look. What do you think of the gold just on the screw covers?

Before I buy the runner I have lots of touch ups to do and I think I'll paint the walls before installing the runner as well. But at least I'm happy with the direction we are headed in. It was well worth the labor, paint and about $12 in Bondo!

The Staircase: Dread for Treads

We're getting close with the floors. We were all a little sore and tired, so we took a little break and focused on the fireplace this week, but I think this weekend we're going to start laying the chevron in the library (yay!). So, since our floors are just about done, my eyes keep floating over to the staircase, which hasn't been touched yet.

The plan was just going to do paint-grade wood in white on the risers and matching white oak planks on the treads. We will have to order oversized custom treads for the bottom three steps. They're extra deep on the right side because of the curve of the staircase.

The lead time was a little longer on these and they were much more expensive that I was hoping, so I haven't made any progress here. I feel sort of stumped and sick of spending money. And when I've felt like that in the past, I usually just end up painting the whole dang thing and calling it good. And truthfully, it might be a good interim option for us.

I could paint the whole shebang from rail to tread white or black or a combo of the two and then add a thick runner to the stairs to hide the planks on the treads, which bother me (I wish they were solid planks).

Or I could take apart the railing and replace just the baluster spindles with something a little cleaner-lined? It looks like all I'd have to do is pop off the little covers to access the screws. Seems like an easy enough job.

The curved rail is pretty simple and would be hard to replace, so I would plan to reuse it for sure.

And I'm thinking it would be way easier to paint the whole thing disassembled, so that's another bonus. The prep would be a pain and all those curves and angles on the balusters are terrifying to think about covering at every angle.

It's a hard choice, since these stairs are like the first thing you see when you walk in. It would be fun to have something special here. Then the other (lazy) part of me thinks, you know, whatever. Those balusters aren't so bad. A little paint would go far there. And maybe black would be really cool (although dusty looking? Hopefully my house will never be this dusty again. blerg.)

Well, now I think I've officially talked myself into painting everything first before looking into anything else. Why not? It could look cool and worst case scenario is I'm out a little paint and some time, and then I can just move forward with ordering the expensive treads and replacing the balusters.

What would you do?

Trim Designs

Remember how we pulled out the front door and bumped up the pass-through in the entry that goes into the living room? The new eight and a half feet tall entries felt great - so much more in proportion with the high beamed ceilings.

The challenge was to give the entries a little more horizontal presence, especially for the pass-through to the living room.

The new taller entrance was still getting a bit lost on that wall.

So I went to the hardware store and I played around a bit in the trim aisle of the lumber section and found a couple of combinations that I liked. I wanted something about eight inches wide.

The piece of trim that I kept wanting to use over and over again was this casing moulding. I loved the profile and the chunky proportions.

I ended up buying a handful of short sections of the pieces I liked best, so I could keep playing around at home.

Then I saw this photo on Houzz while I was looking for kitchen cabinets inspiration and I remembered my Architecture 101 teacher talking about eared architraves and how they help visually widen and open up a passage surround.

I wanted something a little slimmer than the kitchen inspiration photo, and I wanted to incorporate the casing trim I was liking.

Jason helped me come up with this layered series. My favorite casing is on the very inside, layered on top of a primed pine plank, which we just made wider at the eared part, and capped off with a pine plank turned sideways with a smaller piece of trim set inside the elbow.

I love how the pass through and the front door look together now from this angle:

And what a pretty frame for the view into the new fireplace that will hopefully be finished this week!

We did a taller version of the eared architrave for the big pass-throughs that go into the library and the music room.

They are far from done - there are hours of prep work ahead of me (spackling, sanding, filling, sanding, repeat) before we can paint, but I'm actually pretty excited to start that work. I think it will be one of those completely satisfying before and afters that make it worth the prematurely arthritic hands. :)

We are using the casing by itself on all the regular doors too, so I think the moulding all around the house will really look cohesive and really pretty. Trim is not exactly cheap, but wow, what a difference it has made in the feel of our entry space, even now before it's close to finished!