Shabby Chic White Bedding

You're more than welcome to think I have a problem. 

I know I do.

I wrote about my new bedding last spring. (Only about 5 of you saw it so you might want to pop on over to have a look.) 

I went out that day looking for white bedding. They didn't have anything so I got this darling Chapps by Ralph Lauren bedding instead. 

I got it at Tuesday Morning at a steal of a deal. 

 We started changing the other elements in the room in an attempt to lighten it up. The only colors left are some smokey blues, purples and green. 

I have been stopping in at Tuesday Morning every week or so convinced that this spring they would get in some all white bedding. 

I finally gave up. 

They had some duvets (never again)

and some matlesse coverlets (we already had an off white one.)

I wanted a fluffy comforter.

I found the new dust ruffle at Kohls. 

It had some unfavorable reviews but I love it. The material that covers the box spring can tear but the fabric on the bedskirt is lovely.

I kept searching and found the comforter at Target.

It is Shabby Chic for Target by Rachel Ashwell. 

Of course she would have the ruffled goodness I was looking for. :)

The reviews for it said the comforter was too wrinkled. I don't think so. It has a casual look and most of the wrinkles came out after a few days. 

It came with two king size pillow shams.

The shams look good with the antique lace of our other pillow cases. 

 The tray from the dining room table looks adorable. 

I may need to head out to the garage to make another one. 

 

This is a different look for me. 

Usually I have my comforter folded at the edge of the bed but most comforters are way too hot for summers around here.

I don't think this one will be. 

I'm completely smitten with the white against the dark brown furniture. 

Finally,

I have my white bed. 
Bill said, "New comforter?" 
Usually he doesn't notice. 
I guess all the white was a little more dramatic than I thought it would be.

I am hanging on to the floral set. I usually keep one comforter in reserve in case we need a change.

Katie
Linking with,
French Country Cottage  
The Charm of Home  
Common Ground  
From My Front Porch To Yours   
Savvy Southern Style   
Funky Junk Interiors

Bathroom Update III

Things are rolling along with the bathroom. 
This is what it looked like last summer. 

I prettied it up as much as I could but the tub was turning wacky colors.
  
Bill took a day off of work to do the majority of the demo. 
He smashed the cultured marble jetted tub into pieces and carried it out in contractor bags. 

We haven't used the thing in ages yet there was still water in the hoses. Yuck!
Next he demo-ed the shower.
As we suspected there was mold. 
It was primarily under the shelf 
but, it was also in the back left hand corner.

 Bill was not happy to see that the builder didn't bring the stud all the way to the sill plate. The wall moves if you push on it. 
The tile guy came to measure and to take a look at what construction will need to be done to rebuild the pan, fix the stud and repair the sill plates and then tile.  
He said that his part should only take about a week and a half.
He sent me back out to look at more tile samples. 
I need floor tile
 wall tile for the shower
 tile for the shower pan
bullnose edge tile 
and a boarder tile
I have picked all the tile except the tile for the shower pan. 

The next step was finding the vanity.
It was an ordeal.
We didn't want to keep our vanities because they are too narrow. Each section is only 24 inches wide. 
It doesn't have very functional storage and it is low. 
We want a more modern height hopefully with more drawers. Something that looks like furniture.

We searched and searched the internet. We were going to buy something from Seconds and Surplus, a local builder's supply outlet, but realized that getting a 67 inch vanity with a granite top and two sinks up the bend in the staircase would be impossible and these tops don't come off with out possibly cracking.

So I decided that we needed two vanities 30 inches wide. 
We can center them under the light fixtures.
We went back to the big box stores to look at their selection in person. 
I am glad we did. I wanted white. The white cabinets weren't true white, they weren't even off-white, they were cream.

Here.

The only one that was white had a Carrera Marble. Soaps, lotions and cleaners can etch the surface of Carrera. I don't want to have to nag my better half about chemicals on the bathroom counter. If the cabinet had been a regular shape I think we would have gotten two of these and replaced counters when they were worn out but these cabinets had an odd shape. The MDF was also chipping on the floor model.

I thought about getting a buffet and retro-fitting it for sinks. 

Typically they aren't deep enough.

We went to Home Depot and played with the ready made unfinished cabinets.

Here.
I actually really liked this option but Bill would have had to add feet and some other stuff to dress them up a little. 
It would have been about $350.00 for three cabinets. Very affordable but granite and sinks would have added to the cost. Again, Bill wasn't impressed with quality.
We looked at the custom cabinet options but felt they were expensive. 
Bill just kept pointing out that basically these are just boxes with doors. He could build them if he had time.  

                                          Traditional Bathroom Vanities And Sink Consoles by Other Metro Amazon

I went back to the surplus store in Dallas hoping to find something in a French style that I could paint. There was nothing with a white sink. I could live with a lot of things but I felt that the color of the sink had to match the color of the tub. I finally decided that I wasn't getting white vanities and could live without them. I will have plenty of white elsewhere. 

Instead we are getting these.

We weren't wild about the iron curlicues, but we feel we can change those out to something else. 

They have black granite and white sinks and I can always paint them gray later like our designer suggested. 

I don't know why I debated these. They have the cleaner lines we were going for and Bill liked them so much better than the other French Provincial vanities we saw.

Very cute, just not us.

I ordered them today and we can pick them up later in the week. 

I have a fairly light aesthetic in my living room and I love the pop of black from my entertainment unit. 

I think these vanities will give that same pop to my bathroom.

I will show you the tile selections in my next post.

My glammy tub is in and should be delivered as soon as the rest of the faucets come in. Once everything arrives the plumber will come to move drains and supply lines. 

Katie

Linking with,
Between Naps on the Porch  
My Uncommon Slice of Suburbia 
Savvy Southern Style

Chalk Paint Picture Frames

While we are waiting for the stuff to come in for the bathroom update, I have been doing a few little projects in the dining room. I have been puttering with the remains of my can of CeCe Caldwell chalk paint. I didn't love using it on the powder room vanity. But I think I found some other uses for it.

When we cleaned out Bill's little Granny Vi's house she had these cute prints. 

I don't think they were expensive. In fact I saw a sticker on one of them that said they came from Ben Franklin which used to be a Five and Dime in these parts. She gave me the little one years and years ago. In fact it was one of our first pieces of wall decoration when we got married. 

While they all look very similar. The frame colors were a little off. I decided to unify them with chalk paint.  

I think I have almost come to end of my list of furniture to be painted but I still wanted more white, particularily in the dining room.

These little prints will replace some of the moldy gold frames I had in that room.

I love how it has changed these look of them and lightened up the room.

Once I started, I couldn't really stop. 

The mirror in here reflects the chandelier. I tried going without it once but I missed all 

the sparkle reflected back.

I got the frame for the mirror at a garage sale in the 90's. Some of the gesso was broken off so it wasn't too precious by any means.

Before:

After:

I love how everything is more unified and

it flows better with the other rooms downstairs.

It goes well with the tray I just made last week. 

Sprinkled with chalk paint,

Katie   
French Country Cottage  
Funky Junk Interiors

50 Year Old Trestle Table

My mom and dad were DIYers way back in the 50's and 60's. 

They bought a turn of the century Craftsman era home that needed some fixing up.

I told you how they refinished all of the wooden doors in this post here.

My mom loved shopping for antiques and restoring them. 

My dad helped with refinishing projects but he loved to build  furniture.

At some point in the 1960's he built the table that now sits in our dining room. 

He made it out of reclaimed lumber from a barn using antique plans.

The patina of this wood is lovely. The tabletop got refinished at some point in the 70's but since then we have left it "as is". 

Trestle table made from reclaimed lumber.

The legs are just beautiful. 

The table has two ornate pedestals joined with a horizontal stretcher with tenons secured with a wedge. 

It is a classic trestle table design.

The top is constructed of wide, wonderful boards that are dovetailed on each end into perpendicular pieces.

 I don't know what kind of glue he used but this has held up for over 50 years. 

You can get plans to make your own at 

www.popular mechanics.com. 

The finish on this table can withstand just about anything. 

We use it for formal dinners but I have spent hours and hours doing crafts, puzzles or scrap booking at this table.  

It has been in style in one way or another for almost the entire time I have had it.

 

Farmhouse tables are back in a big way. 
It is such a joy to have something with history. 

 My husband never got to meet my dad, but I think they would have had a great time doing stuff together. 

They say you marry someone just like dear, old dad. 

Read about some of Bill's projects

  here,

  &  

   here. 

I think the old saying is true!

I miss you, Dad,

Katie  
Linking with,
Funky Junk Interiors   
Coastal Charm  
Between Naps on the Porch   
My Uncommon Slice of Suburbia 
 From My Front Porch To Yours 
Common Ground  
The Brambleberry Cottage   
A Stroll Thru Life  
Savvy Southern Style  
French Country Cottage   

Pinterest-How Does It Really Work?

I have been trying to figure out Pinterest. I know how it works. Pinners basically create bulletin boards of beautiful images over a wide variety of subjects. Visual to-do lists. I love it for that. 
But...
when "Let's Add Sprinkles" got its first pin, I was thrilled because the image was darling and I thought it was worthy of being pinned. Nothing happened. The same thing happened over and over again. In fact at various times I tried to go searching for pins from my blog. I couldn't even find them through the search engine. I also tried having two browsers open when pinning something to see if I could find my pin on the main page and even on the subject matter pages. Nothing. I could never find one of my pins floating around. 
I know they float around because I see linkbacks to my blog from Pinterest. I have followed the link back and have seen my pins. 
I finally decided that that there has to be some sort of matrix or something to it. For instance, let's say that I am a big name blog or a big name site like Houzz or BHG.com that gets pinned all the time. I wonder if those pins don't get some sort of preferential treatment in a techie sort of way because of the site it is linked back to and the frequency from which stuff is pinned. I am just a little fish in blog world with not many pins, so my site isn't being featured on the Pinterest main page. My pins only float around to the people that follow the people that pinned it. Does this make sense?
I have tried to even google this question to see how or why something is featured on the main site pages. 
I have found no answers. 
I think there has to be something to it because if I search shabby and white for example, I see the same big name pins and pinners over and over and over. These same pins can be there for days on end. There may be some new ones but it is basically the same pins. I know that there have to be a million other shabby and white pictures out there. To see other shabby and white stuff, I have to change my search query. My theory (and it is just a theory) is that there are big name pinners, pins and link backs that are somehow mathematically getting chosen based on the amount of traffic they get on Pinterest. 
I noticed this with one of my pins. One picture of mine was pinned by a big blog. Thank you, Holly@Down to Earth Style. It got a lot of repins because that blogger has a lot of followers. The same picture pinned by another reader got no repins. I am assuming that reader doesn't have as many followers so not as many people saw the pin. Again, I tried a specific, detailed search query for my pin. I couldn't find it anywhere. There were not even that many images to choose from but most were from big name sites. 
Over and over out in blog world I read about Pinterest and the effect on a blog. One post I saw last week talked about how to take pictures for repinning. She noted how she went from 500 repins to 90,000 repins just by changing the picture. (I wish I could remember where I read this and I would give you credit but I can't remember. But if you have 90,000 repins you probably don't need credit from a little fish like me. ;) Let me know who you are if by some miracle you find this post.)
Anyway. I would be thrilled if one of my pictures got 500 repins. But it made me wonder about the images that get 500 pins in the first place. It brought me back to my theory. I think that has to be some sort of mathematical, statistical, matrix that Pinterest has going. The big ones get bigger and the little fish in the sea get a little more traffic but not that much. 
I think that is why some of the bloggers I follow have pinned the same picture several times under different categories so that they can increase their traffic and thus their chances of getting pinned. 
Please weigh in for me. I am still trying to determine the benefits of Pinterest as it is just one more thing to do. Sometimes there is so much to do just to publish a blog post worrying about whether pictures are pin worthy is one more thing. 
Do you have a theory? Are you pinned much? Are you confused by all the social media pressure on your blog? Help?
I was just wondering....
Katie 

  Did an experiment trying to find this image. I didn't see it.