I’ve been a fan of Rodney White prints (particularly this one) for what seems like forever. His work is so fun and being a fan of the modern/rustic vibe and having a special place in our hearts for all things vintage, it’s our cup of tea.
Last week, I was shopping with a friend at Garden Ridge when down in the corner of the sea of gobs and gobs of wall art, there she was…
I noticed some damage here and there, which is why it was marked as 50% off, bringing the price down to $40. Ordinarily, I would pass it by and think “Aww, man. I wish it wasn’t damaged”. But for some reason, that day I was feeling a bit ambitious and was pretty confident I could fix the damage. So, I snatched it up and brought it home.
Large 36″x36″ Rodney White art for $40? Yes, please. Now, time to tackle the damage…
You can’t really see it from a distance, but there are some pretty bad small tears and places where the art started lifting from the wooden frame. It was also pretty dirty from being stacked up in a warehouse-like store for who knows how long.
To spruce it up and bring it back to new, started by cleaning it up with a soft cloth a a tiny bit of rubbing alcohol. Then I grabbed some red and green close-matching craft paints, matte Mod Podge and a some Q-Tips. The edges were easily fixed with a bit of Mod Podge. I ended up using my finger instead of a brush to get it in the creases evenly. I applied little dabs of paint here and there with a Q-tip them rubbed it in with my finger so it wouldn’t look too shiny or new. After about 15 minutes of doctoring it up, it was just like new again. Woot!
We hung the art in the laundry room over the green dresser (which we use for tool storage, extra light bulbs, batteries and all that jazz).
Since this is our “hub” for going in and out everyday, I wanted to keep the top of the dresser relatively empty to have room for stuff like mail that needs to go out, things that need to be returned, etc. So, all we have on the dresser is a small key tray, a faux Ikea plant (the best kind because I can’t kill it) and we moved the white ceramic bee container from the foyer to here – and yes, it is now holding dog treats for Bentley. He always gets his way.
I guess it was a good thing I was feeling extra confident that day in the store because you really can’t see the places where I repaired the artwork unless you look reeeeeeealllly hard. It’s nice to have a piece of Rodney White in the house, plus the $40 price tag isn’t too shabby.
The summer months are coming up and since the foyer is now officially under our belts, we’re now moving on to the other “entry” of our house: the carport. This is where we go in and out everyday, and since we bought the house, we’ve parked our car in there a total of three times – and I think that was during Irene and Sandy. Actually, a while back, we gave our patio furniture a mini facelift and semi-DIYed a huge console table for the space to make it more of an outdoor living slash entry area.
It’s pretty much a blank canvas, but if you look a little closer, you’ll see a few major things we need to address before we get to the fun decorating stuff…
Project #1: The ceiling. As you can see from the photo above, the ceiling is in pretty bad shape. The paint, which was once white (probably back in the 70′s!) is now a sickly-looking yellow, dirty and peeling like crazy. Then there are the lights, which have seen their better days. Project#2: The floor. The previous owners used the carport as, well, a carport, so there are a lot of grease and oil stains from years of car-parking. I also may or may not have spilled a cup of stain on the floor when we were working on a project. Go me. Project #3: The handrails. The simplest project of them all, they just need a quick sanding and a fresh coat of black paint to bring them back to life.
Once we get all of those things under our belt over the next few weeks, we’re teaming up with Target (which happens to be our favorite place on Earth, right after Disney World) to bring some color, comfort and fun to the space. So. Excited. Here’s the plan…
ONE // Like we mentioned earlier, the ceiling is in bad shape. Structurally speaking, it’s fine – it just needs a major facelift. We’re currently weighing the options of scraping, priming and re-painting as opposed to going a step further and cover it up a treatment of some sort such as planks of medium/dark stained wood. Either way, it will look a lot better than what’s going on now.
TWO // Once the ceiling is finished, we’re going to move on to the floor. We’re still debating on whether to paint it or do the whole epoxy/paint treatment (anyone have any experience with this?). Either way, all of the nastiness is going to get covered up with a neutral shade of gray – similar to brand spanking new concrete.
THREE // Throw up some globe string lights and you have yourself an instant party. Aside from replacing the two overhead lights (we’re thinking something silver to pop against the medium/dark planks), we’re going to line the perimeter of the carport with some fun string lights. We actually hung some a few months ago but never blogged about it because the ceiling is just too plain ugly (you can see them in the before photo at the top of this post). This time around, my dad, who’s a licensed electrician, is going to help us install an outlet in the ceiling so we don’t have an extension cord running down the corner next to the door. Yay for dads!
FOUR // New patio furniture isn’t in the budget for this project, but we’re totally in love with Target’s Belvedere Conversation Set. The furniture we have is the same size and color, so we’re going to soften it up with pillows and accessories and try our best to make a cozy and inviting conversation area.
FIVE // I am in love with these Threshold Metal Lanterns. When I picked them up in the store, I was so surprised at how heavy and well-made they were. A few of these on the console table with some flameless candles will add some nice ambiance to the area.
SIX // A part of making a cozy conversation area (as mentioned in #4) is making things as comfortable as possible. We’re going to add at least five outdoor pillows to the furniture. I’m particularly loving these, these and these. Ahh, can’t get enough pillows.
SEVEN // I love, love, love to entertain and having friends over to just hang out. So, when everything is all spruced up, we’re going to be throwing a summer kick-off get-together out on our new “carport patio”. Can. Not. Wait. Everything tastes better in a mason jar – especially during the summer – and I love the relaxed casual look of using mason jars as drinking glasses at a party. So, that’s what we’ll be doing.
EIGHT // I’ve said it a bajillion times, but I love using all white dishes when we entertain. You can add color by mixing in whatever combo you want with special dishes (trays, serving bowls, etc) and colorful linens. For this shindig, I’m going to use this awesome Threshold platter as my “inspiration piece” and will be including corals, reds and a few pops of yellow.
NINE // For our summer kick-off get-together, we’re teaming with fellow Target Inner Circle Member and food blog extraordinaire, Gina, from SkinnyTaste. She creates the most delicious skinny recipes that totally don’t taste like “diet food”. Around here, we’re big fans of her Grilled Chicken with Spinach and Melted Mozzarella and Mexican “Unfried” Ice Cream. She’s pretty awesome. She’ll be putting together a healthy, fresh menu for our get together, and I can’t wait to hear what she has in mind. Plus, it will be a load of pressure taken off of us not to have to spend time figuring out the menu when we can be decorating, haha.
So there you have it, our grand plan. It seems like everyone in Blogland is sprucing up the outside of their houses. How about you, are you getting ready for summer too?
…or at least how I installed one anyway. Something I’ve wanted in the house since Day One is a gallery wall. I mean, come on, who doesn’t love a good gallery wall, right? Haha. I didn’t want anything major, just a little tid bit of organized chaos that happens to look pretty. I just needed an excuse to put one together.
Just when we were nearing the end of decorating the foyer, we got to the awkward skinny wall by the front door. It was too skinny to put a single piece of artwork, not enough floor space for a coat tree and too wide to just ignore and do nothing. And right then and there, I was handed an excuse for a gallery wall on a silver platter.
We had a stack of frames stashed away in the guest room closet that weren’t being used, so I gathered them up along with scissors, scrap sheets of card stock, a Sharpie, tape and a good amount of Command Picture Hanging Strips.
First off, I traced the outer edges of the frames on pieces of card stock then cut them out.
When they were all cut out, I taped the “paper frames” on the wall one by one until I had a design I liked. Being a visual thinker, this proved to be a really valuable step that saved me a lot of brain power. I used clear tape rather than my go-to paper tape so I could get a really good visual of the spacing between the frames.
Oh! The umbrella stand. Greg and I found this super neat vintage porcelain umbrella stand at a local antique mall (Cold Harbor Antique Mall for you locals) for $23. I was shocked when I saw the tag because I’ve been searching for one similar and the cheapest one I found was around $120 plus shipping. So, needless to say, I snatched that baby right up. I’m now on the search for a few fancy umbrellas – the kind with the pretty silver handles. It will be something fun to keep our eyes out for during our shopping travels. Okay, back to the gallery wall…
We had some frames that were the same size but a different style, so to plan out things a little further – because I’m weird like that – I laid them out on the floor to put together a collection that geared toward the look we were looking for (casual, collected over time and not trying too hard). The rest is pretty self-explanatory… time to hang the frames!
Because the frames were going on a wall with a door, we wanted to make sure they were going to be very secure. So, we opted to use the Command Strips. We used these on the tile wall in the kitchen, and they haven’t budged since the day we hung them. Another perk of using these is that if you hang it a smidge crooked, you can easily lift it up and try again.
We’re really happy with how our little gallery wall turned out. Now we’re able to display some of our favorite photos (like this one of me and my grandma cooking in her kitchen sporting matching Mickey Mouse aprons) including the mat our friends and family signed at our wedding and our paint shirt art.
One of our favorite pieces on the wall is this art print of a quote my great grandpa used to say (which is now available here over at Brown & Barkley). I never got the chance to meet him because he passed away a few years before I was born, but I hear stories all the time about what an amazing man he was. So, it’s neat to have a little piece of him here.
Another favorite are these framed vintage numbers. I bought the cardboard numbers on Etsy for about $4 (including shipping) and taped them on a piece of white card stock. I decided to put them in a large frame to give it a more modern look. Oh, and the 29 – we were married on the 29th of December. The numbers look a little flat in the photo, but the texture in person makes them look even cooler.
We can’t end this post without a before and after…
Yeah, we still need a few umbrellas for the stand, but I think it’s safe to say that with that, my friends, we wrap up the foyer. It feels so good to mark an area of the house off the list. I think I totally deserve a Route 44 Diet Dr. Pepper.
