Architectural Salvage Lamps

*knocks on window....peers in*

"Is anyone still there???" she asks.

I am SO sorry y'all!  It's hard to believe that I've left you hanging since August of last year!!  I miss blogging, I really really do, and I hope to be able to carve out a little more time for it this year.  

So much has happened around here since August!  Our beloved Jack Russell passed away in November (she was 13),  Baby Girl celebrated her 1st birthday in January, in February our neighbor found a stray puppy and gave him to us and I talked Hubby into letting us keep him, we got 10 baby chicks in March (only 8 are left now and they're getting close to laying age), we've been getting fresh veggies from our garden, and of course I've still been selling shower curtains and homeschooling the kiddos.  I'll try to share some pictures of some of these things soon.

Let's get on to today's post.

 (Disclaimer - These are cell phone pictures because our computer still won't upload any pictures from my good camera, so I just had to do the best I could.)

These big ol' ugly chunky lamps came from a local thrift store.  The first time I saw them I thought, "Wow, those are ugly!" and I kept on walking.  But then I stopped and backed up and looked at them again and it hit me, I think I could give those a makeover and make them look really neat.  But...I felt like I didn't need another project staring me in the face and making me feel guilty for not completing it, so I left them there.

They stayed there for MONTHS!  Every time I went to that store I looked at them and thought about re-doing them.  Finally I decided if they were still there by the time the next 50% off day rolled around I would get them.  But then I forgot about the 50% off day and had to wait a whole month more.  

They were still there and I got them both for $3.

They weren't very pretty, and they are BIG and heavy. 

They were chipped and cracked and dirty..... I'm not too surprised no one else wanted them.

I had in mind to give them a finish that would make them look like a worn old architectural salvage piece that had been turned into a lamp.  I had in mind something like these pieces.

It was an experimental process and I really wasn't quite sure how to achieve the look I was going for, but in the end I think I ended up with something pretty cool.  

The one lamp already had two big chips knocked out of it, so I purposely chipped up the other one a bit to help it along in the "aging" process.  I gave them a base coat of a dark gray paint, then added a crackle medium in random spots all over them, then I sponged on a layer of white paint.  The areas that had the crackle medium cracked nicely and the darker undercoat showed through.  Then I added a layer of antiquing glaze and then another layer of white sponged on here and there.  I finished them off with a few coats of clear sealer in a matte finish.

I looked online and at a couple of stores at lamp shades to go with them and nothing seemed right.  Then I found these cute burlap ones at Walmart of all places and I knew they would pair perfectly because they pick up the color of the antiquing glaze really nicely.

They're not 100% the way I had hoped they would turn out, but I got tired of messing with them and made an executive decision that they were done.  It had already taken me a month and a half to get them finished and I wasn't spending any more time on them.

The display on these crates needs to be changed to fit the scale of the lamp better, but I was anxious to take pictures and be done.  : ) 

When I started this project I wasn't even sure if I would be keeping them or not, but once I found the shades and put them in place I really like them and decided to keep them.  They go nicely with the  new-to-us matching leather recliners I just bought for the living room.  

I already had all of the paints and mediums for this project, so the only cost involved with these was the initial purchase price of $3 and then the shades which were $15 each.  

There's just something so satisfying about taking one man's trash that no one else wants or sees the beauty in and turning it into a treasure.  

A Farmhouse Chandelier Makeover

Ok, so I'm sure you can tell from the title what today's post is going to be about.....a makeover story.....about a chandelier.....a dreamy farmhouse chandelier......now my chandelier.

So since you already know what it's about, I won't keep you in suspense.

Let's just cut to the chase and show it to you.

 

Ain't it purdy?!?

Do you want to know how much it cost me?  $100?  Too high.  $75?  Nope.  $50?  Keep going.  $25?  Still too high.  $15??  Lower.  $10?!?  Even lower.  $5?!?!?!  Almost there.  $4???  Yep!!  You got it, a budget breaking, whoppin' total of FOUR dollars!!  Can you believe that?!?

 

It didn't always look like that though.  It started off looking like this.

But I'm getting ahead of myself.  Let's back up a couple of years and I'll share a story, a two year story about the search for a chandelier.

When we moved into this house the family room was connected to the kitchen, carpet and all.  Yuck!  But I had always dreamed of a big kitchen and dining room being all connected.  I envisioned a big farmhouse table with a farmhouse style lighting fixture above it, etc etc.  So we turned what was the family room into our dining room so that it would be connected to the kitchen.  I didn't have the big farmhouse table (and still don't) and for the time being we just put in a really basic ceiling fan from Walmart. But I always had the dream of a better lighting fixture in the back of my mind.  

So for two years I've casually searched at yard sales and thrift stores for the perfect find.  

I've researched online to see what styles "spoke to me."  I scoured Pinterest for farmhouse chandeliers and lighting fixtures.  What I discovered was this; the style of farmhouse lighting that seems to be popular right now is basically anything and everything repurposed.  While I do like the occasional one that has been upcycled, most of them seem hokey to me.  Like somebody was just trying to get more pins on Pinterest or more visits to their blog because they added an LED touch light to a car engine, hung it from some strands of jute twine, and called it a chandelier.  I know that's a bit extreme, but that's how some of them seem to me.  The other thing I didn't care much for on the repurposed fixtures is that the light output often times seems very minimal and impractical.  We have a large dining room and I would need something with more than one bulb to keep it well lit.  So I determined that I was not really looking to repurpose anything.  The style I kept coming back to time and time again was the more primitive/colonial style of chandeliers.

Something along the lines of these:

(source)

(source)

But the problem was that those types are always so much more than I'm willing to pay or can even afford to pay.  

There have been a few times that I found something that I thought could work.  One time at Lowes I came across a chandelier that was somewhat similar to this style and it was on clearance.  I stood there and stared at it and debated, but ended up leaving the store without it.  After I got home I kept thinking about it and wishing I had bought it, so the next morning I called Lowes to see if they still had it, but alas, it had just sold....15 minutes before I called.  Wasn't meant to be I guess.

Another time I saw one in a local used furniture store for $40, but I passed it up.  I didn't love it and it didn't have any special story to it, so I let it go.  Yet another time I saw one in a Habitat Restore for $50 that I knew I could repaint and fix up and make it work.  But $50 seemed like a lot of money to me since I was trying to save money for our laundry room makeover as well as saving for the built in shelving unit my brother was going to do for me.  So I passed it up too.

THEN.......the same week my brother came up to start building for me, my parents were also here visiting for the weekend.  Saturday morning my mom and I were just sitting in the living room drinking coffee and chatting when I remembered that a little retirement village just down the road from us was having their community yard sale.  Hubby agreed to keep the kids so Mom and I hopped in the van and drove the mile down the road and did a quick 15 minute pass through their community building where it was being held.  Sitting outside in between a beat up old recliner and some pressed wood cabinets that were falling apart I spied two chandeliers.  And let me tell you...they were UGLY!  I almost didn't even walk over to look closer, but I figured it can't hurt to look so I went over anyways and that's when I found it.

It was so ugly, right??

But....I could see the potential,  because when I moved the sticky nasty chain and the ceiling mount piece that someone had carelessly swiped white paint across, I found this.

  

A perfectly authentically worn wooden center section.

And once the globes were gone I could see it had great, basic colonial-style lines to it. 

 

 I knew it would take a lot of work because this thing was NASTY dirty, covered in sticky nicotine and dust and rusty.  

Did you just throw up a little in your mouth? 

I was thinking in my head that if it were around $5 I would be willing to chance it possibly not even working and also to put in the work necessary to clean it up and transform it.  When I asked about it the man looked at me like I was crazy for wanting it, but told me, "How 'bout $4?"  Big grin...."I'll take it!"  :D

 So I toted it home and had Hubby check the wiring to see if it even worked before I got too excited about it.  It did indeed work so during that week that my brother was building shelves for me, I got busy working on this.

I put on some rubber gloves and took some Krud Kutter (amazing stuff by the way!), a scrubby, and an old toothbrush to it.  Just look at all that nastiness that came off of it!!!  Bleck!!

 

While I was cleaning it I was thinking that I would need to buy a can of flat black paint to paint the arms and candle holder parts so that it would match the flat black of the middle wooden piece.  Then I remembered that I still had half a can of chalkboard paint left from other projects and that, essentially, it would have a flat black finish.  So I taped off the wooden middle section because I wanted to leave it just as it was and I painted the rest of it with the chalkboard paint.  It worked perfectly.

You can't really tell it in the pictures, but the candle cover pieces were really nasty, too.  They were orange-ish in some spots, I guess from age and the nicotine.  I wasn't sure if I wanted them to have a drippy candle look like some of the primitive/colonial style ones have or if I wanted them to be plain black, so I started by painting them black.

It was MUCH improved, but it was just TOO much black for my taste.  I looked online to see if I could buy the drippy wax looking candle covers and I could have, but I didn't really care for them because they looked SO fake.  I studied them a bit and realized I could recreate (and improve) the look on my own using hot glue and not have to spend any money.

 

So that's what I did.  I used a glue gun and made the wax drips, then used some white primer paint I had and covered up the black.  Once that was dry I gave them a top coat of ivory paint, which I also already had. 

 

It needed just a little bit more character so the last step was to add a few touches of Spanish Copper Rub-N-Buff here and there on the edges to give it a bit of an aged look so that it wasn't just plain black.  (Though, honestly, when the lights are on you can't even see the aging details.  It just looks black.)  I already had the Rub-N-Buff so that made the cost of this makeover.....totally FREE! 

 

If you look closely you can see the aging details around the rim of the candle holder as well as some touches on the ridged part underneath.

 

And here's how it looks in the dining room.

 

I absolutely LOVE it!!  

And I love that it has a story all its own.  And I love that I spent so very little on it.  And I love how much character it adds to this room.  Are you getting the idea?  

I love it so much! 

I had to do quite a bit of searching to find a "before" picture that showed how the room looked with the ceiling fan because whenever I took pictures of this room I did my best not to let the fan show because I didn't care for it.  But I did find this cell phone picture from 2 years ago where you can see part of the fan.

 

It's amazing how much brighter the room is now!  I didn't think going from 4 lights on the fan to 5 lights on the chandelier would make that much of a difference, but I didn't take into account the fact that the light would now be bouncing off the white ceiling instead of just shining down.

It makes a huge difference!

Let's take one more look at the before and after of the transformation, shall we?

 

The key to having a home you love is to have the patience to wait for the things you love. 

 If you're surrounded by things that have a story or just simply things that "spoke to you" then you'll always enjoy being in the midst of them.  It doesn't matter where you find them, it could be a thrift store or a yard sale, the side of the road, on clearance, or even full price at a huge department store.  Where it comes from doesn't matter, the fact that you love it and you connect with it does.  So be patient when you're looking to fill that empty spot in the corner.  The perfect piece will come along and if you settle for just anything in the meantime you will have wasted your money and ended up with a home you love a little less.

                                                                

                                                               

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Savvy Southern Style - Wow Us Wednesday #269

Upcycled Winter Snow Village

So....what do you get when you combine various and random Christmas village pieces from thrift stores and yard sales, a candle shaped like a tree, a couple of Christmas ornaments, and some leftover light fixtures that have been replaced in your home?

We'll get to that answer in a minute.

First let me just say, now that all of the holidays are over and things have slowed down just a bit (STILL waiting on Baby Girl's arrival...due date was yesterday!) I wanted to pop in and share this project I did back at the beginning of December.  I did it for Christmas, but actually I plan to leave it up through January because it's more "wintery" than it is Christmas so we can enjoy it a bit longer.

I've always loved Christmas villages, but I've never set about collecting one thus far because 1) we haven't had the room to store all the extra boxes it would take, and 2) I've never really had a good spot to set one up.  But this year I decided to do one on a smaller scale and on the cheap.

So how do you turn all those random things I mentioned before into some semblance of a village?

You spray paint everything white, Mod Podge on a little glitter, add some white lights and white sheet and VOILA!  You've got yourself a wintery snow village.

I even spray painted and glittered the candle tree to make it match.  I also added in my yarn "snowballs" that I made a few years ago just to add some extra interest and texture.

The little clear trees were a set of Christmas ornaments that I found at a thrift store that already had silver glitter on them. I love how the clear glitter on the houses resembles sparkly snow.

And the leftover light fixtures?  Well, I used the glass globes from them and stuffed some of the string of lights up inside of them to make them glow.  They look like big balls of sparkling ice to me.  :)  The rest of the string of lights was tucked under a white sheet to make it look like glowing snow.

It's amazing how a little bit of spray paint can bring random things together and make them cohesive.

My total investment in this village was about $6.  I tried to only pick village buildings that were less than expertly painted to begin with, that way I didn't feel so bad covering up someone else's work, lol!

It's glowing and beautiful and we've really enjoyed it and will continue to enjoy it for a couple more weeks.

I'll be sure to keep you posted on Baby Girl's arrival.  Hopefully SOON!  We're all getting very anxious for her to come.  :)

A Secret Sewing Project

A couple of weeks ago I shared this photo over on the Facebook page and hinted at a sewing project I was going to be working on.

Some of you guessed that maybe it was going to be a fall quilt.  I sure wish I knew how to quilt!

Then a few days later I shared this photo and told you that I had the next step of the project completed, but that it would be a couple of weeks before I could share the whole thing.

Well, now I can share.

I was working on making fall themed pillow covers!  I made 13 in all and the reason I couldn't share them yet was because they were going to be gifts.  In my last post I told you that I'm on a little vacation in Tennessee with my mom and her sisters this week, and 8 of these covers were coming with me to be given out to my aunts, my mom, and two of my cousins.  Whenever they get together like this they have what they call Scarecrow parties and gifts are given out all around (the scarecrow brings the gifts instead of Santa).  : )

I decided the cheapest most cost effective thing I could give would be something I had made.  And since I have TONS of scraps leftover from my shower curtain business I decided to use some of them up and make pillow covers.  I made 2 more that won't be pictured here because they were Christmas ones and I'll share them another time.  I also made one for myself and one for my sister.  The total cost of 13 pillow covers was a whoppin' $8...and I still have plenty of fall fabric left over to make even more if I feel so inclined!

I was a busy bee trying to get these all completed before my trip, plus keeping up with making my shower curtain orders.  We pretty much didn't see the top of the dining room table for about 2 weeks, lol!

Let's take a look at what I worked so hard on.

Some of the covers have a pumpkin shape on them and some have a fall leaf.  I used a variety of fabric styles since I don't know the decorating tastes of my extended family members.  The pumpkin up there at the top though, I made that one with my mom in mind.  She wants to change her living room decor over to a lighter color palette of greens and blues and do a coastal theme.  So I made that one to coordinate with her upcoming decor change.  I love the combination of the 3 different patterns, but yet they all coordinate.  I don't know if you can see it well enough or not, but the aqua one has little white polka dots on it.  So sweet.  :)

The other ones I made were more traditional fall colors and patterns.  After I cut the patterns out of the fabric, I then used a spray adhesive on the backs of them and followed the directions for a temporary bond.  That allowed me to move them around and get them centered just right, but yet it held them in place strong enough to allow me to get them stitched all around.  I purposely left the very edges unstitched so that when they got washed they would rough up in a cute rustic sort of way.

I love the paisley and flannel pumpkin!  I made two of those, one for me and one to give away.  I already had two pillow covers that were two different style fall leaves that were done in the paisley fabric, so then I made the pumpkin to go with them.  I wanted it to coordinate, but not be completely matchy matchy.  I think the addition of the flannel pattern helped achieve that.  It's a warm olive green color that matches the green in the paisley fabric.

So....13 covers in all.  Eight were made to give away as gifts, 1 I made for myself, 2 were Christmas ones to be shared later, I doubled up on one of these patterns and made one for my sister....that accounts for 12.  So what about the 13th one?

Well, remember in my last post I told you to be sure not to miss this post?  

That's because.......

SURPRISE!!!

I'm doing an unannounced giveaway of the last pillow cover!!

I made two of these sweet little pumpkin designs and I decided to give one away to one of my faithful readers.  I appreciate you guys so much and I'm so thankful you've stuck with me even though I haven't been a very regular blogger these past few months.

I didn't announce it anywhere and I don't plan to because I want only my faithful readers to be on this.  I don't want any freeloaders hopping over here just because they think they can get something for free and then I never hear from them again.  This time its just for you guys.

All you have to do is leave me a comment at the end of this post and you'll be entered!  Be sure I have an email address to contact you at in case you're the winner.

This giveaway is for the pillow cover only, you'll have to supply your own 14" pillow insert.  It's an envelope style closure, and its made out of drop cloth.  They're easily removed and very washable.  

I apologize for all the wrinkles.  I was running out of time and light to get these pictures done so that I could schedule this post before I left and I didn't take the time to iron them, but you get the idea.

There's just one thing we gotta get straight......I don't claim to be much of a seamstress at all, I can accomplish basic things, but I'm certainly not a professional.  SO....if you happen to be the winner you have to promise me that you won't make fun of my lack of skills....mmmmm-kay?  Just remember, it's the thought that counts and I made this with love for my faithful readers.  : )

So just leave me a comment below and include your email address and in a week or so I'll do a random drawing and let you all know who won!  

Happy Fall Y'all!

 *This giveaway has now ended*