Stairway to DustyRose Heaven

Our hallway makeover is finally complete. The summer has been crazy, so from start to finish it took about two months to get this project done.  All of the trim, doors, walls, spindles, risers and railing were painted, and unfortunately, more than a few coats over foot prints on the steps.

Hallway on the day we took possession of the house in April.

Dusty rose stairway to heaven. One of the hazards to your health when you buy a B&B named A Victorian Rose...

We ripped the carpet off before changing the wall colour back in July. When my 3 year old niece saw this she questioned "why did you take the fuzzy off the stairs?" ........."because the fuzzy was buttugly"

The trim was too yellowish-grayish-greenish-barfish, and the railing was too yellowish-orangish-shineyish

A couple of coats of a light grey called Luminarie on the wall, then it was on to the BM Cloud White for the spindles, spindles and more spindles. I darkened the railing with a dark walnut low lustre polyurethane. (4 coats)

Wall colour and cloud white trim on the left.

Started the runner, it's a beige colour to warm up the gray to get a natural sisal look.

Measured out a band because the runner was boring on its own



Finally finished.

Clean and fresh.

***Update: check out how the finish is holding up 1 year later

So that part of the project seemed to take forever, but the other sub project took less than 48 hours from brainwave to operational. 

I really like the look of the Moooi string pendant lights.  Since I am cheap/poor I would never buy one. So I came up with my own version. 

Cheesecloth, Stiffy Stiffener and a pendant light.  The idea came from when my mother made a nativity scene in the 80s by draping and stiffening cloth over the molds. I skipped spray painting the shade gold, but the idea was similar.

Picked up a pendant light at good ol' Canadian Tire. Put a call in my brother in-law and offered beer for a wiring job. 30 min later it was up and working.

The big shade fills the hallways high ceilings.

It's a Jungle Out There

This is the courtyard that we were looking at in March during our final inspection. It hadn't been maintained for about 2 years and it was looking pretty bleak.

A month later we managed to get most of the the dead brush out, but then it was looking more like an overgrown jungle of weeds.

After filling bags and bags of brush, leaves, weeds and other ugly stuff we were left with this!

We spent less than $100 on plants,soil, spray paint, sprinkler and gardening gloves after ruining my nails daily for about a week.  All of the furniture, pots, bird houses, benches came with the house, so they just needed sprucing up. Since most of the garden was green we needed some colour, some spray paint on the plastic pots and urns got the splashes we needed.

Trying to get a base for our first garden I started this season with all perennials (and I want the garden to look good next year with less work.) We went with Woolly Thyme, Beacon Silver Spotted Dead Nettle, Periwinkle, Moss Phlox, Pearlwort, Wild Strawberries and Red Creeping Thyme.

Started a vegetable garden in pots this year, and used some old beyond repair Adirondack chairs as their base.

Fence Update:  Request will be proposed at Town Council meeting July 13... the never ending process.  I hope we still have some money left by then to even build the fence.

Aussie Aussie Aussie

Ol' Blue is showing her colours for World Cup... the BF would like to paint her Green and Gold but we compromised on the Aussie Flag.