Our garage conversion is finally finished. It took longer than expected but was worth the wait.

Let’s see how it looks!

In order to be able to work in the garage year-round. The garage was insulated, dry walled and heat and air condition were added.

One thing I asked for is to have the bottoms of the trusses in the garage to be left visible. I wanted them to look like beams across the ceiling. They said not an issue and actually thought it ended up looking pretty cool.

While construction was going on, I painted the breakfront from my office and two shelves I got from Good Will to get them ready for the space. I picked a beautiful shade of blue to compliment the paint color in the garage. I also painted the cabinets we already had in the garage black. It looks fantastic!

To finish it off we found a worktable on Facebook Marketplace and two stools at Good Will.

The finished product. Everything really works well together. Look at my beams in the ceiling!

I can’t wait to do my first project here.

Now that I have new physical space to work in, it is time to redo this digital space also. On December 15th, the creative process of redesigning my website will kick into high gear and “construction” will begin. The build out will take place and continue through the holidays and the month of January.

I am so excited to share my new site with you in 2024. Be on the lookout for the announcement!

Wishing you all a wonderful holiday season and a very happy New Year!

The last time I wrote about the garage conversion was back in July. There have been some hiccups, but we are almost to the finish line.

In the meantime, I have been working on two bookshelves I plan on putting into my new space. I found them at Good Wiil for $9 a piece. They are solid and in great shape. I think they were library shelves in a school. The backs are angled, and the shelves have a ridge on them (maybe to keep books in place). Wherever they came from, they are perfect to hold all of my chalk paint.

I gave the piece a thorough cleaning. When it was dry, I filled in any holes with wood filler, then sanded and painted with primer.

I gave the shelves two coats of this beautiful blue color from Lowes. I will leave link down below.

I love the way they came out! I can’t wait to put them in my new space and fill them with all my supplies!

Interior Paint and Interior Primer Products | Valspar®

I like going to Good Will and shopping on Facebook Marketplace where I have found furniture pieces and home decor at great prices. However, I have avoided going to estate sales because the idea of them makes me uncomfortable. Going to Good Will or finding items on Facebook Marketplace is much different than walking through someone’s home (that usually has passed away) touching their personal items and going into their private spaces.

But after watching some You Tube videos and seeing the beautiful and sometimes unique pieces that have been found at estate sales, I decided to give them a try. My first attempt was a failure. The sale itself had a lot of nice things but I had no real direction and became overwhelmed by the number of items available and the amount of people at the sale. I ended up talking to one of the people in charge of the sale and voicing how I felt about going through someone else’s belongings. She told me I should use the website EstateSales.Net it will give you sales in your area but best of all pictures of what they are selling. It will allow you to see what’s available and help decide if you want to go to that sale. She also suggested that I look at purchasing an item as a way to give it a second life. It made me feel a little better, but I ended up not purchasing anything. My husband however found a Stanley tool chest on wheels for a great price.

In my second attempt I did use the website EstateSales.Net and was able to see pictures of what was at each sale. I found a sale that had a beautiful clock, and it gave me the reason to go to the sale.

Below are some photographs of items I have found at recent estate sales:

Here is the Stanley tool cabinet my husband found. It has a space for his chop saw on top and storage for his drills underneath.

This was the clock that motivated me.

I was the first one at the clock and purchased it for $65. It even chimes on the hour.

I also purchased this large cement basket for $20. It will look great in my garden.

I am not going to lie I will most likely still feel sad when I go to estate sales, but I will try to look at it differently. Instead of feeling like I am intruding, I will look at it as a gift. I have been given the chance to walk through someone else’s home and get a glimpse of how they may have lived. Like seeing decorations for every holiday and envisioning their home in full regalia. Maybe a chair that is more worn than others and knowing this was a favorite spot. Their choices in books, artwork, dishware, and so on. I hope that by purchasing one of the things they may have loved that I am honoring their life in some way.

I would love to hear your ideas about estate sales and definitely any experiences that you may have had.

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Now that Summer is nearing an end and things are winding down, I have been looking at projects that I had been meaning to do but never got around to doing them. One such project was refinishing a half-moon table that was given to me. It will be perfect for our family room.

Originally, I was going to paint the piece but when I turned it over, I saw real wood. We already have a few painted pieces in the family room and having a wood piece would be nice. So, I decided to uncover the wood using a stripper we already had in the house. I started working on the top, but it was messy and stinky and taking way too long. We tried sanding it but again for such a small table I felt a lot of work was being put into it and there were other things I could be doing.

I stepped away from the project at this point to decide if I wanted to continue or move on to something less frustrating. While I was contemplating, I remembered seeing a video recently about using Easy Off oven spray to strip and bleach furniture. In the video it seemed to work well so I thought what can I lose. I went to the store purchased Easy Off oven spray and used it on my half-moon table.

Let’s see what happened!

This is the half-moon table and what I found underneath.

I have used Klean Strip before on tough projects, but it usually needs more than one application, and it has a strong odor.

First application.

After removing the paint, I sprayed it again to start on the varnish and gunk.

Even with the second application there was still a lot of varnish left. I was three hours in, and frustration was setting in.

Even after sanding for a half hour (my husband jumped in for me, my allergies were bad that day) you can see the stain embedded in the wood. This is where I stopped to plan my next move.

It said fume free, but I still used a mask.

I sprayed a thick layer of Easy Off on the piece and let it sit for twenty minutes.

When the time was up, I used steel wool and a wire brush to remove the paint and varnish then rinsed the residue off with the hose.

I did do another coat in some areas where the varnish was thicker.

After rinsing off the residue from the second application I let it dry in the sun.

Then gave it a light sand.

Before and After

I would definitely do this process again. It was much easier, and not only did it strip the wood it lightened it as well.

The finished product looks great in the room. Love it!

I really never thought I would be a “real” gardener. I thought I would have bushes, pots on the front stoop and maybe some flowers for some curb appeal. But here I am with three good sized gardens (at least that’s what I would call them) one is 22′ x 20′, another is 25′ x 8′ and the third is 23′ x 7′. I have to admit I am enjoying myself, it is hard work, but I like digging in the dirt, breaking a sweat and feeling tired in a good way at the end of the day.

However, I am definitely a rookie when it comes to my knowledge of plants and how to care for them. In the beginning I was moving plants around because I did not look at the heights they would grow. I now look at the tags that come with the plants (those of you who know me know I am not good at reading directions). But in this case, things might die if I water them too much, plant in full sun instead of part sun or shade, when to feed, mulch, cut back etc. It is because of everything you need to know to keep every plant happy and healthy that I am creating a plant map of my gardens and starting a journal.

The map is essential for me because I can never remember what is planted and where, so I have to wait until they start to grow to figure it out. I am hoping the journal will make me a better gardener by recording what works and what does not. It will also give me something to look back on to see my progress and also prevent me from creating yet another garden when I look back at how hard I worked on the other three.

Front Garden Map

Cottage Garden Map

Back Garden Map

I ordered this journal from Amazon. With this journal and my garden maps it should help me become a better gardener.

I posted a blog in 2021 about “Creating A Cottage Garden Part One. In the post I talked about how after our addition/renovation was done on our home in 2021, we were left with a perfect place for a cottage garden. In preparation for the garden, we roto-tilled the area, added garden soil, laid pavers for a path, added a birdbath, and ending by selecting plants and placing them (some still in their pots) into a garden design. I followed this post with “Cottage Garden Part Two”. Here I actually planted the garden and was contemplating some type of enclosure. After seeing a video of making a fence out of pallets, I decided to give it a try. Getting the boards off the pallets was a lot harder than I expected and I gave up the idea. I chose instead to use boxwoods around the garden and as they mature, it would create a separation.

That brings us to this blog post. Honestly, I don’t think I ever gave up on the idea of a fence, but it was just too much at the time. Every time I watched Linda Vater on You Tube and saw her Potage Garden enclosed with a beautiful fence, I wanted one too. I was finally pushed into action when I saw four by eight-foot cottagey looking fencing at Home Depot. They would be perfect to enclose my garden. Yeah!

P.S: First I had to convince my husband since I needed a partner in crime to pull this off. Ultimately, he came around. Love that man!

As a reminder, this is where we were after “Cottage Garden Parts One And Two”.

These are the lengths of fencing from Home Depot we ended up purchasing. Now I had to decide what color to paint them.

I thought about painting the fence white, but I didn’t think it would work with the piece of “perfectly rusted” wrought iron fence I had found on Facebook Marketplace.

Returning to Linda Vater’s Potage Garden and the fact that her fence was a darker color, I looked online to see if she had ever mentioned the color that she used. Not only did she mention the color, she posted the formula and the fact she purchased it through Home Depot.

I set myself up in the backyard, put my earbuds in and proceeded to paint all for lengths of fence and the posts they would be attached to. I did some singing and dancing along the way.

I really like the color. It’s a bronzy black/brown which goes well with the wrought iron fence.

As I was painting, I could see the garden right in front of me and thought wouldn’t it be great to have decorative newel posts as an entrance to the garden. A large salvaged pillar that we purchased a couple years ago came to mind.

My idea was to cut the pillar in half and create two newel posts.

Two halves of the bottom and top of the pillar. Now we just had to screw them together.

Because these halves did not match up, the circled part on the right had to be removed to put them in line.

That piece was cut out then glued back together.

After the posts were dry, I painted them with the fence color but wiped some off because I wanted it to be lighter than the fence and for the paint to get into the cracks.

Next, we started putting it all together.

First, we dug all the post holes.

Added the posts, put rocks all around and then backfilled with dirt.

Dug out trenches to level the fence.

Once everything was level, attached a clamp to hold in place while screwing together.

When we added the newel post they were a little short, so we added wood to the bottom to raise it up.

The finished fence for my cottage garden. I love the fence but thought something was missing. Maybe a finial for the newel post top.

I went shopping in my house and found two candle holders made of resin in my front room.

I added the same color paint as the fence to the candle holders and I love the results!

It was a lot of work, but the end result was worth it!

Next up, a glass of wine on the patio looking at our new garden fence!