Kim's Kottage: 2013

Friday, December 20, 2013

Christmas in "The Kottage"

There are so many people who blog and share so much about their homes and lives. I certainly enjoy reading all of it. I've been able to view some very beautiful homes this way and get inspired from some lovely Christmas decorations. So, I debated whether to share some photos of my home decorated for Christmas. I guess just for the fun of it.... I'm certainly not a professional decorator. After some self conflict, I decided why not. So I hope you enjoy taking a quick look around my house that's decorated for Christmas. I went very natural with the outside decorations this year. Most of the greenery was cut off of a farm by myself and my nephews. Not only is it natural but we all had a great time doing the gathering.

Come on in and take a look around. I have trees in the living room, dining room, staircase landing, family room, and kitchen. They are all "skinny" trees though, so they are easy to put up.

This is the smallest tree, and it's decorated with snowman ornaments.

And, this is my favorite tree.... with Longaberger baskets, beaded silverware, creamers, and burlap ribbon.

This tree has some family ornaments on it and a lot of special teacher ornaments I've accumulated over the years.

This handmade sign in the entryway reminds us of the real importance of Christmas.

Thanks so much for stopping by to take a look at some of my Christmas decorations. Hope you each have a blessed Christmas.

Sunday, December 8, 2013

Chevron Chair

Boy, I have been a negligent blogger as of late. I have certainly made a lot of projects but I've been doing the easy thing and just putting them up on Face Book and not blogging about them. So here I am, trying to make restitution. LOL

I REALLY like to reupholster chairs. I say chairs because I haven't gotten good enough to anything bigger. Ok, well, I have reupholstered a bench before. I am looking forward to the day when I can figure out how to tackle a sofa. Maybe someday.... But for now it's chairs, chairs, chairs.... Here's my most recent:

Here's the original chair:

I stripped the chair down to "bones". This allowed me to strengthen the springs and add more padding. The bottom pictures show the chair all ready for sale in my booth in Kansas City. I had to sit the chair on top of a table because we have so much in the booth right now. My partner and I are fully prepared for the Christmas rush of shoppers. I sure hope somebody feels like they need a nice chevron chair in their house.

Thanks for stopping by and taking a look!

Friday, October 18, 2013

The Kid's Table

Maybe sitting at the kid's table won't be so bad for Thanksgiving this year if the kid's get to sit at a cute little table like this!

I took just a plain Jane table from a thrift store and painted it a pale gray, then put some bright yellow letters and numbers on it to try to make it look better. Some lucky kids will be able to sit here to play, study, and eat. MAYBE even eat Thanksgiving dinner or Christmas dinner here! It's headed to my booth at Le Fou Flea in West Bottoms of Kansas City, MO. Thanks for taking a look. Sorry I didn't get any before pictures of this.... but it started with very light wood.

Thursday, October 10, 2013

Giving an Old Chair a New Look

A friend's mother was getting rid of this chair, so she asked if I would want it. Well of course!!! I need more upholstery practice; and this chair would make a nice specimen. Here's the chair as I received it:

I thought the chair had some potential. So I painted it an off-white; and then I let it sit for a LONG time before getting brave enough to tackle the upholstery part. Once I did start the upholstery work, it went faster than I thought it would. It took me about 3 hours to get the old fabric off the chair, and then another 3 hours to add the new fabric. Here's a few shots of the "after". Sorry the pictures have so many shadows in them. I was taking them after dark with the aid of some lamps.

As you can see, I got rid of the buttons and tufting. I thought this fabric had too much pattern for the tufting to look attractive. I also eliminated the separate loose cushion by just making a solid overstuffed seat. The chair is very comfortable.

Friday, September 27, 2013

Breathing some life back into some chairs

I get a lot of pleasure out of renewing old furniture. Why? I really don't know. I love to be creative and make something old and shabby look decent again and make it usable for someone. I find it satisfying.

At an auction this summer I won the bid on a set of 6 old chairs. This was a farm sale and the chairs had very clearly been stored in the barn. They were a filthy mess. Take a look:

These chairs were, in fact, so dirty that I wouldn't even carry them into my basement before wiping them down and stripping off the old fabric. Oh, I didn't mention that two of the six chairs I purchased were so beat up with chunks broken off of them so I just left them sitting in the farmyard. I took the four best chairs home with me.

The chairs didn't get stored for long as I had a nice, solid wooden, round, drop-leaf table that needed a set of chairs. So I painted, distress, and sealed the table and restored the chairs by gluing, cutting new seat boards, painting, and reupholstering the seats. Here's the finished product:

Here's a before shot of the table:

Thanks for stopping by my blog to take a look.

Tuesday, August 27, 2013

Using the Fence Boards

I thought you might like to see what I made with a couple of the fence boards I mentioned in my last post. The sign on the left in this picture was made with fence boards. The sign on the right is made from just regular boards from the lumber yard. Oh, I did cut all the boards with my NEW double beveled 12 inch sliding miter saw. Yeah! I'm getting rid of the old miter saw I bought at a garage sale that didn't have any safety features. I was thrilled to find a nice saw for a great price at Harbour Freight! Their 20% off coupon was a great savings bonus. Oh, back to the fence board sign.....

Friday, August 23, 2013

It Really Was An Accident Officer

Recently, I got the bright idea that I'd like to make a few signs out of some old fence board. So I posted on a local for sale site on facebook that I was looking for some. I got quite a few replies, and one family even offered the old boards for free! You can't beat that! So I went over to the alley where they said to pick up the boards. The problem was that I didn't see any of the houses that had an address posted. I went to where I thought was the correct address and I loaded up a nice big fence panel. Then I drove down the alley and saw some people that I knew. I asked them about the address; they said the house I was looking for was on the OTHER side of the street. Oh NO... I asked if they'd come bail me out when the cops came after me for stealing the fence panel. They assured me that they would. I drove around the block and took that fence panel back and put it back exactly where I got it in the first place. I hope nobody saw me loading that thing up.... how embarrassing. I drove across the street and down the correct alley, where I found the boards as the people had posted. I took about a dozen and now have them here at home. I haven't started the signs yet though. Whew, that was a close call... luckily nobody called the cops. :)

Tuesday, August 6, 2013

A New Booth Space

There's a very popular vintage shopping area in Kansas City, it's in an old area of town full of huge, shabby, brick warehouses. Many of the warehouses have been redone and turned into vintage stores. It's become quite a destination when all the stores (around 13 right now) are open on the First Friday Weekends. I've been considering making a move into the area for a while now and finally when a new store advertised they were opening, I got on board. I'm thrilled but scared about being in this area. I guess I'm most worried about being able to keep up with putting items into the store and wonder if my items measure up and will actually sell.

The people who run the store and the other vendors are SO nice; that's a plus! We just had our first "First Friday Sale" and it went well, but I was surprised at how much work was actually involved in preparing for the event! Luckily, I was able to hire a few young men to help with the move and a friend came along to help me arrange my items.

So in this post, I want to share a few projects I've been working on and some pictures of my new space.

Here's one project that I tackled for the store. Take a look at what I started with... a falling apart cabinet. There is one drawer and one door. I bought this at an auction for a quarter. Yep, you read that right; a quarter. Nobody else wanted to take it on. LOL The veneer was in horrible shape, I had little choice except to scrape it off. After that I painted it a green, and used vintage maps to cover the missing veneer. Here's the finished cabinet at home in my booth.

I had a lot of complements on this piece but unfortunately it didn't sell. Maybe at the next sale.

Here's another remake. A neighbor gave me this love seat. I really didn't know if I could do a thing with it. First off, It was absolutely filthy. So, the first order of business was to mix up a disinfectant and clean it up. I knew then that I wanted to paint the wood white and distress it. Then I had a couple of ideas for those cushions. I finally settled upon using two vintage seed sacks that I had been saving for about a year. You can see the result in the pictures. I really worried about how sellable this would be since it was so different. But somebody bought it for their lake house right away. That was quite a relief.