Guess who’s Garage perfection was showcased on I Heart Organizing…….
That’s right,
It’s our garage, ………..but I think y’all knew that’s where I was heading.
Jen Jones manages a family of 5 (3 small boys mind you) and 2 seperate blogs. I Heart Organizing, detailing her super-human skills for keeping everything in it’s place, and Keeping Up With the Jonses, following her life and the 4 men in it with her.
Go visit her, get some inspiration…
GO!
(She has great taste)
Happy first day of summer, y’all!
Remember that old 12 foot sculling oar I found a few weeks ago in/next to a dumpster?
The one that made y’all question, “Just what is he possibly going to do with that thing?”
Well, take a gander at this cool-ness….
That’s right, how about as a handrail on stairs?
no,
…….it’s not a picture of our house.
I found this example on This Old House…..we don’t even have stairs….(sigh)
BUT IF WE DID….
I would be so ready to put this plan into motion.
OK,
This is kinda crafty,
sorry.
But we thought this was a neat idea, so bear through it.
I started with a handful of tin cans, a spool of jute twine from the hardware store and a bottle of Elmer’s School Glue.
(#LoveElmer’sSchoolGlue)
Just wrap the glue covered cans tightly with jute twine.
……….and that is pretty much all there is to this.
We grabbed some small cactus from Home Depot, votives from Target, and a couple Virgen de Guadalupe alter candles from the Mexican grocery store down the street to make this pretty easy centerpiece.
I told y’all that it was a little bit “crafty”…..but we think they look great.
and practically free.
Can’t argue with that.
Photographer Sharon Montrose found the perfect way to combine her 2 favorite subjects, photography and animals. Since 2008 she has been offering her unique animal photographs through her online store The Animal Print Shop.
Call me a Texan, but naturally, the Longhorn Steer is one of my favorites.
I just don’t think there is a more majestic animal.
……and yes, I understand the irony of having a severed head hanging in my garage.
Her American Buffalo photograph is equally as beautiful.
Looks like it stepped right off the nickel.
The most popular subjects are the little darlings series…….an assortment of baby animal portraits.
They are just about absolutely perfect gracing the walls of a modern nursery….and y’all know how we love multiples of anything.
Just look at how sweet these little things are. (it’s gunna blow Kylie’s mind when she sees that lamb)
Starting at just $25, (ya gotta admit that is a very DO-able price for art) these photos are guaranteed to make your home.
Sharon’s animal subjects are all real, live animals, raised (many of them rescued) by experienced animal keepers and handlers who take great care to ensure the animal’s welfare while being photographed. The larger animals are shot on site in their habitats and then photoshopped into the white background.
The Animal Print Shop even donates a percentage of profits to animal rescue organizations.
What better reason to buy 2, or 4, or even 6.
Elated.
That’s the best word to describe how I feel. Extremely Happy tossed together with an equal amount of Extremely Proud.
Maybe I should start at the beginning of the project
August of last year, we clad the walls of our garage in fencing cedar…
Then hung our old kitchen cabinets….
And taped, bedded, and painted the ceiling…..
Now that the garage is mostly finished, I’m set to install hanging factory pendant lights.
We have a vision of something like the pendants in these “warehouse-ISH looking” spaces.
(images via I Want That, Chad’s Drygoods, Archinect, and tymattson on Instagram)
We like they way they are gridded/spaced out on the ceiling.
Here’s what we found……at an unbeatable price.
The Hampton Bay Brushed Nickel Warehouse Pendant
Someone at the Home Depot marked the lights up from 24.98 to 29.88, but forgot to change the sign on the display model.
I seized the opportunity while I had it, and demanded kindly asked the store to honor the sticker price.
…and they did. Score!
Doesn’t seem like a big difference, but that’s almost 5 bucks each (we needed 4) and that’s about 20 bucks total.
20 bucks will buy 2 Edison Bulbs. (and it did, BTW)
We had gift cards for H-Depot left from Christmas….so out-of-pocket on this was around 6 bucks total. To-Tal.
Barn Light Electric sells some Killer fixtures……..with Killer price tags to match. (About $150 each……4 times 150, plus shipping…..UUUgghhh, you do the math.)
That’s why we went to Home Depot.
But, Barn Light Electric also sells the protective cages separately. Like the red one below……..Which means that we can always add those later on.
Can?
I mean that we WILL add them later.
Maybe red….maybe galvanized, We shall see.
Our H-Depot lights actually look pretty close to those in our inspiration pictures, except that they are brushed nickel. We simply need to spray paint them black so they look more like porcelain.
And……….Don’t we just love to spray paint things black around this house.
Semi-gloss black this time, I sprung for the $3 can of Rustoleum for this project. (up that “out-of-pocket” to 9 bucks now)
Here’s Jamie showing just about where they will hang in the garage…
It’s hard to tell from this picture, but all 4 will cover the ceiling in the garage quite nicely.
Why on Earth would someone mount the only light fixture in the whole room directly over the garage door opener??? It casts the perfect “garage door opener shaped” shadow down on the floor.
Don’t get me started.
My brother Ben had suggested that I run the electricity through conduit along the wall and ceiling like in a loft space, but I opted to just mount the lights directly on the ceiling with “Old Work” PVC ceiling boxes (“Old Work” means that they are going into existing drywall. I just cut a round hole in the drywall with a steak knife and slip the box inside. Then there are 3 screws that expand and hold the box to the ceiling (with all the neat little wiring hidden from view safely in the attic.)
In order to hide all the wiring in the attic, someone (i.e. Me) has to physically go into the attic to run the power lines from box to box.
That was my plan of attack……..
Now I’m not complaining, but I should mention that I am 6’2″, slightly over 230…..I’m a big guy. ….and our attic wasn’t exactly designed for big guys to work in.
The 2 electricians that we’ve had do work up there have been half my size.
Here’s a shot of the area I had to crawl through, CRAWL mind you, to reach my 4 mounting boxes over the garage.
Yes, I did have to shimmy under several low beams.
Yes, that is fiberglass insulation.
Yes, I did cover myself in a sweatshirt, jeans, gloves, and a mask since I would be crawling through/over all that insulation.
Why, Yes, it was unbearable hot with all those layers in late May.
And No, I don’t regret a minute of the sweat that it took…………………….They are everything that we wanted them to be.
Now, where was I with this post…oh yeah,
ELATED
Doug Bihlmaier has the greatest job in the world.
(His closest of friends call him “Seaweed”, By the way)
As the head of Ralph Lauren vintage, it’s his job to shop the world to fill Mr Lauren’s stores with one of a kind vintage jewelry, concho belts, fashion, rugs, accessories, and anything else he finds amazing.
Mr Mort recently had the opportunity to visit Doug and his wife Kathy’s beach house. A beach house layered to the brim with Doug’s unique vintage finds.
Not fussy, …casual, collected and “lived-in”,
Sort of makes me want to kick my shoes off and go barefoot……
I’m pretty sure that Seaweed does.
(all photos via MR Mort, except top photo, I think the Sartorialist took that shot)
Charley Harper was an American Modernist artist best known for his highly stylized wildlife prints, posters and book illustrations. He was born in Frenchton, West Virginia in 1922. It was Harper’s upbringing on his family farm that influenced his work to his last days. He left his farm home to study art at the Art Academy of Cincinnati. It was on Charley’s first day at the Art Academy he met fellow artist Edie Mckee and married her right after their graduation in 1947.
Charley and Edie spent their honeymoon traveling the country, mainly in the west and south, being able to do so because of the Stephen H. Wilder Scholarship the Academy awarded to Charley for post-graduate travels. The first scholarship of its kind that the school had awarded. Harper later returned to the Art Academy of Cincinnati as a teacher, but eventually, the couple and their son Brett formed Harper Studios.
During his career, Charley Harper illustrated numerous books (most notably The Golden Book of Biology) and magazines like Ford Times. Because his subjects were mainly natural, and mostly birds, Charley often created works for nature-based organizations, among them the National Park Service; the Cincinnati Zoo; the Cincinnati Nature Center; the Hamilton County Park District; and the Hawk Mountain Sanctuary in Pennsylvania.
In a style he called “minimal realism”, Charley Harper captured the essence of his subjects with the fewest possible visual elements.
Just brilliantly,
Charley Harper died on June 10, 2007, and the world hasn’t looked the same since.
You can pick up your own piece – prints, books, cards etc – by this amazing illustrator at CharleyHarperPrints.com
The least important room in our house has had the most attention over the past year.
Here’s a picture of the garage before we owned the house. Notice the wimpy little shelf over the washer/dryer. That’s probably why everything else is on the floor.
I hung 4 laminate shelves after we moved in. Functional, yes, just not thrilled about still seeing all that crap.
Well, I don’t mind seeing the globes……
The washer and dryer needed just a little lift, so we gave them one.
I started by building a platform with 2X4’s and shims to level it out on the uneven floor.
The hole in the cedar is for the dryer exhaust.
Using “Every part of the buffalo” the old garage shelves became the platform.
Then a nice coat of white paint. Everything looks “cleaner” painted white.
The front of the platform got a few little trim pieces. Notice how the platform gets wider to the right, but the trim stays the same….y’all never would have noticed if I hadn’t pointed that out.
This whole side of the garage looks so much better already.
That was about 9 months ago, Today it looks even better.
Here’s what we started with, completely uneventful, the kind of room that one would expect to find a live rat in….
…and today.
Washer and dryer on a nice little platform,
That huge barn wood star we made last fall has a perfect home on the chimney brick wall when it’s not hanging in front of the house.
We added more plumbing pipe to the ceiling to match the left side of the garage.
….and the wall of metro shelves along the wall to contain the hoard.
Most everything is contained in neat, labeled tubs.
The PHARMACY sign has been in a pile for about 3 years now just waiting for a home. Now they have one on the cedar wall.
The cabinets came from the kitchen remodel. No way would we ever think to waste those.
And the Ikea Lack shelves we sliced in half and hung off of them. Notice the plumbing pipe to hold hangers.
New platform for the new washer/dryer. The old ones finally gave out a few months ago.
The rolling rack, everyone should have a rolling rack, is for out of season jackets and even better….clothes can be hung-up directly from the dryer.
As a refresher, here’s the left side of the garage that was completed last August,
More of the former upper cabinets from the kitchen, tool magnets, and open storage in wire baskets between the cabinets.
What used to be a dank, nasty storage room is now a clean, bright space where we spend most of our time working on projects.
The Pendant lights went up last month…..more on those bad boys to come.
And we still need to paint the floor. “OY Vey”
It’s been 3 years since we had our horizontal fence built.
One of our very first posts, if ya care to see it here.
It’s cedar, and cedar isn’t forever. So it’s no surprise that both gates are staring to droop a little.
Ok, maybe they droop a lot……
Time to see what we can do about that.
We started with a Homax Easy Gate Kit from the Home Depot
Jamie took all the old slats off, they were just screwed on, and set them aside because most of them are all going right back on. (or possibly on another project)
We cut new pressure treated 2 X 4’s, a bit taller this time. Almost 7 feet. I’d always thought that the old gate was just a little short so we took it up to the height of the fence.
The fence kit simply screws on to the 2 X 4’s……
I attached the whole frame together on the floor of the garage to keep all the pieces level.
It’s not a good idea to build the gate while hanging. Or it will be wonky.
Then we hung it in the open space with the attached hinges.
We added 2 more hinges just to be safe…..the wood is extremely wet and heavy.
Here she is where the old gate used to be.
Love that height much better already.
Then we reattached the old slats, “Every Part of the Buffalo”, ya know?
We used a 3/4 inch scrap board to gage the distance between slats and a level to keep them all looking straight.
Way, Much More Better already…am I right?
We changed things up slightly by only doing slats on the front side, just like the fence. The old gate had slats on both sides for no real reason, now it’s much more consistent.
Except now, we see the unstained back sides of the boards……but not for too long.
I slapped some left-over “Russet” stain on all the wood that was either new, or newly revealed.
Remember the “Russet” stain? Took us several tries to decide that we liked it with 1/4 of the colorant added to the clear stain. Then we had our dear friend Chuck spray the entire fence…..and he did a knock-out job. Always does.
Here’s what the gate should have looked like all along. (minus the row of screw holes along the left side)
…and it looks the even better on back side,
Now, with all the slats lining up with the fence , our gate looks more continuous and just plain beautiful.
Now on to tackle gate number 2…..Hopefully in the next few weeks.
THE CAVENDER DIARY 