Our Hall

While I am in a sharing mood, I will post pictures of our hall floor.  I do not have the time or money right now to sand down all of the floors in our house and refinish them, so I bought some Restor-a-finish from Lowes and followed it up with a nice beeswax.  You rub the restor-a-finish into an unpolyurethaned (not sure if that is a word) floor and it covers scratches and scrapes until you can completely have your floors redone.  It looks nice!  I only did half of the hall and you can tell where I stopped!

See the difference?

See, I do work sometimes...

Andrea

Hall Wainscoting

Isn’t this pretty?  Soon, it will be sanded and stained.  I am looking at rubbing Briwax into it instead of sealing it with polyurethane.  Yes, it would be more trouble…I would have to rub Briwax into the wood every year or so, but I think the wood grain would be prettier and more natural looking.  After scraping off layers of paint and orange-ish puddles of yuck…I think I would prefer not to put any of that stuff back on there.

This is burley or curly pine (I guess depending on where you are from or who you talk to).  Legend has it that only the wealthy in Central Louisiana had it in their homes since it is so rare.  The curly pine comes from a diseased tree where the bark grows in wavy patterns instead of straight.  I was also told that a certain affluent Alexandria family who owned one of the only local mills in the early 1900’s, kept all of curly pine found for their homes.  The builder and owner of my home, Sally Hynson-Ringgold (who, from what I can gather, lost her husband in the Civil War), was the former owner of the Kent Plantation (she inherited the Kent Plantation from her father).  She must have either had connections, or her husband’s family owned one or more of the sawmills in Ringgold, Louisiana, because there is curly pine throughout my house as well.

Andrea

Pictures From the “What Were They Thinking?” Archive

I finally found my realtor walkthrough pictures of our house.  It is interesting to compare before and after pictures of some of the rooms.  I will post them all soon, but here are my absolute favorites….the kitchen before:

I don’t know which is worse, the red plastic handles on the cabinets mounted higher than you can reach, or the burgundy damask fabric that was stapled…YES, stapled to the wall, or the fire engine red laminate countertops.  The swags were also stapled to the window.  If you look close, you can see that they did not even bother to take down the old window hardware before stapling up the swags.  And, of course!!!!  I almost forgot!  The fingerpainted artwork on the cabinet doors!  At least it was acryllic paint and washed off!   The kitchen was also carpeted from wall to wall.  I can’t explain how gross that was.  We pulled it up to find a black and white checkerboard floor.  Which was a lot better than the carpet.

I accumulated two garbage bags of fabric that I took down from the windows, walls, and every other imaginable place.  Look at the front door..yes people, there is a front door under there somewhere!

These doors have: 1) a set of plantation blinds, 2) a lacy curtain, and 3) a set of swags.  Can we add anything else?

I do not have any “after” pics, but here are some “in process” pics that show you what things look like now.  The kitchen:

 

***Update to post: I decided to clean my kitchen and take a better picture.

This is not the best pic… it was taken last year when I was trying to clean some things out and get rid of clutter.  But, as you can see, the 3 layers are gone from the window.  I replaced it all with some very simple semi sheer ivory shades.  Isn’t this hall cool?  We were living in 700 square feet before we bought this place.  I could fit my old place in this hall!  I cannot wait until I get all of the woodwork stripped and those awful repro art deco lights outta there!

Well, until next time. 

Andrea