Antique mall finds: Vintage kitchen

I picked up a couple of vintage kitchen items on a recent adventure to the antique malls. I love this jadite green scale. It's in great condition with just the right amount of patina. 

It was $20, which is more than I would normally pay for a such an item, but it's so perfect. Plus similar scales go for more online, so I don't feel like I overpaid.

I also fell in love with this sculptural solid brass pitcher. Hello brassy goodness! It is seriously heavy; I should probably keep it on my nightstand in case of an intruder instead of in the kitchen.

See? Nearly five pounds!

See more antique & thrift finds >>

Repainting vintage cast iron register

I stripped and repainted the register in our bedroom. And I loved the process so much, I did it twice. Well, that's not true. The part about loving it, I mean. The part about stripping and repainting it twice is totally true, unfortunately.

This original cast iron register had been painted sloppily a thousand times. It had drips and spatters in some areas and in others the paint was flaking off. You can sort of see it in the photos above, but believe me it looked even cruddier in person.

It needed to be completely stripped and repainted. I did the same thing for our bathroom register when we renovated the entire room and I liked the way it turned out.

I stripped with a chemical stripper it and primed it with a rust-blocking primer and then I performed a multi-step process to spray paint the inside one color and the outer frame another... And when all that was done, I was unhappy. And I stopped taking pictures.

There were a few areas where small globs of stripped paint didn't get removed. (They weren't obvious on the dark metal color.) And when I scraped the paint with my fingernail, it all came scratching off! I'm guessing the paint didn't bond with the primer. Bleh.

So in an annoying turn of events, I decided I would have to do it all over again. I tried to do a more thorough job of stripping it the second time, scrubbing with a wire brush and cleaning it up with mineral spirits several times.

Then I primed again with the rusty metal spray primer, and let that cure for a full 48 hours. I wanted to make sure the primer and the paint bonded this time.

After all that, I'd had enough of the spray painting and thought I might get better results using some latex enamel. I brushed it on in thin coats, painting the outer "frame" white and the inner grate black.

You're right. It's not a dramatic change from what it was before, which feels kind of underwhelming after that whole convoluted process. But at least it doesn't look grungy anymore!

Instant art: Framed vintage painting palette

OK, this is definitely one of my favorite recent projects. My brother gave me a decrepit vintage art set he found at a thrift store.

I was actually kind of angry at him for bringing more junk into my house, and this looked like such garbage. I told him I hoped he didn't pay too much for it, and secretly wanted him to take it back home with him.

But inside was this artist's painting palette with paint pellets attached. It was unused, virtually untouched and had managed to stay intact despite being at least 50 years old. I decided it needed to be framed immediately.

I bought this cheap T-shirt frame at Michael's for $5 (regular price $9.99, but on sale B1G1). It's 13 inches square and about an inch deep. Perfect.

I found a piece of scrap fabric (an 18x18 inch sample swatch from my crazy clearance haul) to use as backing. It's a nice creamy off-white with a nubby texture. (Disregard those T pins in the photo. I tried using them to mount the palette to the backing sort of like I did in this other shadowbox, but that didn't work out.)

After ironing out the creases, I stapled the fabric to the thin cardboard backing around the edges and trimmed off the excess. Spray adhesive might have been a better option, but I'm out and I didn't want to buy more just for this project.

After my failed attempt using the T pins, I decided to use a 3M Command strip instead, as not to damage the palette. I've used them to hang things on walls before, but never considered using them to mount unusual objects inside a frame. I cut a hole in the middle of the fabric to accommodate the strip.

 And following package directions, I put one half on the backing...

and the other half on the back of the palette. After everything was secure, I put the frame back together.

It looks so expensive, doesn't it? (But it totally wasn't, of course.) I love framing random three-dimensional objects. Whether they are precious keepsakes or everyday items, they always look more important behind glass.

Should I stain or paint my front door?

This is my front door. I am in love with it. Totally. Arched top, board and batten, solid wood, stained glass, vintage hardware.

Problem is, the varnish is peeling. It's pretty bad. You see those dark splotches? That's bare, graying wood. It needs refinishing post-haste. (These photos were taken last summer, but, suffice to say, the door has not fixed itself.)

My first inclination is to strip/scrape, restain in a light shade (similar to what it is now, though maybe not so yellow) and seal it.

But then there's this tiny part of me that says... paint it! Paint it a ridiculous color and don't look back! I'm not sure what that color would be. I do have to note that I'm not crazy about the faded brown paint on the eaves/gutters/trim or the color of the roof, but they are here for the time being.

Stain pros: traditional, safe, contrasts with the rest of the house
Stain cons: Even with proper sealing, it's my understanding it will probably have to be redone in a number of years. (Our house faces south, gets full sun and we don't have a storm door or much of an overhang to protect it.)

Paint pros: Easier and more durable than stain & seal process.
Paint cons: Color might fade. More work to get back to the natural woodgrain in the future.

So what say you? Should I go with my gut and stain? Or listen to that little voice and paint? Please leave your choice in the comments. This guy is so sick of eating varnish chips for breakfast.

Update: I chose stain! See the final results here >> 

Vintage yard stick growth chart

Elise has been upright and walking since July. And even before that, I have wanted to make her a growth chart. This has been one of those projects that I started months and months ago, so I'm super excited to finally be finished with it.

This image of a wooden ruler backsplash has stuck with me since I first saw it, so I used it as inspiration for this creation. My dad found me a piece of wood and cut it to 6 x 48 inches. I had planned on painting it, but when he showed me it was a piece of cherry from a felled tree, my plan changed. I didn't want to cover up that pretty woodgrain.

I scrounged around for some vintage rulers or yardsticks, but couldn't find anything. So I bought a few new yardsticks at Ace Hardware, cut them and painted them up. But they ended up looking like used popsicle sticks. The colors weren't what I had in mind; they lacked any depth and generally just made me want to puke. Fail! Project on hold until I figured out how to proceed.

Fast forward to an antique mall trip where I found these wonderful vintage yardsticks for like $1 a piece. (The whole group of them, including the ones I bought, were from places in Minnesota. Kinda strange.)

My second run through, I decided to leave the sticks whole instead of chopping them up. I very simply hot glued them to the plank vertically. The first row set the standard for the measurement and I left the area to the left empty for marking heights.

I used a black craft marker to draw the measurements for three to six feet.

Then I coated the whole thing with a thin coat of satin polyurethane, which really brought out the woodgrain.

My model was basically non-compliant for the photo session, but I was able to mark her first height on the chart.

I hung the chart in our playroom-to-be, but the colors are so neutral, it really could have gone anywhere in our house.

Kind of stupidly, I hung it on a little strip of wall where I couldn't get any distance to take a decent full-length photo. Sorry about that.

I pieced together a close-up in Photoshop so you can see the details up close.

Click here to see the finished playroom!

Halloween bats from old hinges

It's probably obvious I'm not a dead leaves and raffia kind of girl. Not that there's anything wrong with traditional fall decor; it's just not my thing. So when it comes to holiday decorating, I'm more into rusted junk and weird tchochkes.

Speaking of rusted junk, these hinges came off our old fence, and despite using one for wall art in our upstairs bathroom, their distinct shape screamed "bat" to me. I couldn't resist hanging a couple of them with some orange ribbon to get in the Halloween spirit.

I was under the impression these hinges were old(ish), but I saw nearly identical unpainted hinges at Ace Hardware. (They probably have them other stores too.)

So tell me truthfully: is this clever or nutty? I'm always worried about crossing the line into nutty.

Found, repurposed and handmade artwork in our office/studio

I'm really happy with the way our office turned out. It's kind of a catch-all, but I think all the elements work together and it gives me the opportunity to show off a lot of things that didn't fit in elsewhere in our home.

I've had this vintage metal sign in every one of my post-college apartments, so I was glad to finally display it in our house. Like many of my "antiques," I got it from my grandpa, but I'm not sure how he came about it.

The plank above the desk looks to be part of an old shipping crate. It was originally a shelf in our bedroom closet, and when we ripped out the existing rod and shelves to install a closet system, I discovered the address written on the underside. No date on it, though. I love the thick painted handwriting and the peeled off label.

These next two items are mixed-media paintings that I did five or six years ago. I don't do much painting (for art's sake) anymore, but I'd like to get back to it sometime.

This is a portrait of my parent's yellow lab, Haley (next to some old letterpress blocks).

And this one is Nixon, of course. For a while, I was fascinated with the idea of preserving personal memories in paintings, though I don't think many of those ideas came to frution. But this is one that did. When I was little, my grandpa used to have a poster of Nixon in his basement, his teeth looking like a hockey player, blacked out with electrical tape.

I don't know if this is true, but it's what my grandpa told me. His parents lost a lot in the Depression, so the phrase was surely more descriptive of that than of Nixon, but I paired the two ideas anyway.

The Siamese cat light on the desk is a vintage 1950s TV lamp. Early televisions were very dim, requiring all the room lights to be turned off. Enter the TV lamp as a way to bring in some ambient low light to an otherwise dark room. Very kitschy.

This mailbox was on the front of our house when we bought it, but we replaced it with something bigger that could hold magazines and packages. I saved it because I like the envelope shape and thought it could be a cute place to stash stuff.