A “New” Chair for Oyster Haven

Greetings from upstate NY!

After a short stint back home in VA, my husband and I had to make another trip up north to check on our Oyster Haven rental property.  This spring we lost a chunk of our back yard, due to erosion from heavy rains.  We had to have work done to fill it in and shore it up, so that if it happens again we won’t lose our stairs that lead down to the beach.  (They’ve been removed temporarily but will be reinstalled when all is secure.) We waited to get this work started until our busy summer rental season was over.

My husband wanted to see with his own eyes how the construction project on the bank was going; but he had to make a trip back up anyway, because he still had to bring in all the kayaks and the canoe from the lake and get them into winter storage, as well as bring in the buoy and the dock.  Not to mention our pontoon boat, which has to get cleaned up and brought to the marina where it will be housed until next summer.  I was originally going to stay behind, because I’m an incurable homebody and I’ve missed being in my own VA house.  I’ve also missed our kids and grandkids who live nearby.  But the bottom line is that I belong with HIM.  I’m his helpmate first and foremost, and everyone else comes second.  Our boys all have wives now, so they don’t really need their mommy!😊

So another week by the lake it is!  And it’s been absolutely lovely here, weather-wise; it’s so warm and sunny—what we used to call an “Indian Summer.”  Just glorious.  As you can see.

In other Oyster Haven news…

Remember this somewhat recent post about how I re-upholstered my grandmother’s chair?  Well, I have another tale to tell about bringing an old chair back to life, with little more than a scrap of fabric (from where else but my mother-in-law’s attic, which is practically a small JoAnn’s affiliate, no kidding!).  And lots of TLC, of course.

Toward the end of the summer, I was thinking about hitting the secondhand shops or garage sales to look for a chair to put in the upstairs hall at Oyster Haven.  When we bought it in the fall of 2015 and started getting it ready to start renting on VRBO the following summer, we didn't spend a lot of money on furniture, aside from the beds.  We got bedside tables at secondhand stores and accepted a hand-me-down dining room table from my sister-in-law.  We had an awesome tile-topped trestle table that my husband had made for our NH house that didn't really fit in our downsized VA house, and he made a pair of glorious wooden benches to go with it for the kitchen of the rental house.  Some of the dining room chairs, a coffee table and a pair of end tables for the living room, along with a few other random pieces that we didn't have a place for in our VA house anyway, also found a home at Oyster Haven.

We were on a budget in 2015, so I ended up buying an inexpensive, nondescript little padded stool from Home Goods to fill this space in the upstairs hall, and it has been there ever since.

I must have been meant to get a new chair to replace that stool; because one August day my husband and I were driving back to his childhood home, where we stay during the summer, and out by the curb at the entrance to the neighborhood there were two dining room chairs near a pile of trash, obviously being thrown out.  And when we went to look at them more closely, one of them was in great shape, except for the fabric on the seat cushion.  (The other, a matching arm chair, had a hunk of wood broken off of it.)

After it was recovered, and cleaned up a bit, it looked quite lovely.

And I loved how it has transformed that upstairs hall!

(It would have been pretty, no matter the cost; but I especially love it when things are free!)

One quick addendum:I decided to recover the stool and bring it back to use in our VA living room.  It’s a small room, and we have a big family; so any extra seating that we can get—especially seating that takes up very little space—is appreciated.

Have I got enough competing floral patterns in my living room?  (Don't answer that!)

Have a great week!  And happy homemaking!

Grandma's Chair (Before and After)

I've blogged before about my paternal grandmother's Victorian mansion in a small Upstate NY town, where my family lived for about a year-and-a-half when I was a young girl.  The seven of us made a temporary home in one of the upstairs apartments that she rented out.  (We used to joke that our place had once been the servants' quarters; I'm not really even sure if that's true, but it made a good story!)

When Grandma and her second husband (my father's dad died when he was very young) took possession of the mansion, they found and rescued many pieces of antique furniture original to the house and had them refurbished.  There was a giant dining table and matching chairs that took center stage in the extraordinarily beautiful, wood-paneled dining room in the mansion.  When she eventually sold the place, my grandmother kept a few of her favorite items, among which were some marble-topped end tables and coffee tables and several of the ornately carved dining room chairs.  My youngest sister had been given two of the chairs after Grandma died and recently asked all of her siblings if any of us would like to take them, as she no longer had a place for them.  One of my sisters-in-law and I were immediately interested, so we each got one.  I just brought mine home from NY about a few weeks ago after a trip up there to get our VRBO rental house ready for the summer season.

While I was in NY, I "shopped" in my mother-in-law's attic for fabric to recover the chair.  (I've blogged about this before as well--about the treasure trove of fabrics and laces and sewing notions my seamstress M-I-L amassed in her lifetime, which I have been given the green light by her generous daughters to plunder at will!) I not only found some lovely upholstery material for my DIY project, but also some coordinating gimp trim.  But I’m getting ahead of myself.  Let me show you what the chair looked like after years of use, including when my sister used to strap a portable high chair seat onto it and her sweet granddaughter would kick away at the front of the cushion with her little feet.

The fabric on the top of the chair, front and back, had held up fairly well.  But the seat was in bad shape.

I could hardly wait to restore this chair to its former glory! To get started, I removed the gimp binding, which is used to cover up the raw edges of the fabric and the nails (and it's attached with glue, so it's easy to pull off).

Then I removed the fabric pieces, which I used as patterns for the new pieces.  (I was able to remove the upholstery nails, which are short and curved at the tips, and then reuse them).

I almost ordered some new blue gimp to match the lovely fabric I’d chosen, because I wasn't sure if I'd like the shiny gold stuff I'd found in Mom's attic stash...

Out with the old, in with the new!

...but I did like it.  A lot!

Oh wow, heart-eye emojis all over the place!!  I LOVE this look!

I didn't refinish the wood, but I cleaned it, and I also touched up the nicks and scratches with some wood stain I had on hand.  There were small traces of orange-red paint here and there, signs that perhaps some misguided soul had at one time painted over that glorious wood--AAAGGGHHH!  But I didn't remove them.  (I've decided that the flaws in the finish add to the character of the chair.  Yeah, character: that's it!  Ha ha!)

The most challenging part to fix was, of course, the seat.  My biggest roadblock to getting that done was finding the appropriate size and type of foam cushion to replace the old one, which was damaged and disintegrating.  I ordered one from Amazon, but it was 5” high—which was a bit much for this chair.  I ended up finding the perfect thing at our local JoAnn’s.  (There was probably some foam in my M-I-L’s attic, now that I think of it!  But I was too focused on finding fabric to notice!)

I put a new 2" foam cushion on top of the seat's interwoven support bands (or whatever they're called!).  I didn't take a picture, but you probably don't want to see that step anyway.  Just imagine a piece of green foam sitting on top of those strips of burlap.

Once the foam was in place, I set out to cover it with the fabric I'd cut out, using the worn-out old seat cover as a pattern.  I started by anchoring the fabric in place with a nail in the center of the back, the center of the front, and the center of each side, and then I proceeded to stretch the fabric as tightly over the foam as I could as I continued to nail it down all the way around.

The last step was gluing down the gimp trim all around the raw edges of the upholstered seat.

Within about four days of getting the chair home to VA, Grandma's chair was ready to be sat upon. I am thrilled with how it came out.  And I love having this piece that is such an endearing reminder of my grandmother and the wonderful old house she lived in for many years.

I have a lot of colors and patterns going on in my living room: a black and tan Oriental rug; a pink and green floral couch and matching loveseat; and now this chair covered in a blue and white floral print.  (Not mention another antique chair that I rescued and reupholstered many moons ago, using gorgeous brocade fabric in a red and green—strawberries and leaves—pattern.  So there's that, too!)  A professional home decorator would probably shudder to see what I’ve got going on here. Nonetheless, this room makes me very happy.

And in the end, that's all that matters, right?  A house should be a home that makes its owners happy; it need not be a designer’s showcase.

But boy-oh-boy, my grandmother's beautiful chair is a bit of a show-stopper, IMHO...

(So many photos!  Can you tell how excited I am about this chair?!  Moving forward here at the blog, I'll try to keep the photo-sharing under control.)

A House with a Heart (and a View!)

My husband and I took a road trip north this past Monday to check on our Oyster Haven VRBO lake house in Upstate NY. He put in the dock and the boats (we have four kayaks and a canoe available to renters, along with a couple of stand-up paddle boards).  He also got our pontoon boat out of winter storage at the marina and anchored it in front of his childhood home by the lake, which is where we spend our summers. Oyster Haven is only about 3.5 miles down the road, so it's easy for us to go back and forth.

We bought this incredible house (built circa 1830, with a later addition) in the fall of 2015 and opened it up for rentals the summer of 2016, originally thinking that we might eventually retire there and have it be our home base for traveling to see our far-flung offspring.  But when it became obvious that three of our five boys were settling down for the foreseeable future not far from each other in VA, we moved south to be near them in 2017, but continued to spend our summers up north by the lake.

We were encouraged by the real estate agent who worked with us on the purchase of Oyster Haven to make sure that it had some personal touches.  A VRBO owner himself, he said that it seemed that renters were more likely to treat a house with respect when they remembered that it actually belonged to someone.  If it was too sterile and impersonal, like a hotel, they might feel comfortable leaving it a mess.  We took that advice to heart, and I made sure to decorate the walls with some personal items so that it would look like a family home.

One of my favorite gallery walls is in the large eat-in kitchen.

The great thing about giving our rental those personal touches is that when we DO get to spend our week there with our kids and grandkids, it feels like HOME.  Oyster Haven is anything but cold and sterile; truly, it's a house with a heart.

Along with all the family pictures on that kitchen wall, I hung a vintage print by Jesse Willkox Smith, one of my favorite artists.  I thought the image of a curly-headed little girl eating a slice of watermelon was adorable, and that it just screamed "summertime!"

Years later, when I had a little granddaughter with similar blond curls, I made her pose for me with a slice of watermelon so that I could hang her picture next to that sweet drawing.  Unfortunately, this little gal hates watermelon.  So this was as close as I could get to having her look like she was eating it!

Anyway, I've gone off on a tangent--now back to the reason for our trip north: our first renters of the 2024 summer season will arrive in the coming weeks, and we wanted everything to be ready for them. Fortunately, all was well with the house and we didn't find any problems that needed taking care of.  We got everything on our to-do lists done and still had enough free time to enjoy an evening visiting with two of my husband's sisters who live up there.  My 88-year-old mother was also having same-day surgery across the lake in VT during our stay, and I was able to be with her and my sister (the one with whom she lives) during her time at the hospital.  So all in all, it was a good trip.

Before we left yesterday morning to head back to VA, we stopped at Oyster Haven one last time to drop off some freshly-laundered linens and organize them in the locked storage closets, so they'll be there for the cleaners to use on turnover day.  (We have a cleaning service, and they take care of everything when we're down in VA; but when we're living up there during the summer, my husband and I handle the laundry and bed-making.) The sun was just beginning to rise, and when I looked out the kitchen window I realized that I needed to take some pictures, pronto.  I grabbed my phone and ran outside.   

This was the backyard view from our deck that morning.

I couldn't decide which photo one was the most spectacular, so I decided to show you all of them.  Isn't that the most glorious view?!

I can hardly wait for the first week in July, when our entire family--five sons, five daughters-in-law, and 22 grandchildren!--will be there with us.  My whole heart will be in that house.  Enjoying that view.

Happy Homemaking (and a Little Project)

There are few things I enjoy more than puttering around my house, tidying it up here, hanging something new on the wall there.  Aside from wife and mother (and grandmother!), I think homemaker is the vocation that speaks to my heart the loudest.  I love working on any kind of project that will make my home more beautiful, orderly, functional, warm, cozy, and inviting.

I was talking to my daughter-in-law Regina (wife of son #1) a few years ago ago about minimalism, which is a home decor style that has become rather popular, and how we both agree that there are definitely things about living more simply that appeal to us...but that we really don't think the minimalist mindset works for the way we like to live and the homes we like to make for our families.  (Full disclosure: I only remember this long-ago conversation because I just found a rough draft in my archives, which I never published; and what I had started to write about back then fits in with what I want to say now...so I copied and pasted, then edited, some of that old never-seen post right here.  #cheating)

Anyway, Regina mentioned a blog post she'd read that addressed this topic: that is, how having lots of things about you that have special meaning, that remind you of loved ones who gave them to you or of memorable trips or events, or having furnishings that are family heirlooms that have been handed down to you, can bring so much joy to your everyday life and create a warm and inviting oasis for you and your family.  Not that a minimalist approach can't work, too; but as this blog post explained, it isn't for everybody.  (And if you like knickknacks, that doesn’t mean you’re a bad person! LOL )

Wow, I thought: there I go again, getting lazy about my blogging--because I'd had this very topic in mind for a few months as well, but now I worried that if I finally wrote my post, I might seem like a copy-cat. (But then again, it's not very likely that anyone other than my daughter-in-law would read both posts, so I doubt I'd have been accused of plagiarism!)

I never wrote/published the post.  But I guess I’m writing it now!

As I get older and closer to that time when I won't be able to take anything with me where I'm going, I sometimes have an urge to purge myself of all the excess: all the pretty dishes and serving pieces that don't get used on a daily basis; all the figurines and porcelain dolls and knickknacks that aren't really useful--but even if they are, aren't really necessary, because like most 21st century Americans, I simply have too much.  Way more than I need to live a comfortable life.

But every time I look around my house at all the lovely things that fill it, I am reminded of the people who gave them to us or where we were when we bought them. Everywhere I look--really, everywhere--the story of our blessed life, our history as a family, unfolds around me, and it's as if the house envelops me in a giant hug.

I am not really a huge "decorative throw pillows on the bed" person  (too
much to take off and put back every time you make the bed!).  But I just 
found this lovely lacy crocheted sham in my late M-I-L's things, and I decided to use it on one of our guest beds.

I could never become a minimalist, I'm afraid.  I do worry that I'm too attached to material things, but I can't imagine clearing away all of the stuff that adorns my walls and tabletops.  There are too many memories and emotions associated with just about each and every item that surrounds me, and that's why I'm never quite as happy anywhere as I am when I'm in my own home.

I go overboard on some home goods, I admit it.  I have a weakness for blue-and-white transferware dishes, for instance.  Exhibit A--my dining room table at Thanksgiving:

I love to decorate the walls of my house with plates.  I drool over pictures like these in magazine spreads Internet searches: 

I think blue-and-white plates on the wall look fabulous. But something stops me from going completely overboard.

Maybe I am a minimalist?!  It looks like I’m not even trying, 
compared to those Internet images!

At the beginning of this post, I mentioned projects. Recently, I worked on one that was so much fun and so satisfying.

Very early in our marriage, more than 40 years ago, my younger brother gave me a small wooden wall shelf he'd made in his high school shop class.  It was for holding tea cups and saucers; there were hooks for the cups and grooves for the plates.  At some point--between all of our various moves, I can't remember exactly when--the top piece broke off and got lost.  So when we were living in NH, I decided to hang it upside down, remove the hooks, and use it to display small knickknacks.  Since our move to VA in 2017, it's been out of commission, hiding in a storage area under the stairs in our basement.

For some reason, I thought of that little handcrafted shelf a few weeks ago, and I decided to get it out and refurbish it, and then put it to use in our "new" house in VA.

Using the bottom as a guide, I was able to trace a new decorative top piece on a scrap of wood I found in the garage (left over from some other house project); then my handy husband attached it for me.  I added a wooden floral embellishment to it and gave the whole thing a dark stain (as it would have been next to impossible to make the new pieces of wood I'd added match the original stain on the rest of the shelf).  Finally, I screwed the cup hooks back in place.

When it was finished, I thought it was so beautiful--that it looked almost like some Colonial antique!  I couldn't wait to get it up on the wall.

This one-of-a-kind gifted shelf that reminds me of my brother adds such a nice touch to a dining room that already makes me ridiculously happy.  (And it's possible that I am ridiculous!  But I have such a fondness for dining rooms.  I know for the most part, the "open concept/living and dining areas combined" thing is more popular among modern homemakers; but I am a sucker for a formal dining room.)

I do realize that at my age, I should be working on detachment from all things material.  I have watched my mother lose her home, after my dad died and we knew that she wouldn't be able to live alone anymore.  Almost everything she owned was either taken by one of her children, given away to charity, or sold in a garage sale.  I know it won't be all that long, relatively speaking, before that will be the fate of all my treasured household goods.

In the meantime, however, I'm just going to enjoy having my things about me, as Mary Kate Danaher would say (in the best movie ever, The Quiet Man). 

If you've seen the movie, you know that Mary Kate's precious heirloom china is blue-and-white.  Naturally!

And I suppose that's as good a way as any to end this post!

Life is Short, Use the Silver

I was inspired recently by one of my daughters-in-law, Ginger (wife of son #2), who texted me a photo of my boy dutifully polishing up a huge silver urn that she'd found at a thrift store.  (He's a good sport, that boy!)  I have silver serving dishes that had been packed away in boxes for ages, some that were gifts at our wedding 43 years ago; and after getting that text, I decided that it was time to break them out and polish them up.  Yes, it was time to start enjoying them on a regular basis, even when it's not a holiday!  Life is short, use the silver--that's my new motto.  :)

Before I continue, I'll tell you a little bit about this particular daughter-in-law: she is the queen of finding incredibly beautiful and ridiculously inexpensive treasures at the thrift store, and she has begun to embrace what they call the "Grandmillennial" decorating style, which is also sometimes referred to as "Granny chic."  This style incorporates many classic, traditional (read: old-fashioned) elements that were beloved by gals of my generation and our mothers--dark wood furniture (often antique); overstuffed couches and chairs upholstered in toile or floral chintz, with ruffles; wallpaper; blue and white china; silver and crystal, etc.--and uses them in fresh ways alongside modern pieces.  This warm, cozy, and eclectic decorating style is nothing new, but for a time it was considered stuffy, outdated, and cluttered-looking; therefore, you can find lots of items that fit the bill at the thrift store, because so many young people have not been interested in holding onto their grandparents' heirlooms! However, in recent years there has been an increasing appreciation for traditional home decor among some millennials, who for a time embraced a more pared-down, minimalistic decorating style (or Joanna Gaines's trademark all-white, wood, and metal aesthetic), but have begun to incorporate the furnishings and home accessories of past generations into their 21st century homes.  Ginger is one such millennial.

So, taking a cue from my sweet grandmillennial D-I-L, I went through some boxes in our basement storage room and got out my wedding pewter and silver, which I hadn't even set eyes upon in the seven years we've lived in this VA house.

Pewter doesn't tarnish as much as silver, but these still needed a little TLC.

I got out the silver polish and shined up these beauties!

One of the most beautiful pieces I own was actually a 25th anniversary gift from my mom and dad.  It's an antique chafing dish; I'm not quite sure of its origin, but I'm going to ask my mom about it the next time we talk.  Wherever it came from, it's just spectacular.  I can't believe it's been languishing in storage since we moved in here!

What is pictured here would have to be considered Granny chic decor.

Look at that beauty!

The other thing I decided to do was to put some of my wedding cutlery into regular use.  As a bride-to-be, I registered for some high quality Oneida stainless flatware (my mother's generation would register for silver or silverplated flatware, but few gals of my generation did so), and we received service for 20, along with a number of matching serving utensils.  The pattern is so pretty. 

Each place setting is 5 pieces.

I had 8 place settings of lower-quality Oneida stainless that was our "everyday" silverware, so I saved those 20 settings of the good stuff to use on Thanksgiving and Christmas, planning for the far-off day when I would have a family big enough to have to use them all at once for a special occasion.  (Goal achieved--ha ha!)

Anyway, while I was polishing up my wedding silver, one thing led to another.  And I got to thinking that our everyday flatware was getting kind of sorry-looking.  We still had 8 matching knives and dessert forks, and 7 soup spoons; but we had gotten down to one dinner fork and one teaspoon from the original set, so over the years I had gotten random pieces to fill in, either at Walmart or at the Oneida outlet, and the silverware drawer in the kitchen was filled with a mismatched mash-mash.  And most of our teaspoons were a tad nicked-up, after run-ins with the garbage disposal.  (Oops.)

So I decided to empty out the drawer and fill it with 8 lovely matching place settings of my wedding flatware (and to be vigilant about always checking to make sure that the garbage disposal has only food scraps in it before turning it on!).  The older I get, the more I realize that life is short, and we should use the pretty stuff now. Because if not now, then when?  And besides, even with 8 place settings in daily use, we are still left with 12 more stored away in the dining room, to break out for holiday dinners or whatever.

I definitely need to take good care of this beautiful flatware, however.  When I looked up my pattern online, I realized how expensive it would be to replace lost or garbage disposal-chewed pieces!

So that's my advice for today: don't wait for a special occasion to use all those lovely things you got as wedding gifts.  Every day is special.  Life is short, so use the silver.  And the pretty china.  And your "good" flatware.  And, well, you get the idea.

We often use paper products with these little peeps (son #4's gang);
but they know it's a special meal when we eat on the good dishes!