Guest Blogger: Vintage Wall Art

Now that I've moved to up north to Massachusetts, I've found that the gardening season is compressed.  There seems to be a lot to do in a short amount of time before winter comes!  I have been busy the last few weeks making beds, buying and planting all those end-of-the-season discount plants, mowing down all the brush in our detention pond, and starting the planting of the bulbs.

But, believe it or not, this blog post is not about my new garden.  We've also been working on some interior projects, and I have my first guest blogger to talk about one of them.  This blog is brought to you by a very special guest blogger - Mr. Red House himself!

Building a vintage looking Wooden Wall Art

When finishing our house we found that we had a pretty blue living room with a very very blank wall on it.

See the huge blank spot on the left!

We had seen a very pretty but oh so expensive wood art that we liked at Pottery Barn.  

This can be yours for only $399 at Pottery Barn!

Lucky for us we felt very crafty!  We had some leftover flooring from the construction of the house and decided to put it to some good use.

There was more, but I forgot to get a better picture of the huge stacks of flooring!

Step one was layout out a pattern on the floor, making sure we had enough wood.

Once we had it all laid out we decided to paint each of the pieces pretty colors. Initially a good stain seemed the ideal choice, however we discovered that the cool colored stains were outdoor only and they would not be safe to have indoors.  Instead on towards paint we charged!  

We lucked out and Lowes was having a sale on sample cans of paint!   Six different colors were selected.

Foam brushes are an awesome invention!

Now we've got paint, brushes and a pattern laid out, the next step is to carefully separate the pieces so each one could be individually painted and reassembled correctly.

We are going for a rustic theme to the house, so I explained to the kids to go easy on the paint so that the wood grain would show through.  Somehow in that explanation any large blob of paint spilled or other mistake became "rustic!"

You won't believe the debates over who painted which color and piece of wood

Finally finished painting and let our disassembled wooden jigsaw puzzle dry.

Then we ran into our first challenge.  We are dealing with hardwood flooring that has awesome tongues and grooves, however without a backing it won't stay together that well.  After some discussion and an emergency trip to Lowes to get a large sheet of plywood and lots of wood glue, the project continued!

Here we are gently laying the pieces on the plywood.  Each piece was held down with wood glue and my handy dandy nail gun!  The weight of the pieces was sufficient to adhere to the glue.  I put in two nails per piece of flooring just as an insurance policy.

Here is is all glued and nailed down.  Final size was about 6 feet wide by 4 week tall AND about 200 lbs!

I adore how the wood grain turned out!

We then did some heavy hand sanding for that weathered and rustic feel.  I originally tried a power sander, but found a simple hand sander with 100 grit sandpaper let us gently weather the wood strips to give a nice aged look.

Now for the second challenge.  The entire piece weighed about 200 lbs!  I suddenly realized I hadn't planned how to put this up on the wall so that it does not come crashing down.  After extensive research, French cleats were the answer.  French cleats are two pieces of metal that form a rail and can hold significant weight.  Here's a Home Depot one that holds a good amount.  

While the weight was fine, I sadly could not use it because our wall studs are 24" apart and these hangers are only 18" wide.  I didn't feel safe unless I had at least two studs.

That's a 5 foot pieces of aluminum up there spanning 3 studs.  I ended up mounting it to three studs and using 4 additional wall anchors.  I went for overkill, but boy is that thing heavy!

Here it is in all of its mounted glory!

Cat not an official part of art display

Our large blue wall now has some rustic charm!

Now I've spent an entire blog talking about something non-plant related, unless you count the wood which is very plant related!  So I leave you with the obligatory pretty flower picture.

I have no idea what this is, but it's pretty.

Making a Patio for the Red House

The patio took us a few weeks to build. I laugh when I see the articles about making a patio in a weekend. Maybe if you have lots of help, equipment, and someone else hauling all the materials.

Step 1: Pick a place, pick what kind of pavers you want, and calculate how many pavers you need. Multiply that number times how much each paver costs.

Step 2: Put back those really pretty antique marble looking pavers and go search in the cheaper concrete paver section. Repeat step 1.

Step 3: Dig a hole about 7 inches deep where you want the patio. Make sure that it will be big enough for all your pavers plus a couple inches on all sides.
Or wing it.

Digging was the hardest part - our dirt is hard clay with lots of rocks, so it took a couple weeks. I would use the pick-ax for a while, dig that dirt out, and repeat. and repeat.

Step 4: Tamp that dirt down. You can rent a plate compactor, or buy a hand tamper. Just be warned for whatever option you pick, there's going to be a lot of tamping. We went with the hand tamper. You can buy one pretty cheaply.

Step 5: Add about 4 inches of gravel base. Some people like to put down landscaping fabric before this, but we didn't. You should tamp the gravel base every couple of inches. Water needs to run away from the house, so we made sure to try to add a slight slope. Tamp some more.

Step 6: Add sand. Lots and lots of sand. Level it, tamp it, level it, tamp it. In order to level it, we laid two pvc pipe lengthwise on the gravel base, filled between and around them with sand, and then dragged a 2x4 along the length of them to level the sand. Make sure in your leveling that you are keeping a slight slope downhill from the house.

Step 7: Add the pavers and pound them in with a rubber mallet. Tamp some more.

Some people add landscape edging around the patio to ensure that the stones stay where they should be. We were tired at that point, so we just backfilled the dirt around the stones.

Tada! It just needs some flowers nearby, don't you think...?

And you know all those stones we dug up from the hole for the patio? I now have edging for a lot of my flower beds:

about the Red House

The Red House was built in 2009.   It was built with color and character, but alas, no garden, unless you count a few shrubs and precisely one shade tree per city code thrown in by the building company.  This is the mission:  to add lushness and color throughout the yards of the Red House.  And hopefully not break the bank doing so...

and UPDATE:

We hadn't expected to leave our Red House, but a change in job and the opportunity to live near family led us to move to the Boston area in 2013.   We now live in zone 6a in our new not-so-red house, and I am learning all about New England gardening.

When I'm not digging rocks out of my new garden, you can find me puttering around in my new, little red greenhouse that helps extend the gardening season just a little bit up here.

As always, happy gardening!