Change of blog title?

LOLOLOLOL!!!  I just realized that my URL doesn't have primitive spelled correctly!  Oh, my goodness!  So if you tried to look for my blog, you wouldn't find me, but you would find another blog with the same title!  Well, SHOOT!  Look for me to change my title soon!  Oh, well, back to the drawing board!  Suggestions? For those who know me, something the yells RONDA!

I guess I need to really think about why I am blogging.  That, partly on the advice of veteran blogger, Donna at Funky Junk Interiors.  Am I just giving an accounting of my day, or is my goal to tell you something that you might not find anywhere else?  I would like to think the latter, but most of the things I am doing these days are based in things I am reading on other blogs.  My thinking when I started this is that it would evolve with time.  Mostly I am in the process of remaking my home and I have friends and family who would enjoy having a place to go to see what I am doing.

So...on the saga of the chairs.  I am still on the lookout for a few more vintage chairs to paint black for my dining room.  2 of the chairs that I bought at yard sales in September need enough work done to them that they are just sitting in my garage waiting on hubby to figure out if he wants to put the time and effort into fixing them.  The good news is that they were each only $5.  Anyway...convinced my hubby to make the 20 minute drive over to a little antique/junk store to check out some chairs, only to find that they are not open on Wednesdays!  Oops, sorry honey!

Did spend some time working on my table today.  Here is another sneak peek~

Isn't she lovely?

Blessings,

Ronda

China Hutch

Happy Tuesday!

A little more about myself today--  while I am a stay-at-home mom, I also am a work from home mom.  I teach private piano lessons here in my home.  I have had 25 students at my highest point, but at the moment am down to 16, including my own lovely daughter.  I do those on Monday and Tuesday afternoons and evenings.  In fact, I have several openings if anyone is looking for a good piano teacher... ;)

On to the project of the day!  Even though I have painted furniture off and on through the years, this was the first project where I started to play around with distressing and antiquing.

I had a can of clearance paint from Lowes that was an off-white shade.  It was a little too yellow-ish for my taste, so I mixed in a bit of brown to try to tone it down.  Since I have no ASCP dealers near by, and I was unwilling to pay shipping in addition to the rather salty price of the paint, I decided to try a little DIY chalk paint.  My first try was with calcium carbonate and I totally guessed at the amounts.  I have since switched over to using plaster of paris and it actually creates a much smoother paint.  Keeping in mind that this was all experiment...and even though I had spent quite a bit of time haunting various blogs about using chalk paint and distressing and antiquing...I still had to make a few mistakes in the process.  Yes, I tried putting antiquing glaze right on top of the chalk paint.  MISTAKE!  It does soak right into the surface.  I finally ended up mixing a little bit of dark walnut stain into a clear glaze and this gave just the right amount of color to darken up the surface and settle into the crevices of the piece.

Here is a closer shot of the inside.  You can see I decided on a pop of blue for the inside.  I don't imagine you can tell from the pics, but my china has blue around the edges, so the cabinet color really brings that out. Yes, I was too lazy to take everything out of the hutch for a photo shoot!

I changed out the knobs and pulls that I found at Hobby Lobby.  YAY for 1/2 off!  Spray painted the hinges an oil-rubbed bronze to match.

Finished it all with a coat of clear Minwax Furniture Wax.  And I LOVE the way it turned out.  Especially for my first try.  In fact, it is probably still my favorite of the many very few (!!) projects I have completed.  I am actually considering trying to sell this one in favor of one that does not have to sit in a corner.  What do you think?  Would you buy this?

Blessings,

Ronda

Linking to:

A Tricycle Beauty

It has been a few days since I posted.  Busy couple of days.  I appreciate the people who have left comments on my blog!  I spent several hours today driving around the county looking for deals.  I visited a new shop full of antiques and other flea market-type finds.  I didn't buy anything, but sure enjoyed looking.  And there are a few items that I stored in the back of my mind to possibly go back to look at.  

Today I want to show you a piece that I painted a month or so ago.  This was an end table that I found on Craigslist.  When we went to see it, it was a bit unsturdy, but after discussing it with DH, we offered a bit less and took it home.  

I did manage a before shot, but this was after my husband removed the decorative pieces from the bottom shelf.  It was missing one or 2 anyway, so we planned to replace them with new ones. Please ignore the lovely garage!  Ha! This baby was destined for MMS Tricycle Red milk paint! I'm still not sure what I think about it.  It didn't perform as expected at all! I didn't use the bonding agent, but it didn't get chippy.  Sad.  

I did the usual sanding to distress and then applied antiquing wax followed by minwax clear furniture wax.  

Here you can see the decorative pieces my DH put on.  

I changed the pull.  Hubby had to drill new holes and I filled the old ones.  I toyed with the idea of trying to sell this Tricycle beauty, but my sweet daughter says I CAN'T!  It does fit well in this room.  Also having some issues with moisture going through the coasters and leaving marks on the top.  I didn't think that should happen with the wax.  I even put 3 coats of the clear on the top.  Suggestions?  

I also worked some more on my "new" dining room table.  You won't get to see  her for a while.  But here is a sneak peek.  

Let's just say it will have lots of character!  

Blessings, 

Ronda

Linking to:

Lovely Aged Chair

So I don't know if anyone at all is reading my blog...yet.  I know it will happen at some point if I have something to offer.  Still in week one, still a baby blogger.  Insecurities kicking in...does anyone out there care what I have to say?  Does it really matter if anyone else cares as long as I am using this blog as an outlet for myself?

 Ok, enough venting.  Today I want to show you a project that I am playing with.  I have been working on changing over my dining room table to a farmhouse table with mismatched black Windsor-style chairs. So over the past couple of months I have been accumulating chairs to paint.  One of the chairs that I bought, I actually spent more than what I had set as my max amount to spend on them.  But I saw it and I loved it, and I was only just beginning this little journey of furniture painting.  A lovely lady had already painted and distressed this beauty in an off-white.  Sorry, no before pic, you will just have to trust me that she was already beautiful.  But the color was not really me and did not fit my house style so well, and besides, I did buy it with every intention of painting it black.  Since I will distress it after painting it, I wanted to cover over the white shade so that the white didn't show through when I started sanding.  The paint finish was flat, no poly, no wax, so I decided to try a stain over the top of it.  

I am really loving the look now!

Love how the already distressed areas, which were light wood are now so dark and how the imperfections in the wood picked up so much of the stain.  

Notice something missing in this pic??? LOL!  Guess I didn't see that side very well when I was working on it!!

So now my quandry!!!!  I love this look, but I can't use it at my dining room table because it is not black!  What do I do?  Find a different place for this as is?  Or go ahead and paint it?  HELP!!  

Blessings, 

Ronda

Linking to:

Curtains!

Ok, so maybe I am not as "original" as I thought I was! :)  After posting yesterday, I decided to do a Google search on The Primitive Pumpkin.  And, yep, you guess it!  Thousands of results with the Primitive Pumpkin in them!  Shops, blogs, you name it!  Oh, well! It's done and I kind of like it.

Anyway...onward and upward...I thought today I would show you my latest sewing project.  We have lived in this house almost 15 years and I have had the same lace curtains in the dining room the entire time.  I was rather tired of them!  I did some pricing of curtains that might possibly be what I wanted and found that I couldn't bring myself to put out the money just because I was tired of what I had.  At first I thought maybe burlap, in fact, I found some really cool looking burlap printed with old-fashioned skeleton keys, and I thought I had found the answer.  But after looking at it in the actual store instead of just looking online, I decided it was too stiff and would not drape the way I wanted it to.

However, on the shelf right below it was a bolt of osnaburg, a fabric that looks somewhat like linen, but is all cotton.  So I went home and started dreaming of what I wanted these curtains to look like.  I didn't want them to be just the beige color, I wanted a little black in there, too.  I'm loving all the grain sack stuff that I am seeing, so I thought, why not?  I'm sure it wouldn't be too difficult to paint the fabric. I used a 40% off coupon at Hobby Lobby to get 10 yards of osnaburg for $2.40 a yard!  Love a deal!  So, some painters tape, a ruler, black craft paint and a sponge brush and Ta-Da! It's a look I am really loving!

If you look closely in the top 2 pics, you can see that I also kept the skeleton key idea by using curtain rods that have a skeleton key-like finial! I have yet to make curtains for the living room.  They will be similar.  I think I am going to make them floor length, so I don't think I will stripe them, but I want to do something.  Maybe a stencil across the bottom and up in the inside? I plan to start those later today. Sorry I couldn't take a pic of the entire window, but the light coming in made it too dark to see anything.

What do you think?

Blessings,
Ronda

My Very First Post!!

I know, some of you are wondering why on earth I would choose The Primitive Pumpkin as the title of my blog.  I don't know that I have a great answer for that.  I was sitting here on my couch looking around and wondering what I should use as my title that would not only describe who I am, but also sound cute, and possibly be descriptive of what this blog will be.  Well, part of the problem is that I am not sure what this blog is going to be about! I have been spending a lot of time looking at decorating blogs, liking what I see.  But do any of you really care about what my house looks like or what projects I am working on?  I guess we will find out!  I know my mom does :). Thanks, Mom!  

Well, all that said, back to the title. I guess my favorite decorating style is primitive, so that seemed like a no brainer.  But for those of you who have ever tried to come up with a blog title, you know how difficult it is to find one that is available!  So, looking around, I spotted one of my cute little pumpkins currently decorating my house, and I LOVE alliteration-- so The Primitive Pumpkin was born!

I am hoping to gain a few followers that will guide me in what you like to read about on my blog.  I am also hoping that you will give me some opinions on some re-decorating dilemmas that may come up.  

And if you have stayed with me to this point, you have just finished reading my very first post!

Blessings,
Ronda