Trimming Boxwoods and Progress on the Back Deck

When last we left off with back deck, it looked like this. (Yeah, we lived with that astroturf for the past eight months. Yikes.) This post has a wider shot of the roughly 7x20' space. It's small, but there's plenty of room for a round table and chairs and a grill. So with the warmer weather enticing me with promises of barbeques in my near future, and my new shop-vac giving me the necessary boost of courage, I pulled that nasty astroturf up, scraped up the flaky glue and loosened concrete with a planing shovel and a wire bristle brush. Then in was time to vacuum.

Some of you guys had questions about shop-vacs since I mentioned mine in this post. They are very, very powerful vacuums that you can use to suck up anything - water, spilled paint, sand, sawdust, rocks - and the mess deposits into this big rolling bucket that you just dump out when you're done cleaning. But the filters are pretty basic, so I wouldn't recommend using them in your home for regular cleaning. They're almost too powerful for that. But they're amazing for messy outdoor projects. This is after literally one swipe of the shop-vac:

And here's what the floor looks like now. I scraped up as much of the glue as I could for now. We might still rent a wire brush drill bit to clean it up more, but the concrete is a little fragile, so we'll probably just skim right over everything with a fresh layer of concrete before I paint.

I also picked up some new boxwoods for the back deck recently. Two big ones for the matte black  planters I bought at Target last summer. And two smaller boxwoods for these new urns I picked up at Lowes last week. I love the chalky black finish!

I used my favorite pair of pruners to trim up the new plants. 

I rounded out the big ones and squared off the smaller ones. I'm hoping they fill out this spring so I can shape them a little more.

I love seeing the shot of green outside the doors in our living room. And I love that the green is not astroturf. :)

Lantern Hunting

You know those crazy lighting show rooms that look really lame from the outside? They're usually called LIGHTING EMPORIUM or LAMPS AND MORE! or some other such nonsense. The fixtures they have up front are really tacky and really, really overpriced, but if you wander to the far sides and the very back of the store, sometimes you can find serious treasures that have been passed by for who knows how long.

I wandered into one of these showrooms while I was shopping in the burbs last week and at the back of the store I stumbled on this huge lantern (it's 20"x40") for less than $100! The company that makes it (Nulco Lighting) has gone out of business I guess, so all their stuff is super marked down in most stores now (or so I hear from the sales guy). I've since poked around online, but it looks like everything is sold out. I bought the two lanterns they had in the store and asked the salesman to call around to see if he could secure a couple more for me (for which I'd gladly pay a little more). I'm supposed to use these for a client's mudroom, but what I'm dying to do is use them in my kitchen.

They are that weird bumpy pink brass finish, so I would paint them. Black is always a good choice. White would be really pretty. And of course you know I like red!

Tommy Smythe in House and Home (scan via)

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Margot Austin

Atlanta Homes and Gardens

BHG.com

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A couple of lanterns could be pretty sensational in here, right? Cross your fingers for me that we can find a few more!

DIY Faux Malachite

I would have never guessed a couple years ago when I made this double wide desk from IKEA components, that I'd still be using this inexpensive combo today. I really love it - it's great to have so much work space - but it was time to change up the look a bit. When Sherwin-Williams invited me to use some of their green paint to dream up a project for National Painting Week, I knew my old trusty desk was going to be the lucky target.

I shared last week that I've been dying to try my hand at a faux malachite painting technique, but I've been a little intimidated. I had no idea just how easy it would be! Here are the paint colors I used, all of the colors were mixed in Sherwin-Williams All-Surface Enamel Latex Gloss, going clockwise from top left: Cape Verde (SW 6482), Active Green (SW 6986), Country Squire (SW 6475), and Faux Impressions Clear Glaze.

I put a coat of primer down on the desk, just make sure the surface was smooth and clean. I did a little sanding too, just with a hand block.

Then I brushed on a coat of Active Green for the base of the malachite.

I let that dry for at least a couple of hours.

I made glaze mixtures in both the dark green and dark teal colors. The mixture was about one part paint to three parts glaze, and then it was mixed well.

I think the secret to doing a very easy faux malachite is two sizes of fan brushes. If you can find something very small and another very large brush, that would be ideal.

The malachite pattern part is fun and easy. I started at one end and worked in rows. The trick is to layer the swirls on top of each other. You cover up the start-stop part of each swirl with the smooth, round part of a new swirl. The glaze makes it so the paint dries a little slower and you can layer on the swirls in a clean way, so that the clear bright green base shows through.

Turn on some music and try to keep a loose hand. :) The trick is to not go over the same part twice, if you can avoid it. Also, rather than doing perfectly rounded circles, add some wiggle to the brush so that the lines of the swirls have some movement. It takes some playing with to get the hang of it, but it's fun to do and it goes really fast!

Don't forget to switch back and forth between the small and large fan brushes and the dark green and the dark teal glaze mixtures. I mixed the mixtures together sometimes too (such a rebel, I know).

I also tried to continue the same swirl pattern and glaze color down the side of the table top for a consistent look.

And here's the dried, finished look:

It's definitely not meant to fool anyone into thinking it's real malachite. It's just meant to be a pretty, abstract look. I love it!

I like how much blue there is in the finished desk - I think the SW colors were perfect! I'm really loving how they look against my dark gray walls and with my leopard Eames chairs.

And now for the barrage of photos of the desk at all angles!

I loved getting to try another faux painting technique - especially one that had such quick and easy results! A big thanks again to Sherwin-Williams for sponsoring LGN and letting me participate in this year's National Painting Week. And be sure to catch the thirteen other design bloggers' projects this week! Today, Cassandra at Coco + Kelley has another green project (I love the color she chose!) and tomorrow Erin from House of Earnest and Justin and Cassity at Remodelaholic will share their yellow projects. It's going to be a colorful week in blogland! :)

Spring Flowers

One of my favorite things about where we live is the proximity to Trader Joe's. I have to pass by it to take my girls to school each day, which makes it easy to pop in for the day's food. I stopped in yesterday and the $5 ranunculus giant bunches are back! I love peonies as much as the next blogger, but there's something special about ranunculus blooms. I love that they are a little quirky with their meandering stems. And I like that some have really dark, almost black centers.

What are you favorite flowers? I'm also a big fan of white anemones and garden roses in any color.

PS I met the queen of flower arranging at a party once and she is hands-down the coolest person. Isn't that the best when online people exceed coolness expectations in real life?

A Surprise in the Vestibule

The other day I had our shop-vac out (P.S. shop-vacs are life-changing) and was cleaning up the common area in the main front door of the brownstone, which we share with our upstairs neighbors. There's this really nasty, unfortunate commercial grade carpet everywhere in there and it's dark blue-gray so it shows every spec of dust, every sliver of newspaper. I pretty much hate it.

Since my shopvac is so shockingly powerful, I kept accidentally sucking and pulling up the carpet piece on the vestibule floor. Suddenly I saw a flash of black and white tile under the carpet. 

I felt like Charlie when he saw the little twinkle of the golden ticket so he ripped away the chocolate bar wrapper as fast as possible. That old carpet was up quicker than you can say "carrara marble with soapstone."

After vacuuming and wiping up decades of dirt, I couldn't have been happier about my surprise discovery. It's definitely not perfect, condition-wise, but I love this 106 year-old original floor. Such character!

And isn't this simple pattern a great design? Gracie says "It looks like chocolate chip ice cream or a Queen's fur coat." Love that girl and the way she sees the world.