Lime Mortar FAQs for Stone Foundations
You’re a homeowner with an old house and a stone foundation, and you realize that the stone foundation needs to be repointed. Now what? We’ve been in your shoes. We are DIYers who were skeptical of the ‘advice’ we were getting and went on a mission to figure out the best way to repoint and repair our stone foundation. Whether you are hiring a mason or planning to DIY it, here’s what we learned that will help you get started on your repointing project. Scroll through this blog post or use the table of contents to jump to the questions you want answered. Table of Contents What is lime mortar…
Happy List: #425
Hello, hello! Welcome to this week’s Happy List. I am absolutely thrilled to see you here. This week on the blog, I shared the vintage crate that I turned into a spring wreath. I love reimagining new uses for old things. It’s a great creative exercise. I also received happy mail from a friend, and that led me down a rabbit hole of looking for cards that look like art and should be framed. That’s just how my brain follows the path of inspiration! It truly makes my day to connect with you. I work alone, except on snow days. It snowed here this week. It’s fun to talk to…
10 Greeting Cards You’ll Frame Because They Are So Pretty
Have you ever received a greeting card that was so pretty that you needed to frame it? The very thought of throwing it away or shoving it in a drawer just felt wrong. That has happened to me. Out of the blue last week, I received a postcard from a friend. A friend I’ve made because of this blog. (How lucky am I? The luckiest.) Her love language is making cards and sending cards and postcards to her friends and family. How great is that? Receiving her postcard got me thinking, “How is my stock of cards looking?” I usually keep generic cards on hand that will work for a…
DIY Repurposed Berry Crate Spring Wreath
Who says a wreath has to be round besides the dictionary? No one in this house! I decided my vintage wood berry carrier would be an excellent ‘vessel’ to refresh my mantel for spring. Making this repurposed Berry Crate Spring Wreath also refreshed my soul a little as I’m slogging my way through another winter storm. I’m ready for spring. The calendar doesn’t care. What is a berry crate? A berry crate, berry basket crate, berry field flat, or berry basket carrier is used by berry pickers to hold individual berry baskets full of berries. They use these as a carrier to shuttle their individual berry baskets to a check-in…
Happy List: #424
Hi! Welcome to this week’s Happy List. I am absolutely thrilled that you are here. This week on the blog, I shared the makeover I gave to a recent roadside find, and then I shared the makeover I’m thinking about giving our sunporch. The plants are taking over that space and need to be corralled. It truly makes my day to connect with you. I work alone. It’s fun to talk to kind and interesting people. If you want to reach out, please comment on this blog post or email me here. You can also direct message me on Instagram or Facebook. Here’s the Happy List! CEILING WITH A VIEW…
Upholstered Stool Makeover – A Roadside Find
There’s a certain thrill to driving down the road and spotting free stuff sitting on the side of the road. I gave one such recent roadside find, an upholstered stool, a makeover with a sentimental twist. Of course, because this is me and I have a penchant for making things unnecessarily difficult, I didn’t spot the upholstered stool while driving by. I spotted the stool while out on a walk, and then proceeded to carry it a mile home. My neighbors probably think… Well, I don’t even want to speculate. But, hey. You have to carpe diem the roadside find when you spot it, or it might not be there…
Unique Indoor Plant Displays
I overwinter many of my porch plants (ferns, geraniums, petunias) on our sunporch, and don’t have a great way of displaying the plants that makes it easy to care for them and looks aesthetically pleasing. First world problem, I know. My Current Plant Display Setup: The plants do seem to like it out here, and the photo below shows the best my current sunporch plant display has ever looked this winter. I have a couple of boards perched on top of a seed table that we don’t use for starting seeds. Because of these boards, I can rest three plants on top of the table, so I guess we do…
Happy List: #423
Hi! Welcome to this week’s Happy List. I’m delighted to see you here. This week on the blog, we talked about concrete and the problem it has posed in our basement. We also had a moment for the $20 thrifted brass table that’s now living on our sunporch. Who knows what varied topics next week will bring? Not me, and I write this blog. Uh, that might be a problem. Ha! Thank you for choosing to spend a few minutes of your day here. I hope you have fun, learn something new today, and leave feeling inspired. It truly makes my day to connect with you. I work alone. It’s…
Basement Workshop Stone Repointing: Part 2, Concrete Problem
Welcome back to our Basement Workshop Stone Repointing Series. It’s a rocky romp through restoring the creepy part of our house – the basement. You can catch up on Part 1 here. Today we’re talking about the concrete problem. Most people in the U.S. probably take for granted that their basement, if they have one, has a concrete floor. So did I, until we bought this house. Part of our basement has a rubble floor. Aside from the perk that the floor is one big drain, it’s about as awesome for modern living as you imagine. However, the part of our basement that we are currently repointing DOES have a…
Vintage Soapstone and Brass Table and How I’m Styling It
My thrifting radar must have been working perfectly a couple of weeks ago, when I had a feeling that I should stop in at my local overpriced thrift store, because while there, I found the greatest side table – a vintage soapstone and brass table. Here’s the juicy story: At first, I was sure my eyes were failing me (again) when I glanced at the price tag. The award for living to middle age is your eyes struggle to see small print, but your hindsight is 20/20. But sure enough, after triple-checking, the price on the tag was $20. Twenty. Dollars. I can’t even buy a small stone cutting board…
