Our Vintage Very Snow Neighborhood-Heritage Hill

          CJ and I have the privilege of living in a very beautiful neighborhood here in Grand Rapids, Michigan. The neighborhood is call Heritage Hill Historic District. It is one of the largest and oldest historic districts in North America. CJ has lived in the neighborhood when she came to town to go to Kendall College in the 1980's. I have lived here off and on for years and  built a construction business that specialized in restoring houses in this neighborhood for a number of years.

 We now live here together and often love going for walks at the end of the day. We both love old houses.

 This week our unusually warm weather ended and about a day ago we started getting a soft gentle snow fall and much colder temperatures. After two days of snow we have a regular winter wonderland.

 So late this afternoon we went for a walk when I got home from a day of working in my shop. Everything was so beautiful, quiet and snow covered that I couldn't resist taking some of these pictures of house we passed as we walked.

 All of these houses pictured are when in two blocks of our house. It is a wonderful thing to be surrounded with some much beauty.

 We hope you enjoy these few pictures of our very vintage snowy neighborhood.

Chalk Paint, Furniture Painting/Refinishing, and the Reorganizing of the Work Shop

The dust is still settling from my major work shop reorganization. I am now working in a space about half the size as my old space. It may take me awhile to get everything just right but the space is feeling very comfortable. This new move is already producing some good results. I am feeling that the smaller space will force me to be more selective about future projects, it is also forcing me to process my projects quicker rather than leave them standing around to long periods of time, I find that I tend to lose tools less frequently because my tools are less spread out across the shop, and it is also making me look at how I finish or refinish our furniture projects.

For some time now I have been spraying furniture that we refinish or paint. In this new smaller space this has become more difficult. I have had an interest for some time in both milk paint and the new chalk paint that seems to be growing in popularity. So I have taken this work shop change as an opportunity to look at how I am finishing furniture and play around with some of the finishes I have wanted to try, and go back to doing more furniture by hand rather that spraying my finish. In my smaller space going with product that don't fill the air with paint has become important for my health.

The new Annie Sloan chalk paint has really intrigued me so I paid a visit to a dealer and purchased a can of French Linen, a can of the dark wax that top coats the product and a color chart. The paint is a wonderful soft matte finish, is a primer and paint in one and is water based. I painted a small primitive buffet I had in the shop and found that it meet all my expectations. Easy to use and easy to clean up, it covered in one coat and after I sanded it out I applied the wax. I brought the piece of furniture in to Bluedoor and found that it sold so fast that I didn't even get a chance to get a picture of it. So I went back to the chalk paint chart to look at some of the other colors to see what else I could try. After years of painting furniture in cottage white, black and a variety of greens and blues I found myself loving some of the colors on the chart like Country grey, Paris grey, Old ochre, French linen, Versailles, and even Emperor red. Some of these similar colors are also showing up on the Pottery Barn winter paint color palette.

                                                 As much as I loved the chalk paint I found that there were some draw backs for me in using this paint. First was the cost, second was that there are no dealers here in Grand Rapids were I live and third you can only purchase it in the colors available on the shelf or chart. So I decided to pay a visit to my local Benjamin Moore paint dealer and found that they have a new paint product called Regal Select available in a flat or matte finish which basically claims to be very similar to chalk paint. So I had a gallon mixed up in black, my white and the color called country grey(actually very close to a pottery barn color). The cost of the product was much less and when I painted the above two pieces of furniture I was very pleased with the result. Once the paint had dried I lightly sanded the furniture to give it the right amount of distressing.
The next part of the process was to wax or find a process that would duplicate the wax process. Now, I do love the wax however we have found that over the years wax can sometimes make it difficult to change colors and can sometime attract dirt. So I purchased some water based glaze from the paint store, tinted it with very dark brown paint, applied it to the painted piece and then wiped it off with a wet rag. The results were very close to the results I got with wax.

 The two above pieces of furniture were the result of my second round of experiments. I finished off all of the above piece with a matte clear water based product to give them a final clear coat.

I also tried the above two chairs in the pottery barn red which is very close to Annie Sloan red. Again, I like the result and I also like the new palette that I was developing for my furniture. 

I have also done a bit of furniture refinishing and have decided to add a few more pieces like the interesting old pine church bench pictured below.

  I love how the finish plays with some of the new colors I have been experimenting with. So you will most likely see more of my new color palette along with some more natural finished pieces, as well as some of our old standby colors like black and white. The one thing I want to try next is layering different colors as is suggested on the back of the Chalk paint chart.

We have also always tried to collect great architectural items as a part of our love. So about a week ago a came across the two fabulous items pictured below.

The items pictured are sections of vintage cast iron handrail that came out of the old city hall here in Grand Rapids that was torn down in the 1960's. Aren't they great!

All the items pictured above are currently at Bluedoor. So come down and see our ever changing collection of vintage finds.

The New Year and Resolutions

 We hope that all of you had really great holidays and are now quietly at home putting away Christmas like we are. New Years always seems to bring with it resolutions and so we have asked ourselves what should are resolutions be.  If you are in business for yourself you are always asking yourself how you can do to do your business better, what are the trends you should be following, and what areas should we focus on. As a result, one of the things we hope to do in the new few weeks is to ramp up our ebay and etsy listings.
Are esty account in called True North and are ebay account is called Hattiemaevandaff(named for our cat). We have had both accounts for awhile and feel that it is far more productive for us this winter to focus on listings to help us increase our sales over the winter when our sales slow some. So if you have some time check us out on both locations and see what great finds and creations we come up with over the next few weeks.

This past year I have also made a resolution to reduce the size of my work shop. I have had my space for about 15 years and at various times I had a crew of people using the shop when I owned a construction company so I needed alot of room for the construction of projects and for large pieces of machinery. However, much of the machinery is now gone and so is my crew. So, over the past few years I have filled my shop up with lots of vintage stuff that I intended to fix, repupose, or upcycle. I have manage to collect much more than I could possible work on or use and so I decided to reduce the size of my shop and attempted to organize my shop so that we can save some rent money as well has making my workspace a more efficient space for me to work.

This is not any easy task for me because I love my "stuff" and I would not have hauled to to my shop if I had not seen some value in it. But, by New Years day I had vacated half of my shop and am now working on putting some assemblance of order to all the remaining stuff. About now I am sick of cleaning, sorting, and throwing stuff out of my shop window and am ready to get involved in some new projects including some projects I found while going thru this very large change.
So keep an eye on us this year. We are talking about lots of ideas and potential changes and are very excited about our business possibilities this year.

Merry Christmas!!!

 I woke up this morning to let the dog outside and be hold there was snow on the ground. There was none perdicted for this weekend so it was a surprise. Much of it has disappeared by tonight by it did put us in the Christmas mood.

This week I did a search for vintage Christmas photos. I came up with some really great photos from the 1920's that I would love to share with you.

 It is rather amazing to me how bushy trees were back than. I wonder when we got the idea that they all needed to be trimmed to be pointed.

 Cj and I both wish you all a very Merry Christmas this season and hope you all have wonderful holiday. We are grateful you all you you that are friends, for reading our blog and supporting us. Thank-you!

Creating Christmas

 We picked up a copy of the new Mathew Mead Holiday magazine in the last week. It is full of alot of great recipes and holiday creations. Creating is important to both of us doing the holidays. We are grateful that our occupation as antique dealers and as an interior designer allow us to be creative.  We love both receiving and giving handmade creative gifts. There are some many wonderful creative people on Esty these days. Our hope is that if you can't yourself create that you will be supportive of those who do so by purchasing from such people on Esty. and artists that live in your community.
Cooking from scratch has to be one of the most wonderfully creative acts in the holidays. Try making a pie from scratch, make your own fudge, or gift wrapping. It will enrich your life and lives of those around you.

I week or so ago we went to our annual tree cutting party. My son,Eric and his wife, Angela went with us. We had already cut our tree so we accompanied them on their quest for the perfect tree. After the tree had been cut we headed back to the parking lot for all the homemade goodies that had been loving prepared for us by our good friends Dave & Pat.

This is not a feast to miss. We are always grateful to be invited to this celebration and make it a part of our holiday celebrations. It is a wonderful example of how creatively prepared food can be a real gift.

 CJ has been busy with design work this whole Fall and Winter season. We have are having one of the best months we have ever had at Bluedoor this month. It is a season to be grateful.

Our Vintage Christmas

I can't resist sharing a few pictures with you of our house after CJ spent most of last week putting together Christmas at our home. We had a neighborhood party at our house on friday that we wanted to be ready for. So alot of effort on CJ's part went into cleaning and bring Christmas up from the basement. We always have a great spot for our tree in our large front living room window. I few years ago I built a box to elevate our tree. After we mounted the tree in it's stand and put it on the box, CJ covers the box with vintage fabric and then the whole tree gets decked out with our collection of vintage ornaments. It than gets topped off with an angel from my childhood. This vintage plastic angel tree topper dates to the 50's or early 60's . I remember as a child my parents putting an angel just like this on the top of their tree. So a few years ago I found a duplicate of it on ebay(don't you just love ebay).

                                                               The fireplace mantel got the white treatment this year. We brought in greens and pine cones salvaged from outside. A chippy white mirror off an old vanity became the focal point. Candles, mercury glass, a vintage porch spindle with candle on top, cake plate with glass dome were all added to the mix. It is takes on a magic of it's own when we light the candles and fireplace at night and turn out the lights.

                                                                      The side table next to the sofa has our collection of choir candle people. The vintage church sitting on the table is a duplicated of a church that my German Grandmother had set up in her living room every Christmas(again another ebay find). The church winds up and plays Silent Night, Holy Night.

                                                              Our old chipped green paint cupboard between the kitchen and the dining room has CJ's collection of glass tree toppers on it along with a collection of vintage Christmas houses I have collected and given to CJ over the last few years. My criteria for buying a house is that it has to have both a Christmas tree and a snowman on it. Houses that have both are not so easy to find.

We got our first dusting of snow this week and because it turned colder it has stayed around. We are beginning to catch most of our favorite Christmas movies on TV. CJ managed to fill almost every nook and corner in out place with Christmas. Most of our shopping is done. We have successfully had our first Christmas party and downed our first glass of eggnog for the season. So I think our Christmas season for 2011 is off to a great start. It really is a wonderful life isn't it.

Christmas, Bluedoor and Elements

I needed to add this wonderful picture of this 54 Chevy with christmas wreath and snow to our blog. I once owned a 54 Chevy and when ever I see one it tugs at my heart strings. This old red truck with wreath all covered in snow appeals to my holiday mood. I even noticed that the latest Sundance catalog that just came in the mail yesterday had a red 54 chevy pick-up on the front cover.

Speaking of Christmas, we have Bluedoor looking ready for the holidays. CJ went in last week and bought a great christmas look to our booth their. We have lots of handmades from vintage and have been making a real efforts to increase the volume of our vintage small items. So we have plenty of product for the holiday shoppers.

One of the things we realize about our business is that you can never have enough small vintage items. They seem to be the bread and butter of our business. Over the last few months we have been looking for markets were we can find more vintage smalls and as a result we have been able to offer alot more smalls in our markets.  We have been delighted with the results and the response to our offerings.

                                                                               We have also been putting more product at Elements here in Grand Rapids. This wonderful store is owned by our good friend Patrice(see our side bar for Elements blog). The store is located in an old brick furniture factory. This setting gives the store a great funky vintage feel.
Patrice main mission is to be a gift and home accessory store that emphasizes vintage. In the store there are two spaces rented out to other dealers that compliment the look of the store. We are providing Patrice with vintage furniture items and architectural items that she mixes in with her own product.

 We like the look and feel of her store and encourage all of you to check it out over the holidays. Patrice also just opened her store Wednesday thru Sunday. She intends to make this permanent and so she will only be closed on Monday and Tuesday.

We hope all of you are enjoying the holidays. It really can be such a beautiful time of year. Blessings to all of you!