Mockingbird Hill Cottage

Life in our little cottage in the country

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C’est Fini. For the Moment.

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My plan to work on Act 4 yesterday was shelved when I decided I would rather get everything organized in the kitchen, finish painting the trim and get all the crap off the table. I’m not a person who can leave a mess behind. Some people have no problem with that, but I’m someone who cleans and straightens up before I leave town. I did assign Don the bathroom; heaven knows when he’ll take care of that. Most likely, when he knows I’m two hours away and headed home on my day off. Same with washing the sheets. I will wash them before I leave and I think I can rest assured that he’ll leave them as is until absolutely necessary.

Not the best picture as it’s dark and rainy today, so I had to take it with the lights on so the yellow looks darker than it is, but you get the idea. Still have to re-mount the roman blinds and hang a few things here and there.

Anyway – all done! For now. We’ve decided that we want to paint the entire kitchen yellow, which isn’t as overwhelming as it sounds because we have lots of windows and trim and all the cupboards and a door that will be painted ivory white. And the ivory white I’m using is lighter and brighter than the current paint color. That’s just fine with me as I’ve never liked the paint color in this house, which is the same in every room, save the two bathrooms which I painted not long after we moved in. This house was flipped and I am absolutely sure that the flipper had every wall sprayed in this same blah color – not white, not beige, but somewhere in between. In a flat finish. When was it ever wise to paint a kitchen in oil-based paint in a flat finish?

We’re coming up on 12 years in this house and I’m finally getting around to painting the kitchen, which I’ve been threatening to do for years. I doubt I would have started painting, knowing me, but then we fell in love with the vintage stove.

And I’ll do anything for that stove.

The process will take a long time. I’m going to do it a section at a time and I’m headed off to Hartford for five weeks, so there’s that.

Again: dark, rainy, the floors look darker than they are but here’s the table. I find I’m really liking it. Don tells me he had no trouble cooking last night and the pots and pans and baking supplies are in another cupboard now that is much closer to the stove. The crate under the table holds miscellaneous items, including dish towels, some rarely used utensils, etc. I think it will work. Eventually, we’re going to replace that microwave with a smaller one in white. (I’ve never liked this one, but it came with the house, so we accepted it.) I’ve also never liked the black stove and the black dishwasher. The dishwasher doesn’t work. It’s never worked. Right now, we’re storing supposedly essential kitchen items in there. But we never use them. So they’re getting tossed and we’re getting a new dishwasher. In white. None of this will happen immediately, but with the paint, the new dishwasher and the vintage stove coming, we’ll have a mini makeover.

Oh, and I hate the tiled countertops.

You can see how the yellow changes depending on the light, the time of day and whether I have to resort to turning on the overhead pot lights.

The other item I purchased on Saturday was not a need, but I fell in love with it, so it came home with us. It’s almost impossible to take a good picture in the den because there are windows on three walls and it tends to stay dark in there until late in the day.

 

This table. Fell in love with the shape, the paint color – everything. I had no idea where it would go but this seemed like the right place and Don agreed. Excuse the laptop cord, but hey, this is real life. This is also pretty accurate in terms of the color. I had to close the blinds to get it that way.

And for those of you who asked, here’s the former island on the porch. I haven’t really done anything with it yet. No time.

It does look pretty there.

As you will see, it’s facing the entrance to the porch.

I have to find some place for the bench that was there – it’s currently shoved over to the left.

What do you think?

To sum up: Photos, but none of them very good. But there you go. It is what it is.

Okay. Acts 4 and 5 today and then Tuesday and Wednesday are for shopping and laundry and packing.

Happy Monday.

When A Stove That Isn’t Even Here Yet Upends Everthing

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I am so friggin’ tired this morning! Too much going on, horrendous humidity (which broke, thank goodness, overnight) and a day spent in the beautiful Berkshires where we really didn’t have time to acknowledge that beauty because we were frantically driving from one antique shop to another trying to find a substitute for the island. By the time we got home around 7:30, we were exhausted. Don pulled a dinner together and we watched “Singin’ in the Rain.”

The first shop we went to ended up having the most possibilities, but no matter what we looked at, it was basically a table and not the right height for an island. After endless measuring, chatting with Shirley, who ran the shop and everyone else who worked there, we were dehydrated, tired, and in my case, overwhelmed and in mourning for my island, which I know darned well is too big and had to go. We tried every other shop before coming back to the first shop. Finally, we acknowledged that whatever we bought would be a place marker until we found the right substitute. Whatever we eventually find will be much shorter in length and much less of a presence in the room because Don is loving the room to walk around and do what he has to do when making dinner. He’s a big guy and he needs space. We  need space.

Sigh.

We ended up buying a small primitive table because I loved the original blue paint. We figure it can go into storage if we find something better or maybe there will be another place for it in the house or in the mudroom we’d like to add someday.

And the wood bread board I got earlier in the summer fits on top. The Vernors crate is there for the moment, but I have a feeling I’ll move it somewhere else. It’s taking up too much real estate. Where that is, I don’t know, as every corner in this little cottage is taken up by something or other. Love our cottage but sometimes we yearn for more space.

We also got this vintage crate with the great graphics because it has a hinged lid and I’m going to store the dishtowels and linens inside. Today I have to clear out one of our cupboards so that I can reconfigure where we store our pots and pans and baking dishes. And I have to paint the trim on the window. And work on Act 4 of Midsummer.

I also got this because I love vintage graphics and display items.

We might hang it above the vintage stove as a container for spices, sort of like this (courtesy of Don):

Or it might go elsewhere. A lot depends on the stove and how it looks here in the kitchen. As Shirley, who must feel relieved not to have to have any more long indecisive conversations with us on the ‘island’ that isn’t really an island, said – we should wait until the stove arrives to see what we want or don’t want. She’s right.

Gosh, this stove has upended everything here at the cottage!

We bought one other item, but it’s impossible to get a good picture of it this morning, so I’ll work on that later in the day.

Change is always hard for me and there are a lot of changes happening around here right now. And I leave in four days for five weeks away from home. It’s all too much for me at the moment, which is why Don and I sat on the porch this morning and cuddled on the glider while I cried a little. That helped.

Happy Sunday.

 

 

Yellow and The Island

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Yesterday was a long day; full of painting, and incredibly humid at the same time. I didn’t take a shower until 7 pm! Everything is done on that wall except for the trim around the window, which I’ll do this weekend.

We really like the yellow, which changes as the day goes on. On this dark and rainy morning, it looks like this:

But it’s actually lighter than this – a buttercream yellow. It makes us happy. Now the big question is whether we do it on all the walls or just this one? We’re going to wait on that decision. Actually, we have no choice. I have much to do, we have much to do, including looking for a smaller kitchen island. I’ll have more photos soon.

Yes, I know. Everyone loves that island, including me. It has been an incredible boon to us with storage and an additional counter surface. But it’s huge. Mammoth. 68 inches long, 38 inches high. It will block part of the view of the stove. The stove is deeper than the one we have, which means we’d have to move the island closer to where the refrigerator is, and that would make getting around the kitchen even more difficult.

This one isn’t easy for me. I’m already in mourning. But we want to see  our vintage stove, which will be and should be the star of the kitchen. With the old island in here, I’d never be able to get a full-on photo of it. We’re rethinking the storage of kitchen items. What to pitch and what to keep. And I am leaving in 5 days! A bit overwhelming, but this darn gorgeous and large vintage stove has made us rethink everything!

The island, pretty as it is, has chipped paint most of the time. It’s so big that it makes it difficult to clean around it. Time to move on. Sigh. Don came up with the idea of using it on the porch as a potting bench/storage unit and it looks pretty good there. We’re trying that out.

A photo of us from the other night. We were out to dinner, trying to take a selfie (we’re woefully inept at that) and collapsed into giggles. It was a celebratory dinner, but that’s all I can say at this moment. More soon.

It’s blurry, but it makes me smile a lot.

We’re off to do some antiquing/treasure hunting in the Berkshires.

Happy Saturday.

Lambs Like to Party

Lambs Like to Party

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