Dis-stressed Out!

I suppose it's my turn to contribute to the blog since Katie is posting like a mad woman! Not only is she posting blog entries, she is really pulling together some beautiful ideas for the house.

I spent a few hours on Sunday clearing out the basement. Only one corner of it had stuff occupying it, but boy, what a lot of stuff was there. Fifty years of collecting.

I had hoped to find a secret stash of money, babseball cards or even a mint condition Colt, but no dice. I did however find an abundance of tools. And not the "Made in China" kind. America baby! I discovered power tools from the 60s and 70s, an old spinning reel, a huge pulley, about 6 vintage Stanley wood working planes and God knows how many hand tools. The previous owner must have had over 30 files, 50 screwdrivers, tons of drill bits and over 200 lbs of hardware.

I don't need all this stuff, so I am still working to determine what is of value and how I can move the other stuff with a quickness. If you know anyone interested in buying old tools, let me know!

In other news, I began looking how to take the interior 10-lite french doors we plan to hang with the barn rig and make them appear like they didn't come from aisle 32 at Peabody Building Supply. I had envisioned some really rustic, heavy wooden doors. The kind of doors that oozed character and made you think, "If these doors could talk!"

Well we don't have the time to play the American Pickers, so I think I found the next best thing on Katie's second favorite site - http://www.younghouselove.com/

With a few hours of work and some serious aggression, we plan to beat these doors into submission. Round one we'll sand the sharp corners into a more rounded edge. Then round two, we'll hit the doors with bags of screws, careful not to break any glass, but nicking the wood into perfection. Then we plan to take a hammer Tony Soprano-style to the panels to add some more "character".

These indentions will really come to life when we add the first quick coat of dark stain. All the nooks and crannies will really POP! Then we hit it with the walnut stain and the results will be breath-taking! (We'll be sure to post more when we undertake this process, which will surely be quite messy.)

We want each room to have a unique accent or focal point. And between the funky floor tiles to the barn door partition to the throwback master bath, this is going to be a cool crib!