Our Little Cabin in the Woods-Part One

I hope you haven't been holding your breath waiting for us to finish the cabin!  Like most everything we try to tackle these days, it has taken about three times as long as it should have...and we're still not totally finished, but I'm going to share it anyway, because we're just sooo close to being finished, and I can't wait any longer!

When we purchased the land next door, this structure was already there.  The 16' x 24' building was built on sight.  It has a front porch and a gambrel style roof which allows space for two sleeping lofts inside, one in front and the other in the back.  It was covered in white vinyl siding on the sides and back, but had cedar on the exterior of the front wall, inside the porch.  The inside was unfinished, but had a small wood stove and a window unit air conditioner in the wall.

What We Did...

On the exterior, we removed the vinyl siding (I forgot to take a "before" pic with the vinyl siding.) but here's what it looked like after it was taken down.  See the door leaning up against the back wall?  We added that so that we would have a back entry.  We also removed the window unit air conditioner that was in the wall...you can see where the hole was filled in.

New back door with awning...

Front porch area is now trimmed in cedar to match the front cedar wall.

Color scheme that we chose to use is the same as what we used on our house last spring...more about that in the next blog post.

We needed to add new air conditioning, as we had removed the old window unit, so we went with a ductless system by Samsung, and we love it!  It works by remote control, and keeps the place at a constant temperature, even automatically switching from a/c to heat, when needed.   It's also energy efficient.  (Samsung did not give us anything for mentioning this product.)

We also needed to connect it to the septic tank so that we could add a bathroom. That required ditch-digging.  

We removed the ceiling fan. (I borrowed this picture from Hope Contracting's Facebook page...Hope Contracting did most of the work for us.)

Insulation went up.

...then the metal ceiling!  I was so excited about using corrulated metal on the inside, and I do love it as much as I thought I would!  Oh, and see the black wall up on the end of the loft?  That's chalkboard paint!  Just imagine camping out and playing tic-tac-toe up there while you're supposed to be sleeping!  I plan to add some funky picture frames to the wall so that kids can create their own wall art within the frames...

And, here's my sweet hubby hanging the funky green chandelier!

That's all I'll share today...this post is taking me three times as long as it should, too!  I only have about a thousand pictures to look through after four months of working on the place!  

Be watching for part two where I'll share the bathroom and some more interior work real soon.

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My Vintage Market Days Experience-Part One

Wow!  What a week...there was so much anticipation and excitement leading up to the big Vintage Market Days event.  When set-up day finally arrived, vendors flew in like a tornado...and created a wonderland of vintage and antiques treasures.  On opening day, the shoppers crowded into The Grounds of Mobile in huge droves and shopped.  After three days, just as quickly as it all came together, it was over, and all of us in our sweaty glory tore it all apart and went home... already planning the next one.  I now know how it must have felt for the carnies and circus performers who traveled around from city to city in days gone by. (I would have been the Gypsy Fortune Teller!) It was a good kind of tired.

So, I've already given you a hint at what my little shop looked like.  Did you catch it?  If you know me or have followed me much at all, you know I'm fascinated with all things "gypsy" and that's just naturally the theme that I pull together...It started with my banners that would show my logo and business name, but with markets that are away from home, it becomes "The Traveling Show."  The large banner that was on the back wall right in the center featured a gypsy lady setting up housekeeping under a tree.  She was putting out her washtubs and a bird in a cage.  I design my signs to go with what I'm selling, and in this case it was a pair of ninety-year-old chairs with their original berry colored fabric.  To pull it all together and tell a story, I bordered the banner with that same berry color.  To complete the vignette, I added the bird cage on a stand, wash bucket, basket, and a broom, among some other things...greenery was then draped over the top to give the appearance of the tree under which the vardo was parked. 

To continue the gypsy theme, the front table centerpiece was another banner with a dancing gypsy girl, playing a tambourine.  I had a tambourine that I had purchased years ago on Beale Street in Memphis, and it had developed a hole and was pretty tattered.  I remembered a song about a hole in a tambourine, so I used a line from that on the banner with the girl to tell that story.  Although the table of merchandise did get picked apart and purchased, the star of the day was the actual banner.  I couldn't believe that people wanted the banner!  So, I sold it, along with the tambourine....then I took orders for more.  Funny thing though is that everyone wanted me to find them a tambourine with a hole in it to go with their banners!  You just never know what's going to sell at these events.  Oh, the large one on the back wall sold, too!  And that buyer is wanting me to make more....so, maybe that'll be my "thing"...those banners.  I think I'll make more (three, or four....or five!) for the next event.

As I said, the table of "gypsy goodies" was picked over the first day, so I had to pull together another vignette early Saturday morning so that it would be fresh and pretty for the second day shoppers. This next pic is what the same table looked like the next morning.  It's still filled with things that gypsies would have had in the vardo, but these items could have just as well been found in any farmhouse.

The other side of my little store had more treasures set up in a little vignette on a buggy seat...

Directly behind this vignette was the youth bed which got lots of attention, but no buyer.  It's a great piece with lots of details and folds up to travel or store away when not in use.  I filled it with hay (because it was the first day of fall!) and then added an assortment of pumpkins and treasures...

At the foot of the little bed, I had a turquoise blue chest with original chippy paint. On top of that, I added two tiny chairs-a white chippy one and a stained wood rocker.  Oh, and I had to put some candy down at kid level!

Of course, there was more-ironstone, t-shirts, and some other pretty gypsy style things...

Well, that's a look inside my Down in the Delta-The Traveling Show space at the very first Vintage Market Days of Mobile.  I'm happy to report that I had GREAT shoppers who took home many of my finds to enjoy in their own homes.  I did still have lots of fun things to pack up for the next event, so if you like anything pictured here, just ask me...I might still have it.

That's part one of the two-part VMD recap.  Tomorrow I'll share with you the bigger picture, more about the entire experience.  Hope you'll check back for that.

Thanks for dropping by!