Quince Cottage: Porch

Showing posts with label Porch. Show all posts

Friday, November 6, 2015

Non-Traditional DIY Autumn Porch Decor

Hey there, welcome back to Quince Cottage!
Today we're talking autumn plaids. Everyone is mad about plaid this year, right? Well, we decided to take a slightly off-the-beaten-path approach.
Maybe we were inspired by some of the brilliant things Nature does in North Carolina this time of year.

Roadside weed © Rhiann Wynn-Nolet

Toad on Sweet Potato Vine © Rhiann Wynn-Nolet

Beauty Berry © Rhiann Wynn-Nolet
You can make jam from these, and use their juice as a bug-repellent.

Passion Flower Vine © Rhiann Wynn-Nolet

That passion flower was growing in the weeds between our house and the one behind us. It also inspired another project we'll show you in an upcoming post. Pretty amazing flower isn't it?

As we've said before, we like to pinch pennies when we can, and by sewing your own pillow covers, you can too. It's pretty fast and easy if you've got a sewing machine, even if you hate sewing like Rhiann does. This time around we wanted to make a matching throw too. We bought the fabric at Joann Fabrics.

Being able to reverse the pillows by using a different fabric on each side gives even more options in terms of look. You can use snaps or velcro dots or just a basting stitch to close up the open side of your pillow casing.

There's the throw in the photo below. Super easy to make using the leftover fabric from the pillows. On either end of the length of the berry plaid, Rhiann sewed a strip of the green plaid. Then she hemmed all the edges. Ta-daaaah! Done! Now we're not saying this throw will keep you warm on a frosty evening, but it adds a splash of color and continues the theme without breaking the bank.

What do you think? Yes, we know, the porch floor needs to be stained. We're currently debating colors.

Of course it wouldn't be a Quince Cottage blog post without some doggy cuteness, so here you go...

Daisy © Rhiann Wynn-Nolet

Quince Cottage Style mixes old and new, rustic and opulent. Our goal is to make our new subdivision house look inviting, beautiful, and as though it wasn't born yesterday.

Saturday, October 17, 2015

Halloween Decor - Taking It Outside!

If you saw our previous post about Halloween decorating, then you know this is a special holiday for us, since it's also our anniversary!
Here are some more photos of the inside of Quince Cottage.

Dining Room © Rhiann Wynn-Nolet

Close up of one of our vignettes © Rhiann Wynn-Nolet

Halloween Mantel © Rhiann Wynn-Nolet

And at night...

Night © Rhiann Wynn-Nolet

We had a couple of weeks of unrelenting rain here in North Carolina which messed up our decorating schedule, but we've more or less finished and want to share some photos with you!
Here's the full effect in daylight...

Halloween at Quince Cottage © Rhiann Wynn-Nolet

Here it is at dusk...

Halloween © Rhiann Wynn-Nolet

We thought the lanterns needed a little something-something, so we added orange bulbs and simple spiders we cut out of construction paper and taped to the glass.

Lantern © Rhiann Wynn-Nolet

Graveyard © Rhiann Wynn-Nolet

And here's a close up of our "graveyard" and our fountain, now a "skull compote" of sorts. To be honest, the darker skulls were a threesome that are supposed to light up and make scary noises, and be stuck in the ground on stakes. Unfortunately they didn't work this year, so we dumped them in the fountain and added a couple of Dollar Store skulls, some dead leaves, and cobwebs.

Final Resting Place © Rhiann Wynn-Nolet

On a less creepy note, we decided to keep our summer pillows and work with the yellow/gold and lavender/plum scheme, because those also create an excellent autumn palette. The fact that it's a little different from the usual orange/brown/red scheme is actually fine.
Being different is a good thing, right?

Here's a closeup of our urn. We felt bad about ripping living plants out of the urns, so we simply took a grapevine wreath, placed it on top of the urn, then pulled some of the ivy and Impatience over the top. Next we set the pumpkin on an upside down flower pot in the center, and finally tucked in some faux berries from Michael's.

Urn © Rhiann Wynn-Nolet

We hope you enjoyed this little tour of our scary-but-not-too scary front porch!

While we were hard at work decorating, Buster was dreaming of being a unicorn.

Unicorn Buster © Rhiann Wynn-Nolet

(Actually that's a water buffalo horn he was gnawing before dozing off).

Come back again soon, we've got some great DIY projects in the works and a couple we've actually finished and are ready to share!

Quince Cottage Style mixes old and new, rustic and opulent.

Our goal is to make our new subdivision house look inviting, beautiful, and as though it wasn't born yesterday

Sunday, May 31, 2015

Porch Project #2 - Table ReDo!

Welcome to Quince Cottage! As promised, here's our follow up post to Porch Project #1. Our last porch wasn't big enough for a dining table, but the one we had in Maine was and we've really missed summer meals in the semi-outdoors. That table from Maine was sitting right in our garage, taking up much-needed storage space. The solution was obvious.

We didn't want to spend a lot of time and effort (we've got TONS of projects happening) rehabbing the table; therefore, this redo was quick and pretty easy. Once we removed the oil cloth cover and fixed the not-quite-broken leg (courtesy of Daughter #1), it was time to decide on a "look".

Thanks to the pillow project, our porch has a lovely, nostalgic, shabby chic but not too sweet, vibe. A fresh paint job with a simple stripe seemed just right.

We stuck with two paint colors we've been using on other DIY projects: Milk Paint and Scandinavian Sky, both by Olympic Paint purchased at Lowes. Tip: those little tester jars are great for small projects like this!

Milk Paint

Scandinavian Sky

In addition to the paint, all Ron needed was one 2" paint brush, one artist's paint brush, painters' tape, a ruler or yardstick (metal is ideal), an X-Acto knife and a can of clear coat finish. We used Minwax Polycrylic water-based eurethane.

Since we wanted the table to have a slightly worn, but not heavily distressed, appearance, Ron applied a thin coat of the Milk Paint. You can see the brush strokes clearly.

Next he measured carefully and taped off the placement of the stripes. This is where the X-Acto knife and straight edge came in (cutting the painters' tape to make a thinner stripe).

Once the pattern was laid out...

Ron brushed the Scandinavian Sky on, first going the length of the stripe, then applying a second light coat brushing in the opposite direction. This makes it look "almost" like fabric, like say an old dishcloth or grain sack?

When the paint was THOROUGHLY dry, he removed the tape, and applied clear coat to make the finish last longer and help protect against mold and mildew.
We're pleased with the finished product!

And here's the first dinner we had on our "new" table. Dining al fresco, in the shade, without bugs.

Porch life is wonderful, don't you think? Here's Buster, checking out the paint job (well, that's what he said he was doing, I suppose he could have been checking to see what was for dinner...)

Thanks for stopping by Quince Cottage! We've got plenty more DIY projects, recipes, gardening stories, and design ideas for you. We might even throw in some real estate tips for those looking to buy or sell a home.

Saturday, May 23, 2015

Porch Project #1 Pillows!

Quince Cottage Confession No. 1

We get bored easily. This keeps us in a more or less perpetual state of changing our decor, or at least wanting to. Our house in Maine was a Craftsman-inspired cottage and we decorated the porch accordingly in terms of color: earthy greens and reds with cream and brown. See the photos below.

Those pillows on the floor functioned as dog beds :)

When we moved to North Carolina, we ended up in a Craftsman-inspired home once again, and once again, the color scheme of the exterior was "earthy". Sorry about not sharing a photo of the screen porch there, but we never got around to taking pictures before moving out.

Fast forward to Quince Cottage, the place we now call home. Boy, were we ready for a change! We went in pretty much the complete opposite direction with a creamy exterior accented with soft blue and white.

Now, I don't know if you've ever purchased new pillows for a Lloyd Flanders sofa, but let me tell you, they're not cheap. Moreover, there was nothing actually wrong with our cushions, aside from their fabric covering, so the obvious solution was to recover them (along with the existing toss pillows).

Quince Cottage Confession No. 2

I loathe, loathe, loathe sewing, and I'm really not very good at it. As a result, I did the simple toss pillow covers weeks before I finally tackled the more complicated box pillow covers. In fact, I'm so "not good" at sewing that this post is NOT in any way a tutorial/DIY thing.
Here are my only tips: announce a disclaimer before you even start (as in, "these covers are going to be FAR from perfect, in fact they might look somewhat sucky"), second, do your best to hide the really ugly stuff in the back of the pillow (like how you deal with fasteners etc.), and finally, throws can hide a goof-up under the pretense of providing coziness on a chilly evening. I'm still looking for a pretty throw to cover up that pillow cover on the far left of the sofa, where the stripes didn't line up and the seam puckered...

But, without further ado, here are some photos, and you'll notice we used two different fabrics on some pillows. Two looks for the price (and work) of one!

And here's the sofa, those two large pillows (yep, they're bed pillows) in the middle can each be reversed so you can have two navy blue, two rose, or one of each.

We found the floral fabrics on the "leftovers" table and in the clearance section at The Mill Outlet Village in Raleigh. They have fabulous stuff there, AND they're really nice. The striped fabric we found on clearance at Ballard's Designs online.
Oh, one more thing, if you're not using Sunbrella material, then take the extra step of spraying on Scotchgard™ water-repellent to help stave off mold and mildew when the weather gets hot and humid as it does around here. If you live in Arizona or some place like that, you can probably skip it.

Be sure to spray it on outdoors and not near any surfaces that shouldn't be made water-repellent. Why yes, that is a different sofa - you're so observant! That's the one on our front porch and we'll be talking more about that one in an upcoming post about curb appeal.

Happy Memorial Day to all of you! We hope you get to spend some time taking it easy this weekend, like Buster here. We all love porch life here at Quince Cottage.

Quince Cottage

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