Beach House Part 11: the furniture

Now it was time to play, setting up the inside of the beach house!  

The OMEGA Miniature Show in Fergus came just at the right time and I found many wonderful things there, especially 1 very beachy chair and a lovely 2-seater wicker bench that were perfect, from Georgian Bay Miniatures, along with 2 battery powered lights!  Also cushions for the bench from Les Ateliers Menu Art.

The third chair I decided to order from the Little Dollhouse Company in Toronto, and while I don't like ordering things sight-unseen, this wicker-look chair turned out to be a perfect fit.  It just needed a better cushion.

Great start!  So we humans all had a place to sit, what about the dogs?

I'm not sure about adding doggy beds, but my sister gave my 2 doggy dishes, one for water and the other over-flowing with biscuits.  She also gifted me these 2 pictures, and I had planned the room so they could hang on either side of the big window.  They look great!!  (These goodies were from etsy vendors.)

Now we needed tables, some place to put our beverages and reading material.  From the same etsy artist who made the 3 windows, Miniatures by Vio, I had also purchased 3 table kits, 2 for inside and 1 for outside.  So now it was time to assemble these kits!  

The kits are laser-cut mdf and I used a PrismaColor pen to color the pieces to mimic wood before putting them together.  The pieces fit together so well, very little glue was needed!

  I wasn't completely happy with the mdf, though, so for the table tops I colored and sealed with ModgePodge very thin veneer so my table tops are real wood.  

Here's two of the finished pieces!  I highly recommend these kits if you don't mind the mdf!  The designs are lovely, they would be absolutely stunning in wood! 

And, oh yes, the pastries on the tray are as mouth-watering in person as they are in the picture!!  They are from Sweet Moment Miniatures: a strawberry shortcake, a macadamia nut cream and a raspberry chocolate mouse.  

So this is how far we are now:

This is my sister's spot, with a gorgeous plant and a refreshing glass and jug of lemonade ready to enjoy.  The new cushion looks good and suits the decor.

This is Mom's spot with her tea at hand.  I needle-felted a warm, fuzzy pillow for her back because she's always cold. 

  

And this is my spot.  I'm always warm, so I don't need a cushion under my bum, but one at my back to lean against the wicker.  I do like to read with the book against my knees, so this bench, while not planned, turns out to be really quite perfect for me.  There's no room for a table, so I made a corner shelf where I have my lemonade.  

Next:  Finishing the outside and a carpet!

Book real estate

In our third year here, patterns are definitely emerging:  B&B winters are slow, but that's okay because there's a lot of touching-up, fixing, renovating, etc... to be done.  We've taken full advantage of this time of year and finally got on to of our own affairs, which included bringing many loads to the local thrift shops! 
  Not so with books, of course.  You can never have too many books... but eventually you run out of places to put them all!  So it was that I desperately needed more shelves, NOT just for books but our collected rocks from a vacation in Utah.  


Market Road Antiques in St. Jacobs came to the rescue!  Obviously we wanted something that looked a bit older, but was still in good shape and could shoulder a load.  We found this piece in one of the stalls and went home to measure our space.  It would work!  Then we asked a friend with a truck (thank you Olga!) to help transport the shelving unit, and it was home!  

The unit is stamped "Vilas Canada" on the back:  it turns out that Vilas was manufacturing in Cowansville, Quebec, and made furniture from 1950 - 1980 according to this website.  

From this blog:  "Canadians of a certain age are familiar with Vilas and Roxton, reputable furniture makers, who produced maple and other hardwood pieces in the rustic American style.  There is a lot of this furniture around from the 40’s, 50’s and 60’s; it’s very solid and well-made but definitely stuck in a time warp."  

Along with all sorts of homeless treasures, my rocks went from this:









to this:

A place for everything and everything in its place.

Dining room Danby

It is with sadness and nostalgia that we announce the passing of our bar fridge.  This sweet little mini fridge, seen on the far left of this photo of our dining room, froze everything in it solid when its thermostat died.  (Yogurt, when frozen and then thawed, is pretty yucky!)

The company, Woods, is no longer in existence and no replacement part could be found.  How old was it?  Well, it was bought when my grandmother moved into a nursing home, so about 1995.  It had a good, long life...

So we hunted for a new mini fridge for our guests and found Elmira Home Comfort and their huge collection of "scratch and dent" items!  We selected a Danby, which actually has more room for our guests' food and beverages, a nice advantage as the Woods was a bit small.

Long live the new fridge!  

February Fun

We had wonderful fun continuing to furnish our Flying Leap Bed and Breakfast!  February happens to be a great month to pick up antiques as both the St. Jacobs Antiques Market and Market Road Antiques have winter sales.  We went last Tuesday and found some gems, here's the best of the loot:

I spotted these folding chairs back in September but at the time we had no idea if we had any use for them.  They're "Stakmore", stamped on the bottom of each seat, and from the 1940s, reupholstered but the curved wood backs and curved seat rails are gorgeous and they're comfy!   And they fold nearly flat!  On sale we got the set for $70.00; I'm happy they waited for me!  It looks like Stakmore has been making folding furniture since 1922.  Come sit on our lawn in one of these cool chairs!

This is a lovely 1950s-1960s rosewood Victorian side chair with a carved foliage crest, serpentine seat rail supports (per the hang tag) and there are massive springs in the seat.  At $56 it was a steal except that the upholstery on the seat is discolored.  This is going to be a project, to clean and then stain the white fabric with beet juice for a natural burgundy color and then it will be in our Fox Hole guest room.  

If anyone has any advice on using natural juices as dyes, I'd love to hear from you!  Thank you Sarah for the information on milk paints, available at Honeychurch Lane!

We needed a big picture to hang over the bed in our Meadow room and we both knew this was it when we laid eyes on it!  It isn't from an antiques market but from the St. Jacob's Furniture House.  

The red leaves pop and the frame is perfect for the room.  There's a stone house in the background where it's quite misty... you can imagine faeries or a dog running around back in that fog.  

Back to the antiques markets, Mom also fell in love with this framed watercolor signed "Dardarian Oct 1990".  It's very peaceful and again my favorite time of year.

And just the perfect little carved corner shelf called out to us!  Mounted in the Creature Comfort bathroom it's just right as a bubble-bath shelf!  How's that for indulgence?

A Tale of Two Chairs

In hoping to acquire some vintage pieces for our bed and breakfast, Mom and I have taken up hunting through the local antique markets.  St. Jacobs has two excellent places to wander through, the St. Jacobs Antiques Market and Market Road Antiques.  Since we purchased our new home and business in May but only got it in August, we had a lot of time to dream... and wait.  So back on June 10th, in Market Roads Antiques, we spotted these two chairs. 

They were refinished (maybe they were even white at one time judging from the white paint on the wood under the seat), reupholstered and had a few nicks and notches, and were a little low for chairs with the seat at about 16 1/2 inches.  Still, we really liked the wood, the fabric and the shape of the chairs and they felt good but they were $85 each and we really didn't know where we'd put them or what table we could pair them with so we left them behind.

In August we saw the chairs again, still waiting for the next phase of their life to begin.  And on Sept. 20th, we visited with the chairs again, taking them out of their booth and sitting a spell.  Yes, they were comfy.  Mom joked:  "If the chairs are here the fourth time, they're coming home with us!"  
  And so it was:  on October 24th we found a great big upholstered chair and a great matching table for our Fox Hole room... and there were the chairs.  But timing is everything:  now they were only $40 a piece AND, in another booth, was a delicate table with the same color wood and the same burl wood grain!  We put the three together and it was an instant hit!  Wow!  

These three pieces now sit cozy in our Meadow Room's bay window, a perfect spot to read or sip tea with the breeze and bird song drifting through the windows.