I’m sure I mentioned this a few times but now I’ve finally taken this finished project out of the garage and into the light. Here is the estate sale rocking chair with a blue makeover, Napoleonic blue by Annie Sloans’ Chalk Paint to be specific.
Sanding this would have been a nightmare. It’s very blue, but works well with the front door. I thought about trying my hand at distressing, but let it go since there is so much else going on.
We’ve been using this antique trunk as a coffee table in the front. Shabby chic? I think not. More like just shabby, neat but shabby.
My plan is to paint this with Annie Sloan’s Chalk Paint in Graphite (black). I think I’ll use a small brush around the hardware, allowing it to stay this deep rusted red.
The blue chair will be accompanied by an walnut stained antique rocking chair. So this eyesore of a bench will have to find a new home.
We’re planning a wrought iron fence around the front yard. If we get the fence, we may replace the wood, paint the bench and place it next to the fence. I like the angle of the seat and it was my grandmother’s, so I’d like to keep it if I can. The fence we’d like is along these lines, only around the yard not the porch (as we have no porch). It’s sleek and modern, but it’s iron structure nods to tradition. Since our home is contemporary, it needs a bit of modern and tradition with everything we do.
Since I last posted pictures, we’ve cleaned the front up a lot and developed a clearer vision of what we want. Here is the before (after heavy pruning)
That’s a dolphin fountain by the way.
Here is where we are now:
We’ve removed the large oddly placed bushes, planted lavender, rosemary and other still very small plants. It’s been foggy for weeks here, so the photo is a little hazy. On the right will be the vegetable garden. My husband used suckers from my dad’s almond stumps to create the rails and wood stakes for the posts. He put the fence up in a less than a day. We don’t have wildlife to worry about, other than our children. For them, I hope it will act as a mental barrier teaching them they aren’t welcome without a big person to lift them over. Here is a close up.
Every step we take I love it more and more.