Our Vacation

Hi everybody!  I know this is not about furniture but I thought I would tell y'all a little about our vacation.  BLittle and I love traveling in the Caribbean.  We have only been to one "touristy" spot in the islands.  We went to Providenciales, Turks and Caicos in 2007 and although we LOVED it and Grace Bay is one of the prettiest beaches we have ever seen, it was missing something for us.  Now we have only been vacationing in the Out Islands of The Bahamas.  These islands are not well developed and have this untainted, adventure quality that you can not get on other islands.  They usually require a small airplane ride and amenities are limited but who cares!  You are in The Bahamas!

This time we went to Long Island, The Bahamas which is a southern island in The Bahamas chain.  We stayed at Chez Pierre.  It consists of 6 basic stilted, wood cabins on a very quiet bay and a main lodge where Pierre, a trained chef, prepares breakfast and dinner everyday.  Long Island is long, hence the name, and last week we drove the whole 81 miles of the only main road of the island and saw so many beautiful things.  It doesn't matter how many times we go, it never gets old seeing those gorgeous water colors and beaches.  It was an amazing week and I think we will be visiting this island again.  Here are a few pics from the week.

Yes, we had to get on a prop plane.  Not the first time but I still don't like it.
The quality of plane down there is a little different than here.
It can be a little scary when you see Duct Tape on the walls inside a plane :/

Our chairs in front of the cabin.  My front yard for the week.

Sunset at Chez Pierre in front of our cabin.

Our Cabin

View of Millers Bay from the bed in our cabin.  Amazing to wake up to this view every morning.

Beautiful beach we had all to ourselves.

Columbus Monument

Caption on the Columbus Monument

I love this boat.  No one was on this beach but us and this super white boat was
there looking lonely so I decided to take pictures of it.  I love them all.
I am going to put them on canvas and hang them in our home.  

Another beautiful beach we had all to ourselves.

Dean's Blue Hole - this is the deepest blue hole in the world.  Free divers were there everyday practicing.  It was really neat but kind of eerie.

Dean's Blue Hole

View from the Cape Santa Maria Resort deck at lunch. 

Cape Santa Maria Resort.  The beach here was calm and powder blue.  Absolutely breathtaking.

We hired a fishing guide for the day.  It was by far my favorite guide experience.  We had a blast.

Lunch on the boat.

We saw a 6-legged star fish for the first time.

I caught my first bonefish but a shark got him before I could reel it in all the way.  I had several other bites and break offs but never got one all the way in.  Guess I will have to go back and try again.  :)

Calmest day we have ever seen on the water in the Caribbean.  It was amazing.

I have TONS more pictures but you get the idea...it was gorgeous!  Now it is back to work and reality!  I have several pieces ready to purchase and in stock for custom refinish.  Contact me if you are looking for a certain piece.  Have a great week y'all.

Pottery Barn Inspired Dresser

If you have read my posts about our living room and our bedroom,  you know that we have a Pottery Barn, coastal vibe going on.  Even though I LOVE Pottery Barn, I HATE paying for their stuff.  Especially, their furniture.  Most things are solid wood and the quality is good but the penny pincher inside always reminds me I can find a better deal.   I did buy our sea grass chairs from PB (30th birthday present to myself so I feel it was an acceptable purchase) and our living room rug is PB but I bought it on eBay for a fraction of the store price.

Here in New Orleans we have a Pottery Barn and a Restoration Hardware in our mall right next to each other.  Again, LOVE the styles and spending time in the stores drooling over the beauty of the pieces but HATE the cost.  So when I saw the 4-drawer dresser I knew I could make it have that PB/RH feel without the PB/RH price.

Here are the before pics:

Overall, it was in great shape but definitely needed some updating.  The drawers are very deep so they can hold a lot of clothes!  I used a chocolate/java colored stain (again, this is a stained piece, not painted) and distressed the edges to give it a bit of a worn look.  Also, I did paint the original hardware and was going to reuse them but when I put them back on I felt like the dresser was missing something.  I decided to update the hardware and it really brought everything together.  It is a BEAUTIFUL result and this is one of my favorite pieces.

After pics:

As always, thanks for reading and following my blog.  Have a great weekend everyone!

The Office in Progress

Hello all!  Just thought I would do a progress post about our office.  Sorry for the bad pictures.  It was rainy yesterday and I couldn't use natural light.

I have been mentioning the office since I started the blog and I thought it was time to post a few pics even though it is not finished and half of the room looks like a fly tying bomb went off in it...more on that later.

This room has always been the guest room that we knew was going to be the office.  For a long time it was the junk room.  I figured you didn't need before pictures of this since we all know what I am talking about.  Just imagine Monica's secret locked closet at the end of the hall.  Ok, maybe it wasn't that bad but there was a lot of stuff living in that room and we were not using it for anything but storage.  I got it cleaned up and set up this fly tying station for my husband.  This is where he is supposed to sit and tie flies for fishing.  Perfect little space right?  Except he says he can't watch TV in the office while tying his flies.  My bad.  Long story short, it now looks like a bomb of feathers, hooks, weird tools and bright colored strings went off on the desk and the fall out landed in the surrounding area.  I am trying to fix the problem but we are going with this picture until the aftermath has been cleaned up.

Brian's space has been taken care of but now it was my turn.  I wanted a desk that was a big enough space to do crafts and sewing so I started looking for tables instead of a desks.  I came across this dated beauty on Craigslist.  It also has 4 matching chairs.

Here is the after.

I stained the top a mix of several colors.  I wanted it to look greyish like weathered drift wood but not too grey so I added some walnut stain to darken it up a little.  The base and the chairs are painted a fun blue color I had left over from Jaxson's Skiff Bed.  Love the finished project.  I got a great deal on the table & chairs and I had all the supplies & paint for the refinish so the cost was minimal for a huge workspace.

Here is what the desk and surroundings look like.

Kind of blah, I know.  I still haven't decided what to put on the wall behind my desk.  I have a few things to decorate with but I'm not loving any of my ideas which means it is still pretty naked.   Nothing brilliant has come to me but hopefully soon. :)

I do love my lamp.  This lamp was purchased years ago and used to be in our  spare room in Texas.  It has been hanging out in this room since we moved and finally has a purpose.  I know its strange to see a floor lamp on a table but when I am at my desk the ceiling light and the window are behind me and they create shadows on anything I am working on.  To get rid of my lack of light, shadow problem, I put my floor lamp on my desk.  It is high enough to light up the whole area unlike a table lamp that would only light up the immediate area.  It also works because the on/off button is on the cord not up high near the lamp part.

I also love my custom dry erase board on the wall left of the desk.

I had this frame laying around so I decided to make it a dry erase board for notes and reminders.  The picture is from a map I inherited from my grandfather who was a boat captain.  He started a marine business, took us fishing and out on boats as children, and ultimately triggered my love/obsession of the water.  I have several of his maps from the 1970s on the walls in the office but they are not being shown right now because they are in the bombing zone...lol...they will make the next office post.  I didn't want to hurt any of the maps by folding or cutting them so I made colored copies of the area I wanted framed and pieced them together.  This is the final result.  It is of Rockport, TX which is where Brian and I want to live/retire so it is a constant reminder of our future goal.  I didn't have to buy anything for this project so it was free!  Love that! 

And lastly for now, I love my curtains. 

I talked about our tall ceilings in my post about our master bedroom.  It is really hard to find curtains long enough even if they are ordered.  The options are always limited and the price is rediculous.  I went to Joann's and the blue patterned fabric was on sale and it matched the desk BUT THEY DIDN'T HAVE ENOUGH!  Blah.  I hate it when that happens.  So I decided to add a stripe of cream fabric at the top to "make it work" as Tim Gunn would say.  This let me use the blue fabric and it broke up the busy blue pattern.  I made two 9.5 foot panels for less than $30 and the curtain rod we had already.  Thank you mom for teaching me how to sew!

Hopefully in the next few weeks I'll have things organized better and I will figure out what to do with that blank wall behind my desk.

Thanks for reading and visiting my blog!

Happy Monday!

Reality is sinking in!  If I was still teaching, I would be driving to work right now!  I am so thankful my husband is supportive of Fisherman's Wife and let me quit to pursue my business full time.  It is such a blessing.

Here are a few projects that I have going on this week.

Custom Media Cabinet

I have several pieces from a return client.  Here is a sneak peek of the media cabinet.

Before:

Sneak peek after:

4-Drawer Dresser

I originally had this dresser as a "pick your color" piece but when I started to prep it for primer, I realized what good shape the wood is in and I decided I couldn't paint it.  So, I stained it a chocolate/java color instead and it is amazing.  It is coming along great and I can't wait to show y'all the after pictures.

My Friend's Boat

Another project for this week is a friend's boat.  That's right...a boat.  My husband and I have built 2 boats together so fixing small things and doing touch ups is no problem.  In this picture, I have already wet sanded the bottom to clean up the clear coat and sand out all the small scratches.  It already looks better. 

USA Table

I also have this Made in the USA table with a leaf and 6-chairs.  They are in great condition and I love the curved back in the chairs.  Someone had tried to re-stain the top and did a horrible job.  It will have to be painted but it is going to be a beautiful make over.  If anyone is interested in this set, e-mail me with details of what you want done and I will get you a price quote.

I hope everyone has a great week!  Check back for some updates on this week's projects.

The Huge 9-drawer B&A

Hi everyone!  Happy New Year!  This is a short and sweet post just to share some B&A pictures.

I love this dresser! I knew when I saw its great shape and detail that it had amazing potential.  You just had to look past that yucky weird color finish but beauty was there.  It was a "pick you color" piece so the client got to choose their color.  This dresser is going in their master bedroom and needed to match the current cherry finish furniture.  So I stained the top a red mahogany/cherry color and the body and mirror are Ivory White from Benjamin Moore.  Here are the before and after shots.  Enjoy!

BEFORE:

AFTER: