Rent free housing

I've been out in the workshop playing carpenter all morning. It was quite pleasant today. I just finished my latest birdhouse condominium. This structure will be rent free and is available to any bird who would like to call it home. The taller units have false bottoms in them so that they will be easy to furnish. I don't want the bird to wear themselves out filling it with nesting material.

I make these birdhouses one-at-a-time. Since there are over 60 individual pieces, it would be just crazy to keep up with more than one.

This one is going to my booth at Third Coast Antiques since I sold the other one yesterday. *happy dance*

Moving on up!

I am really enjoying having my booth at Third Coast Antiques. In fact, I am enjoying it so much that today, I opened a booth in the shop that is two doors down - Betty's Trash to Treasures Too. This second one is a tiny booth.

It needed a little TLC. Do you agree? The first thing I did was take a crow bar and bust down that ugly lattice panel. The shop owner said that I was the first person that she had ever seen setting up their booth with a crow bar. I think I am really going to like working with her.

I like the fact that the booth has electricity. I'll just have to ignore the ugly wires.

I designed the bookshelf and my husband helped me put it together. He wasn't able to help me set it up, so I made 3 of the shelves adjustable so that they could be removed so the darn thing wouldn't be so heavy.

One of the shelves has Alice in Wonderland related items, one has Coca Cola glasses, one of the shelves has bird and nature items, and one of the shelves barely has anything.

It was hard to visualize just how much I could fit in. I will go back on Wednesday and take more goodies. I am sure that I can fit LOTS more in there.

I sold over $100 in my Third Coast booth just this morning. *doing a happy dance* I will try to take a nice load with me. February has been very good.

Nest building

My sister is starting to scout cool things out for me now. She says "WWTD" - what would Teresa do? She found some big, chunky wooden picture frames and wondered what I would come up with for them. I'm glad that she snagged them for me. It's funny how easily I am excited over old stuff. I jumped up and down when she handed them to me. I know; it's pathetic.

I had been warned not to put bleach on vintage linens but they were all stained and thought it would be fine. No, it wasn't. The bleach ate the delicate stitching on some family linens. Since they were no longer going to be family heirlooms, I decided that I would just need to create something with them. They told me that they would love to be backdrops for my next project. They were the first things that went into my Feather Your Nest piece. I fixed up the nest while the sweet little bird looked on.

Half table is whole again

Note the big, black circle on this pretty half table. It is a deep burn mark. I wonder what caused it. I'm thinking that it might have been one of those infamous votive candles. It took a several applications of wood filler to fill that crater.
After a good sanding or two, or three, I applied a nice, clean coat of white paint and made sure that it crackled some. She looks so much better now. I lightly sanded certain areas in keeping with the history of this sweet table.

Hurricane Ike Hall Tree

Back in September of 2008, hurricane Ike paid a visit to the upper Texas coast devastating everything in its path. Galveston was one of the areas which was particularly hard-hit. Ike had a pretty powerful storm surge. Not a good thing.

When I was on my buying trip to Round Top, I came across a glorious pile of architectural pieces. These pieces were all salvaged from Galveston by a Galveston resident after hurricane Ike paid its visit. All kinds of doors, pieces of gingerbread, windows - you name it. Enough to make you just absolutely drool. Drool, I did. I made myself quite a stack - a $200 stack.
Today, I finished the hall tree I've been working on. It is even wired up with a light! I had a super time designing it. In fact, I was so excited about it, I had trouble falling asleep!