Cheerful Coastal Colors!

Now that the siding is installed at the Sassy Seagull cottage I am excited--and maybe a little scared--to pick colors for the exterior. Paint is one thing that has a tremendous impact on the look and feel of the home and I want to stay on budget by getting it right 

the first time. 

I want the colors to feel bright, cheerful, and coastal so I started by going to a couple of paint stores and picking out my favorite paint chips that met that criteria. 

There were soooo many options and as you can imagine it was a little overwhelming. My husband requested that I pick something for the siding color that is blue or blue-ish so I chose a periwinkle blue color from Benjamin Moore that we both liked called "Blue Lapis".

I bought a sample and it was tried it in a small place before committing. 

It looks lighter than the paint chip in the bright sunshine but we loved it! Unfortunately our neighbors had loved it too and it turned out to be the same color as a nearby cottage that had a tall vine-covered fence in front obscuring the view of their home. So I went back to the drawing board and played with some more colors...

I need three colors--one each for siding, shutters, and doors as well as white. I also want to paint the floor of the front porch a light to medium gray and use blue on the ceiling of the front porch.

So after more samples, more trials on the shed behind the cottage...

L to R: Benjamin Moore Limelight, Poolside Blue, Pink Peach, Amelia Island Blue and Limelight

I chose "Amelia Island Blue" over "Poolside Blue" for the siding, "Limelight" for the shutters, and "Pink Peach" for the doors. It's gonna be bright and happy y'all! The painters are working right now and, hopefully, I'll have pictures for you soon! 

Bargain-Hunt Beautiful!

On your virtual visit to Coast Awhile Cottage have you decided in which room you'd like to stay?  Would it be the "nautical and nice" downstairs master?  Or the "makes you smile" bunk room?  Or maybe Anna's masterpiece?  Can't make up your mind?

Let me show you one more and see if I can make it harder to decide:)  This one is next door to "Anna's".  It started out like this...

 As you can see there are lots of big windows. 

There were two lights that were on each side of the bed.  Jane Coslick and I decided to cap them off since we are changing the furniture arrangement to accommodate a king size bed.

We are leaving the bookshelf to store books and games.  The door on the right (above)

leads to a closet.

 As I already mentioned, this room has lots of windows.  They are original to the house with wonderful, wavy, old glass.  I love them!  The room get lots of light yet it looked very dark with it's dark paneling.  Call in the painters!

The paint color is MSL 8002 "Glass of Milk"--a Martha Stewart color.

Ahhh...better already.

While we were busy getting the house ready I was busy bargain-hunting.  One of my daughter's best friends, Jennifer Smith, told me about a fabric store that sells remnants and end-of-the-bolt fabric for unbelievably low prices--just my price range!

 Fabric World is located in Stone Mountain, Georgia.  It's sort of like a big rummage sale but at $1.99 a yard for designer fabric, I'm willing to dig through.

It's very hit or miss.  Sometimes when I go there is nothing I want but on this trip I lucked out and found lots of remnants just perfect for pillows!  I already had a lime green and white duvet cover and these other fabrics will look great!

Source:  Jane Coslick

Once the room was ready, Jane and I began experimenting with the fabric and trying out lamps and other furnishings.

Next time I will show you the finished room--it turned out so beautiful!  Then you can decide where you'd like to stay! 

Anna Works Her Magic!

We're having an ice storm here in our usually-mild-weather community.  Everyone is housebound and right now it is so delightful to think about going to the beach.  Tybee Island is supposed to be in the mid-60's this weekend and in another month azaleas will be blooming and some days will get into the 80's.  Ahhh...I can't wait for warm days ahead!

While I am dreaming let me show you another of the lovely bedrooms at Coast Awhile Cottage.  The initial styling was done by Anna Speir, a talented artist who sometimes assists Jane Coslick.  Here's a peek inside..

 Before we actually go inside to get a closer look, let me show you what the room looked like "before". The bedroom had dark paneling when we bought the house.  I really wanted to brighten up the room with some white paint.  It was scary to paint over wood paneling but Jane Coslick, my designer, agreed that it needed to be done.   She suggested a Martha Stewart color MSL 8002 "Glass of Milk".

I think it made a huge difference.  

Just look at these before and after pictures and tell me what you think....  

Before

After

The room gets wonderful light from the big windows.  There is a huge porch that wraps around the front of the house and these windows look out onto it.

Before

After

The door on the left leads to a closet and the open door leads out to the living room.  Even though the walls are white the paneling is still beautiful--the texture adds so much!

Now let's get a closer look at the room....

This room was one of the last ones to be decorated and Anna did an amazing job using what we had left to compose a very pleasing space.  She found the green lanterns outside on the floor of the porch--we had bought them to possibly use out there--and decided to hang them on the wall.  It added such a nice pop of color and personality to the room.  Thanks Anna!

Yes Sir, That's My Baby!

Did I ever show you pictures of the exterior of Doc Holiday?  I don't think I did yet and I am so pleased with the result!

If you've been reading this blog from the beginning, my very first post showed our little old cottage that started it's life in the 1930's down the street at another location...

It's owners wanted to tear it down so they could build a lovely new house but the historical society at Tybee Island persuaded them to wait--to give them time to find somebody who would move the house to another location... 

 That somebody was us!  Me and my husband Henry!  We bought the cottage for a dollar!

We raised the cottage so it would be above the flood elevation...

Some very skilled carpenters and other trades applied themselves to fully restoring our 

little cottage inside and out...

Then voila!  Here is Doc Holiday today!

After all this effort and attention, it's almost like my baby!  And like any proud mama I have lots of pictures to show my baby off.  Please bear with me!

  The main part of the house is painted a Martha Stewart Living color called Hummingbird Blue 

MSL 135.  The shutters are Behr Citron 400B-4.  And the front door is Sherwin-Williams 

Coral Reef SW 6606.

Like the colors?  I wanted it to feel like a beach cottage with bright colors that are so perfect on coastal properties.  I'm thankful that I had a great color guru, designer Jane Coslick, 

to help me choose.

Next up--the landscaping!

Chandelier Shangri la!

I showed you lots of chandeliers in my last post...lots of bee-u-ti-ful chandeliers that I loved but had to pass by because they were too costly for me at the end of our major restoration of 

Doc Holiday cottage.  But I was determined to find Chandelier Shangri la in my price range.

So, starting with an inexpensive off-the-shelf chandelier from Home Depot

    

and some spray paint--Rustoleum Painter's Touch Ultra Cover 2X Satin spray paint in Aqua--to be exact this is what my fixture looked like (minus the glass beads).

 It was in great need of some embellishment and some shades for the light bulbs! 

Here's what I did...

First I consulted my friend Beth Silvercloud, a very gifted jewelry artist--you can drool over her creations on her website here.  She had some great ideas and showed me which tool I needed to purchase in order to recycle some of the hooks from the glass bead strands.

 When Beth saw the shell necklaces I had purchased from Michael's she suggested that I use something with larger shells.  She felt (rightly) that the smaller shells were too tiny for the chandelier.  Here they are hanging on the chandelier.  They were kinked from being in the bag and I was trying to get them to straighten out.

In the interest of the budget, I decided to use the smaller shell strands for half of the project--the part where the strands come down from the top of the chandelier to each arm.  Like this...one...two...three...four...five...

...and six!

Then in keeping with Beth's suggestion that I use a larger scale strand of shells I found this rope with shells attached one day while shopping at Home Goods (where else?)!!

 I played with the strand to determine how long each section needed to be to look pleasing as it draped from arm to arm on the light fixture.  Then using some covered aqua-colored wire I found at Michael's, I marked each section

 Then it was time to attach the rope and shell strand to the arms of the chandelier.  I unhooked the other small shell strands temporarily and then reattached them after I attached the rope.

One at a time like this until I made it all the way around...

 Once the rope strands were attached I re-hooked the smaller shell strands.

Almost done!  I had some extra starfish left over and I decided to add them to give a little extra pzazz!  This is what it looked like...

 

Last but not least--shades.  The bulbs are way too bright without shades.  Voila!

 

Ahhh---It's Chandelier Shangri la!

Let's Be Enlightened!

The crown jewel of most dining rooms is the chandelier.  My remodeling budget at this point was more like rhinestones than crown jewels.  I did lots of looking around for a bargain.  First I went to a great flea market in Savannah called Two Women and a Warehouse.  They can usually be counted on for some funky, fun finds--and they did not disappoint.  I found this cool chandelier with 

strands of turquoise....

It was nice but a bit too small. 

I spent some time looking at online sources.  No luck with Craigslist or eBay but I checked on Etsy and found a vendor who made these fun pieces with canning jars.....but at $385.00 I had to pass them up.

 Here are three of my faves from Shades of Light--one of my all-time favorite sources.

I would have loved one of these especially the jute one (on the far right above) but they were way too pricey sooo.... I kept looking and found this gorgeous oyster shell chandy from

Low Country Originals...

 So many pretty things--so many expensive pretty things.  It became clear to me that I was going to have to buy an inexpensive chandelier and rework it so that is what I set out to do.  I found these great chandeliers at Home Depot that were more in my price range.

 

But the chandelier that really caught my eye was this one from Home Depot...

The glass beads could be replaced with strands of shells and it would be easy to spray paint the gold-tone metal before putting the shell strands in place.  At $169.00 it was more affordable so I decided to take it home!

Here is what it looked like after being sprayed with Rustoleum Painter's Touch Ultra Cover 2X satin finish spray paint in Aqua.  The electrician had just finished hanging it and he hooked the chain to make it shorter so the workers would not hit their heads as they worked.

It was time to get busy embellishing the chandelier.  I'll show you what I did next time!