Hello again friends! Wow, it has been over a year since I last updated you all. Mike and I have been busy lifin’. But we have managed to squeeze in some country house projects so this is part 1 of a two part catchup!
Let’s start with the first project, not a glamorous one but one that is oh-so-important. Our back deck gets A LOT of sun facing the west. It’s brutal out there in the summer. And the deck certainly looks weathered and old. It’s also a pretty long deck. Though we would love to replace it with some sort of lower maintenance material, price-wise that is just not an option.
Instead we decided to stain it. Something that neither of us have ever done but after watching videos with good ol’ Tommy on This Old House and some other YouTube DIY videos, we began by putting cleaning it using some special solution. It already looks fresher after just that step!
This project unveiled how much water we can use before we overpump the well… which is what happened when the hose suddenly went dry as we were scrubbing solution. After several minutes of shear panic, we learned that we just had to wait a few hours for the well to catch back up. Neither of us had lived in a house with well water before so we hadn’t experienced this before.
Here’s a picture of Mike actively staining. I am a sucker for Walnut - I think that is my favorite wood. And we went with SaverSystems #1 Deck Semi-transparent in Light Walnut. This is just the first coat.
And here it is completed after 2 coats! Or half complete anyway. Doing half the deck took multiple days, partly because we had to do it only on free weekends, when it wasn’t raining, the temperature wasn’t too hot or too cold for the staining solution, and we did it in phases so as not to overpump the well again. We ran out of days before it started to get too cold, so we’ll finish the other half of the deck in 2026. There is still a WAYS to go; we haven’t touched the railings yet either. It’s a bit streaky (which we read would happen) but it looks a helluva a lot better than before.
A presidential table?
I wanted some sort of live edge table, which I thought would fit the aesthetic of the house. Well, one day Mike and I were driving with a friend and we came upon a cool shop called “Live Edge Guy” which was run by a Live Edge Guy! We hadn’t planned on buying anything but then he regaled us with a tale of an old tree, recently cut down after it had been struck by lightning. But this was not just ANY tree. This was a presidential tree!
We live in rural Virginia which has a lot of presidential history. We are within a 45 minute drive of not 1 or 2 but 3 different presidential estates! One of those is James Madison’s Montpelier. Well, for all you history buffs out there, Lafayette gave some Cedar of Lebanon trees to Madison when he visited Montpelier in 1824. Live Edge Guy informed us that the wood was from one of those very trees!
Anyway, we ended up buying this slab of wood and asked Live Edge Guy to put some hairpin legs on it to match the modern farmhouse vibe we are going for. And now it sits just inside of front door. It also has this wonderful bear lamp that Mike’s parents got us for Christmas. I love it and it suits the table perfectly. Now we just need some sort of picture to go above the table…
Let there be light
We finally put in the dining room light fixture. Mike is very proud of the installation. Is he squinting because it is bright or because he is tired after the installation? You get to decide!
And another view! You can also see this cool Shenandoah poster that I bought off of Etsy and framed.
And let there be song!
This nook next to the dining table was the perfect spot for some instruments!
Well a couple of years ago, I finally decided to buy a baby grand piano! I have always wanted one but we don’t have the space in DC. This one is used and it was actually not that expensive. It sounds amazing and I think it looks perfect in the space.
Here I am enjoying my new piano. Thambi is tolerating it well.
And now…a puppy picture
Thambi is usually close by when we do projects. For the deck project, he had to stay inside but not before he got a little playtime on the deck right after we cleaned it.
Next time, I’ll shared updates on the renovations in the attached apartment!