DIY Antique Railroad Board

 Here is the Easy Step-by-Step for my Latest Creation: 

A Large Antique Railroad Schedule Sign 

For Over Yy Back Door:

Fair warning, this is a project that takes up some space, the area over our back door is fairly large so I wanted to do a project that had some size, and brought a big punch of impact. This is a great project if you have a large area that you want to fill up or as a background layer for what you 
already have in place.

I got the idea for this sign when I was visiting a museum here in Michigan, I saw one in a display and snapped a photo, thinking that it was an awesome DIY idea just waiting for the perfect spot.

#1. First you start with the board, something of this size needs to be light enough for hanging without bringing in a civil engineer, so I went with a product called Hardboard. It is thin and has one smooth side and one rough side. It is a pressed wood product (you might remember it from your grade school days) and I picked mine up at the Home Depot. They have it in several pre-cut lengths, but the dimensions did not fit my needs so I picked up an entire full sheet. The full sheet was only $9 and I cut the exact size I wanted out of it, saving the other pieces for another project (ask for help with the table saw if you need it, no trips to the emergency room please!)

#2. Paint: Here is where a little trickery comes in. When folks look at the finished board, they think it is a chalkboard, even though it is not. If you want your board to be a functing chalkboard, paint yours with chalkboard paint. However, my board is hung over head level and I was not intending to write on it, so I wanted the look of chalkboard without the cost. So I painted my board with black tempra paint. Yep, the cheap stuff that you can pick up anywhere and that kids use all the time in art class. I did a couple coats of black paint on my board and left it to dry:

#3. Lettering & Lines: for this you will need a T square (I borrowed my husband's from the garage) a pencil, stencils, printer and white paint (I chose an antiqued white from Walmart that I paid $1 for) Measure the height of the board and do the math to figure out where your lines will go: for example, I wanted the header to be the biggest space, so if your board is 50 inches tall, start with the height of the header: 5 inches, south and north headers: 2.5 inches each, all the rest are 2 inches for a total of 50 inches. You are going to use your square to make a mark at those measurements on both sides of your board and then use you T square to draw the lines connecting those marks. Mine did not light up exactly, but I did not sweat it, we are going for homemade here, so get as close as you can and move on to making your dividing lines for the No, From, To, Due, Reported, Leave, and Trk. columns:

                                          

Lettering: I used stencils with a fancy scroll font that I picked up at Walmart for the "South Bound" and "North Bound" Headers and I printed out the Pere Marquette Rail Co. on my computer in a font I liked and then taped the printouts to the board and traced over the letters firmly with a pen, which leaves a faint outline on the black paint that you can use as you guide to paint. *you can name your railroad whatever you want, the town you live in, your families' name, what ever strikes your fancy. I also painted the main title letters with crackle medium first, let it dry, then painted it again with my white paint, which caused the letters to crackle, adding to the "old" look of the sign.

#4. Finishing touches: otherwise known as the fun part! Beating up the sign. I used sandpaper to sand all the edges of my finished sign, especially the corners where I took off quite a bit of paint. Sandpaper was also used to lightly sand the words to make them look weathered. I also dinged and scratched up the front of my sign with a screwdriver. A great tip is to use some masking tape to pull some of the paint off. Take a strip of tape, place diagonally on the sign and pull off quickly, it will leave a nice, mottled tape mark that really adds to the antique feel! (you can see one of these marks in the photo below, crossing over the word "Bound" at the bottom of the sign) The last step before hanging was to take a piece of chalk, held flat, to cover the entire sign in a layer of chalk. I then used my hand to rub in the chalk/wipe it around, which gives the black tempra paint that "chalkboard that has been written on and erased a thousand times" look, you see in the finished photo at the top of this article. My board was placed in a permanent home, so we leveled and screwed through the board right into the studs of the wall (use a stud finder) with dark colored screws to make sure the sign would not fall or warp. You can attach hangers to the back if your prefer. Add a piece of chalk tied to a length of twine looped around one of the top screws and 

Ta Da! ~ a one-of-a-kind piece that will get compliments 

from everyone that sees it!

Retch To Rustic DIY Stairway

Hello Folks! I am so happy to announce that I finished my back stairway re-do            over the weekend!

This hallway was always a sore point for me, most people come in our house through the back door, which either leads up into the kitchen or down into the basement family room. We had already re-done the basement and freshened up the kitchen, but the back stairway/entry way left MUCH to be desired. It was fugly, no bones about it.


The walls were faux-painted in a creepy skin color/almost pink and the walls were so beat up and full of dings and cracks and holes that it looked like bulls had been on parade. There was also a charming silvery wallpaper border that went around only halfway before stopping in a messy end where someone had ripped it off. Oh, did I also mention the light was just a bare bulb hanging there? Nice right?! The handrails were painted a "once was white" and were almost goopey they were so dirty and gross, and the carpet on the stairs was a very cheap, very old and very smelly berber blue that was stapled down with no edging, no moulding, no nothing.

In fact there was no moulding or trim anywhere in this hallway. I was fed up with being embarrassed about this space, especially since it was the first stop on your way in the back of the house. Not having a bunch of money or time, here is the list of what we did on the cheap to get from our before to our after~

DEMO: gross part: ripping up the carpet and pad from the stairs, this was pretty easy and it was good to get that stuff out of the house. I used pliers and a screwdriver to remove all the left over staples that did not come up with the carpet. We were left with light colored wood stair steps and the risers (the up and down part of the steps) were just plywood, so kinda ugly. We also filled and sanded all of the dings, cracks and dents in all the walls at this point and removed the wallpaper border. Tip: use a hairdryer if it does not come off easy, usually heating up the glue helps it peel right off. 

Handrails: This was pretty easy, I took the handrails off the wall, and put them over sawhorses outside. I then sanded the crap out of them until all of the old nasty paint was gone, hit them one more time with a fine sandpaper, wipe down and sprayed with a clear coat. I also took the original brass hardware holding up the rails and hit them with my favorite hammered bronze spray paint: TA~DA! Instantly better! p.s. I love rustic, & wanted to make it look like it has been there forever, so I left some dings and a bit of white paint on my handrails, feels more charming :)

Paint: White, white, white. I painted everything white semi-gloss which instantly turned this from the dark hallway of doom to a brighter, more cheerful space!

Steps: K, this was a biggie, trying to figure out what to do with the steps without spending a ton of money or taking years off our lives with stress. My solution? I stained the wood steps themselves a dark brown, 2 coats made them a color I love (I use a Minwax stain and finish in 1 product). I chose to let the stairs weather naturally, they have already gained some light spots and the edges on a few steps are show a bit of wear. This might drive you nuts, but it is the kind of thing I LOVE! I wanted it to look like an old farmhouse stairway, since the original part of the house is over 100 years old, I wanted the steps to look like they have been there with dogs and kids running up and down them forever.

Beadboard: For the stair risers, we bought a couple sheets of white breadboard from our local home improvement store and cut pieces to fit each stair riser, which we then air nailed into place. We followed that with a piece of quarter round where the riser meets the step to give a nice finish (and to hide any wobbly cuts we made on the table saw) We also added a piece of breadboard to the "bump out" ledge wall you see in the photos, that wall was crumbing and it ending up being a nice touch and matched the steps and the ceiling. 

TIP: when you are cutting your pieces for the step risers, take a pen and number your steps, then write down the measurements for each step on a piece of paper next to their number. For example: Step #1 is 4 feet 2 inches wide and 9 inches tall, etc. When you are cutting, write the number on the back of each piece as you cut it. Believe me, you are going to have a bunch of pieces that are similar in size, you don't want to drive yourself crazy trying to figure out which piece goes in which spot. If you are lucky like us, our steps were all the same width so we just measured the hight, cut, wrote the number on the back, moved on to the next one, and so on……

Moulding and More Moulding: An important part of this project was the trim. We measured and went up to the store and cut and painted the moulding ourselves. We bought basic, cheap wood trim since I was painting it all white. Trimming in all the areas such as the doors, the baseboards, the outside corners, and the ceiling was a bit of a pain but boy does it make a difference! And the secret to great looking trim is calk. Not joking, it's your new best friend. My husband would air nail the trim up and I would follow right behind him with white calk in my calking gun. Run a smooth line of calk anywhere trim meets the wall or another piece of trim. Smooth with a finger, have a damp rag ready to wipe up behind your finger smoothing and a paper towel on hand to wipe up excess calk. Trust me, it's easy and cheap to do and it is the difference from a professional looking finished project and crappy looking moulding. It hides many sins, so pick some up when you are at the store! 

Extras: We threw up a light that I found for less than $15 at Menard's and some funky coat hooks, some stick up chalkboard shapes and a basket I found on sale in the little side nook. I made the curtains myself from fabric and ribbon I found at Walmart and used fabric bonding tape instead of sewing them because I was feeling lazy. I am looking forward to adding a few nick-nacks from my collection into the space now that we are all done. 

2 weekends of work= a whole difference space that I can be proud of!

Let's Get Real About Romance

Today's post is half wake-up-call & half rant, so if you are not in the mood to get slapped with some stone cold reality, please feel free to go back to your game of Candy Crush……

The recent passing of Valentine's Day has me thinking about not only my relationship with my husband of 12 years, but relationships in general, including what we teach our children. Risking much hate mail, I propose the following 5 guidelines for real-world romance, tongue placed firmly in cheek…..

#1. Please Remember That Your Partner Loves You Because Of The Awesome & Unique Snowflake You Are, NOT because you will be the 2nd half of some weird combined organism. I am a firm believer that no one, at any point, should be caught dead on a couples bike, wearing any kind of matching clothing or sharing a common email address. Sorry, it's just not right. If anything, please remember that there is an entire world of people that must interact with you, and sometime JUST you. Together you are awesome, but make sure there are no matching Halloween costumes in your future. 

#2. Real Love Is Tiny, Not Disney Epic Big. This is something that I have had to remind myself of several times in my relationship. Everyone loves that first gush of feelings, but I think we sometimes get caught in the trap of "my spouse should do so-and-so to prove they love me" or "If you really cared about me then you would X or you would do Y or you would act the exact way I think I want you to act." Please! That sentence was hard enough to type, let alone live up to. Shut your mouth and pay attention, because I am telling you the cold hard truth right now: You don't want someone that will do as they are told every single day, You DO want someone that will take the time to scrape your car windows for you in the dead of winter without you asking.

#3. Get real about what you want, not what you think you want. Resist the pull of pop culture! Stop punishing your partner for exhibiting traits that drew you to them in the first place! Personally the idea that I would want a man that is super in-touch with his feelings, had a nice feminine side and was not afraid to be vulnerable sounds a lot like dating the pain in the butt roommate I dealt with my first semester of college. What I do know and am not afraid of saying out loud: I want a MAN, an honest to goodness man. I want someone that will balance my sometimes-a-hot-mess self. We can't BOTH be mushy and weepy, I need me a rock, a backbone of my family. Someone who can teach our son what a man is, how he treats people, about dignity and hard work and fun and standing for something. Someone who can help me teach our kids how to treat others and demand to be treated in return. You may enjoy your emo-hipster who is unable to change a tire, but personally, I am heading home with the biggest bada*s in the room. Everyone needs someone who will sometimes hold their hand and sometimes keep them in check…..especially folks like me…..who happen to have a big mouth..

#4. There is no boss at home. Please, please, please try to remember that you and your partner are just that, PARTNERS! That does not mean that everything will be equal and fair, you will figure out pretty quick who is better at keeping the grass cut and who is best at folding fitted sheets. Or if you are like us, you figure out what chores that you loath and will trade them with your spouse for chores that they can't stand. There will be areas where either you or your partner will do the lion share of work, but here is the biggie: Your way of doing things is not the "right" way, it's just your way. Repeat that a couple times to yourself when you are ready to pick a fight over something stupid like how the dishwasher is loaded or how the carpet is vacuumed or the bills are paid or the kids are put to bed. Your partner is not your child, you are not in charge, accept that you need to either let some stuff go and be happy that you have someone that will help you out with tasks or keep your freakin' mouth shut and do it yourself. Those are your only choices, so the next time you start telling the love of your life the "correct" way to make a bottle or that their dirty laundry "belongs" in the hamper, take a deep breath and get over yourself. A dirty sock is just a dirty sock, not a secret commentary on the level of respect someone has for you. Pick it up or leave it there…….it feeds the happy, I promise!

#5. And finally….remember that you are in love. Sometimes this is easy and sometimes I want to punch my husband in the throat and laugh while he writhes on the ground. But I have found that stopping what I am doing in random moments to text my husband, or go find him in another room for a quick peck and a casual "Love you babe" does more for my marriage than any couples vacation or manufactured date night. ALWAYS kiss hello and goodbye, even if it's just a quick peck, even if you are out in public, even if you are surround by friends or kids or the apocalypse. ALWAYS say "hi babe" or "bye hon" & I love you. My husband does not give amazing foot rubs, he does not buy me jewelry or flowers, he isn't even always nice to me, but when he shows up at the ice rink to coach our son's team and five feet in the door he looks around for me, wades in through all the hockey moms sitting there and chatting to tell me "hi" and give me a quick kiss before heading for the locker room, that is what makes him my  everyday white knight…..bushy red beard and all….

Rusty Love

It never fails; when I drag some dirty chunk of metal from a bucket at a yard sale, or dust off a forgotten  and forlorn little something at the Re-Store, the person next to me asks "what are you going to do with that?!"
Confession time: I have a chronic case of rusty love. If it's dirty, dusty, rusty & dented, it's usually coming home with me, even though I rarely know what to do with it at the time. I just know if it catches my eye and captures my heart, that it will eventually find the perfect place in our home.

I know that many folks prefer the shiny, the slick, the brand new from the store, but the reason I choose well-worn is simple~ you can trust rust. There is something about a house filled with found treasures that lets you know that you can relax, that no one is going to walk by and tell you to take your feet off the coffee table. Feel free to run and yell and goof off, this house is fun. I couldn't care less if you wear your shoes inside, and I don't think I could find a coaster for your drink if you paid me.

So I will continue to hunt for the one-of-a-kind, and May my home always be rusty, chippy, a little bit kooky, and always filled with love and warmth to welcome friends….

Move It Around

As I sit here, locked in the throws of yet another snow day, I have turned to using what I already have around the house to re-decorate in the hopes that it will keep me occupied and avoiding activity similar to The Shining. One of my favorite things to collect are wooden folding rulers, I love the graphic nature of the numbers and they can be readily found in many sizes and colors at garage sales and antique shops for a couple bucks a pop. I had previously hung them on the moulding of my doorways in our house: 

Since the bookshelves in our den were screaming out for something decorative on top, I went on the hunt throughout the house to find something to repurpose. Not wanting to get all involved in the cutting and nailing to make traditional stars, I just bended the rulers into star shapes and used some thread to hold the ends together. I started with the 3 in the top photo and now have a collection of ruler stars in all different shapes and sizes which never fail to "measure up" in the compliment department…….sorry, couldn't help myself…..

Who Knows?

It has come to this Michigan Gypsy's attention that there is an epidemic running rampant through our society these days. This persistent unpleasantness of this infection is so wide-spread that is had become almost impossible to ignore:

No one really knows what the hell they are talking about.

Now I mean no offense, and acknowledge that I myself occasionally suffer the symptoms of this sad affliction. This state of affairs is so extensive that we can no longer afford to sit idly by (I believe there is a Facts R Your Friends Celebrity Concert in the works). When attempting to diagnose this disease, one must look to the main culprit of this contagion......laziness. 

I'm looking at you, Furious Facebook Sharer & Enthusiastic E-Mail Forwarder! In today's culture of over-sharing that allows us to seed ignorance as one would sow handfuls of wheat in a hungry field, we no longer take the time to think before we act. Being able to broadcast a scrap of information to hundreds of our nearest and dearest with a click of a finger has resulted in the formation of a toxic cloud of falsehood that can engulf even the levelest head.

Take for example, the case of the dreaded E-Mail Influenza: 

This illness starts off innocently enough, perhaps there is an email containing important information about a school or organization that you send on to those you know will need it. Next you forward a hilarious video of a cat playing the piano or a baby dancing (remember that one?). Then before you know it you are forwarding several emails every single day to your entire contact list. Forget that these emails almost always end up in the recipient's junk or trash file, but this condition is know to be very hard to self-diagnose ~ "MY emails are actually informative," "I'm sure that if people have this persuasive information they will agree with me,""I'm doing a good thing by supporting my cause."
Sound familiar?
The only cure for this affliction? The Hard Question
Just because you know someone enough to have their email address does not mean that you know them enough to predict their opinions and beliefs. Forwarding emails that contain polarizing views, un-verified propaganda, or possibly insulting images or statements can be perceived at the very least as annoying, and at the very worse as pompous, unpleasant and invasive. So ask yourself the following questions before you hit that Forward button: "Why am I forwarding this email? Is my motivation worth the risk of alienating my contacts, friends and family?" And if you choose to continue your forced influx of information, then please don't blame the rest of us for hitting "delete all."

Now we move on to the Manic Media Mumps:

This is perhaps the most shocking ignorance affliction since it strikes at the heart of our information steam, the news media. Since the invention of the idiot box, our entire nation has gathered around our beloved glowing screens to listen to the nightly news. The level of trust gifted to the media is staggering in it's ability to sway the way we see the world. Regardless of your opinions on which network provides the most accurate depiction of the facts, the reality of news is that if we see a story reported at 6 o'clock we accept it as fact. If your trusted anchor tells you that there is a fire in the next town over, you feel comfortable passing that information along to others. But what happens when the Media gets it wrong?
these mistakes run the gauntlet from a local Fox affiliate in Dallas, Texas misidentifying one of the Boston Marathon suspects as television star Zooey Deschanel, to CNN and Fox News wrongly interpreting the Supreme Court's decisions on the Affordable Care Act. More humorous mistakes include Vogue Magazine mis-identifying Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Dan Baer as an interior designer and the Miami Herald claiming that the National Science Foundation "funded a study on Jell-P wrestling at the South Pole." The suggested treatment for the Manic Media Mumps is the tried and true Grain of Salt Treatment. Stay tuned to stay in the loop, but please remember, everyone makes mistakes, even Anderson Cooper. 

The last, and perhaps grimiest, of information germs is the Facebook Fuzzy Falsehood.

This icky little fellow likes to pop up on Facebook feeds on an almost daily basis. Warnings of an alarming disposition, cautions of a dubious nature, doctored and photo shopped images that "prove" something or another and "facts" that has no substantiation, are all early warning signs of this persnickety affliction. Once infected, sufferers re-post information without bothering to find out if it is actually factual. For example, there is not a set of coordinates on Google Earth that show the disposal of a murdered individual, Paul Ryan did not refuse to tip an elderly waiter, the vague warning about bad guys using small children to trick and assault women has been a circulating urban legend since 1985, writing "Frank" or "Frankie" in place of a stamp will not get your letter mailed for free, and posting a notice on your Facebook wall will not actually protect your copyright and privacy rights....sorry. Unfortunately, there seems to be no shortage of individuals that love to share and re-post these germs and others like it, setting off a chain reaction of falsehood.

Happily, there are ways to counteract this tidal wave of ignorance. In order to inoculate yourself, please fill the following prescription~

2 heaping tsp. of Common Sense
1 leveled cup of Healthy Skepticism
A dash of Actually Reading Something Once in a While
1 lb. of Do Your Own Damn Research

Mix thoroughly and administer with occasional doses of snoops.com accompanied by long pauses of thinking before clicking. Reapply as necessary











p.s bonus Gypsy points will be awarded to those who checked my examples to make sure they were actually true :)

Does It Have To Be All or Nothing?

As my family returns from a weekend trip to a Detroit Area sports tournament, I find myself pondering the various conversations that I overheard in our travels. Not surprisingly, a great deal of them had to do with gun control and the recent stories in the news.

As I read, listen and surf the current information and opinions that are out there, I can't help but wonder where the voice of the everyman (and every woman) is. I am a bit fed up with the opinions of individuals that most would consider extreme being plastered across the airwaves.

How do we cope with evil?
Who do we blame?

Since my husband works in the news industry, I understand that the nuttiest folks with the most unmovable stances make the best news. As a country, we feed on the crazy, we like to see the bizarre and love to fight about the all or nothing point of views on hot button issues. "If it bleeds, it leads" is a very true statement. I wonder however, why more folks like me are not up in arms demanding a more logical and hopefully, country-wide voice.

Do we only want to hear facts that
support what we already believe?

Guns and gun control have been a hotly debated topic for some time now, but I can't fail to see that the majority of people I talk to and interact with on a daily basis adhere to a calmer attitude when discussing whether or not guns are good, bad, or somewhere in between.

I call this the "mind you own business" attitude. This attitude is deeply bedding in the giving and receiving of respect. I have my own believes on the subject and act accordingly in my own home, with my own family. I ask those around me to respect that. In return, I respect the decision of those around me in regards to what they believe and how they live their lives. That is called good manners.

Is selectively banning certain guns
the answer?

Somewhere along the way, we started mixing up "manners" with "morals." Morals are highly personal opinions and beliefs that are between you, those you love most and your Maker, whomever you believe him (or her) to be. Manners are things that we do to show respect, good will and friendliness to those around us in every day life. It is bad manners to verbally attack someone because they happen to think differently than those around you. You are not the end-all, be-all decision maker for your fellow man, and attempting to pass judgement on others beliefs and decisions will most likely end badly for you. Going around telling everyone and anyone that you can trap into a conversation that you are right and they are wrong and that laws and policies sold be changed or created to enforce your specific point of view is the very height of arrogance. It's rude...stop it right now! Miss Manners would be horrified, and I myself feel faint at the thought.

Are we conditioned by the
media to react a certain way?

For example, I believe that owning guns is a very important right in the United States. I grew up around guns and currently own several. My entire extended family hunts various animals and we use the meat from hunting to help put food on the table, because it is healthier, more economical and we believe that it is required to be a responsible part of the food chain. We do not hide our weapons from our children (as they were not hidden from me and my siblings) and education our youth from a very early age on the reality of weapons, death and the grave responsibility that comes with handling fire arms. It is a fact that I could set a loading gun down on the table in front of me and it would rust away to nothing before it jumped up and ran off to hurt someone. I believe that evil resides in the twisted individual that chooses to kill and maim, not in my inanimate object. No one in my family has ever "found" a gun and played with it, accidentally shot a loved one, or any other of the horrible and gruesome things you hear about in the news in regards to having guns in the home....never, not once, ever. There is no fear, just responsibility and respect. I feel this is healthy, normal, and feel safer knowing that I have the training necessary to defend my family.

Can we learn from other Countries
or do we make our own way?

But here is the kicker~ I would never, ever, ever consider attempting to tell one of my friends that does not care for guns and will not have them in their home, that they are wrong. I will not argue with them in the attempt to make them see my point of view. I will not scream and swear and call names and show pages full of facts that defend my stance. I find such behavior to be the height of arrogance and rudeness. How can I, being so confident in my beliefs, presume to tell others that their beliefs are somehow wrong, simply because they do not align with my own?

Are of feelings causing us to
ignore evidence?

Instead of debating on weather guns should be legal or not, we should be focusing instead on the breakdown of common decency, respect and privacy that is a frightening glimpse of what is to come. There will always be guns in America, period. Even if tomorrow the government outlawed them, they would still be here, in our closets, our gun safes and in our basements. The idea that every individual would turn in their weapons is ludicrous and laughable, it goes against the spirit and history of our nation, simple as that. The criminals of the world would defiantly hold on to theirs. So instead of getting weighed down with fighting over who is "right" and who is "wrong" perhaps we can instead work towards the idea that even though we will not always agree on issues, those issues need not define us. At our jobs, in our neighborhoods, at our kid's soccer practices, we stand shoulder to shoulder with folks that have very different ideas about everything from guns to religion. Does that change anything? Do you have to be "with us" or "against us?" If I can respect your choices and decisions about your life, is it too much to ask that you respect mine? Can't we all just mind our own business and not let the whack-jobs try to box us in and label us?

Will there always be people
that will hurt others not matter what
they use to do it?

 Drawing lines in the sand is a dangerous pastime, and some lines can not be erased after they are scratched on the ground. Are you motivated by the need to be "right," the lure of convincing others that they are "wrong," the desire to make decisions for homes and households that you are not a part of? Isn't be allowed to live the way you see fit and allowing that same dignity to others enough?
 Does it have to be all or nothing?