First Light Designs

The ottoman in the master bedroom at my twin sister Diane’s house got a facelift, a new custom cover I made for it:

The original upholstered cover fell victim to the claws of Diane and Ed’s dear departed cat Alex. The newly slipcovered ottoman looks right at home in front of an easy chair in her bedroom:

Here’s a view that includes a peek at Midnight in the Garden, the quilt I gave Diane for her 60th birthday:

The newly covered ottoman actually has a fraternal twin (hey, just like me!):

This is the slipcover I made four years ago when I was visiting Diane over Thanksgiving. My goal was to make this look like an upholstered piece, since I’m not a fan of slipcovers. It was a real seat-of-the-pants project, since I had never made a slipcover or upholstered anything. When I started working on the new one, all I had to do was look at the old one to refresh my memory on how I had made it. No need to reinvent the wheel!

Every year when I visit my twin sister Diane over the Thanksgiving holiday, I work on a home dec project for her. It’s a small way to repay the generous hospitality she and her husband Ed show my husband Charlie and me on these annual visits.

This year I’m making a slipcover for an ottoman that goes in the master bedroom. This is what it looks like now:

Ed and Diane’s dear departed cat Alexis (Alex for short) liked to sharpen her claws on the ottoman, and she left the evidence behind:

Alex  was an equal opportunity kneader. She managed to work her magic on both sides of the ottoman:

On my visit last year, Diane and I found this lovely basketweave fabric which we thought would be perfect to recover the ottoman with:

This year we found the perfect trim for it — 50% off — at Frugal Fabrics:

Today I got the fabric measured and cut. Here is the top with boxed corners pinned and ready to sew:

Tomorrow I will get out my trusty old Elna sewing machine (bought in 1975), which now lives at Diane’s house, and will start sewing. It will be good to sit in front of a sewing machine again!

My sister Diane’s kitchen renovation (subject of the this post and the previous one) included the creation of a built-in buffet in her dining room. It’s almost nine feet wide! Check it out:

The buffet replaced a standing sideboard that was just under five feet wide so you can imagine all the storage and display space she gained. Here’s a closer look at the top of the buffet:

Diane and I had such fun rearranging her “Rosalie” Spode china! It was given to her about 30 years ago by her mother-in-law. Thanks to antique stores, estate sales, and ebay, Diane has added to her collection over the years and, I am happy to report, uses it often.

The top cabinets of the buffet are glass-fronted without panes to show the china to its best advantage. Here are close-ups of each cabinet:

Four of the six cabinets on the lower cabinets are also glass-fronted:

A few years ago our stepmother Shirley gave Diane her yellow Fostoria glassware in the “Baroque” pattern, which features the fleur de lis, a favorite motif of mine. Every time I came from Oregon to Georgia to visit Diane, I would tuck a few carefully wrapped pieces of glassware into my luggage. It took a while for all the pieces to get here but the effort was well worth it. The Fostoria and the Spode look elegant together, don’t you think?

I must confess to being a little green with envy over these wonderful changes to my sister’s home. But I’m also very happy for her. After 40+ years in the working world, she recently retired. She has earned this renovation, and I know she will enjoy it for many years to come.

What you are looking at here is the space between the kitchen and dining room in my sister Diane’s Atlanta home. This space, often called the butler’s pantry, was simply a nook before the kitchen renovation that Diane and her husband Ed undertook recently.

The butler’s pantry contained a lovely antique cabinet in which Diane stored some of her Spode china. The rest of the china was in the formal dining room in an antique sideboard. The kitchen renovation expanded to include turning the butler’s pantry into a wet bar and replacing the sideboard in the dining room with a built-in buffet.

Diane chose glass-fronted cupboards above the wet bar to show off her vintage glassware. Alas, it virtually disappeared against the white walls and glass shelves. What the cupboards needed was some depth of color. Her clever solution was to cover foam core with a rich paisley home dec fabric and place it on the back wall of the glass cupboard.

Here’s a look at the fabric with the cupboard doors open . . .

. . . and closed:

Don’t you love the play of pattern between the swirls of the paisley and the straight lines of the basketweave backsplash?

Up next: the new built-in buffet in the dining room. Please come back for a look!

For the last 15 years (at least) my husband and I have traveled from our home in Portland, Oregon to Norcross, Georgia to spend Thanksgiving with my twin Diane and her husband Ed. It’s a tradition we treasure.

Every year Diane would comment on how much easier it would be to prepare Thanksgiving dinner if her kitchen had two ovens. The two-oven conversation often evolved into what other changes she would make in her kitchen and dining room. The other big ticket item on her wish list was a built-in buffet in the dining room to display the set of Spode china that Ed’s mother passed on to them many years ago. Ed and Diane wanted a buffet that evoked the one in Ed’s family home in Laurelhurst, a lovely old residential neighborhood in Portland.

As I write this post, Diane is in her newly renovated kitchen making pumpkin pies. I’ll be joining her in the kitchen shortly to help with other tasks in preparation for tomorrow’s Thanksgiving feast for a dozen.

As often happens, what started out as a simple remodeling project — in this case, creating space for a second oven and building a buffet — turned into a complete renovation. In the process, Diane gained a kitchen worthy of the pages of House Beautiful, a wet bar in the butler’s pantry, and a built-in buffet that beautifully showcases her Rosalie Spode.

Let’s take a look at Diane’s new kitchen. First, the northwest corner:

The southwest corner:

Looking south-southeast:

This view from the northeast corner takes in a good part of the kitchen:

This is the time of year we tend to reflect on the things for which we are thankful. You can bet that Diane is thankful for her beautiful new kitchen!

In my next post I’ll show you the dining room buffet and the butler’s pantry. Diane did something very clever in the latter with a piece of home dec fabric. I hope you’ll come back in a few days for a look. In the meantime, I send my best wishes for a wonderful Thanksgiving! I hope you get to spend it with people you love.